Blue and red flashes illuminate an ichthus. As the camera pans to a wider scene, and we realise the metallic fish is actually a bumper sticker on a convertible that has collided with a Volkswagen Beetle. Sitting on the sidewalk is…
Christian Madsbjerg. Look: How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2023, 234 pages, $29.00. Nothing is more central to the whole Theological Aesthetics project than accompanying the Christian community as we learn to look. I practice theological…
What do horror movies have to do with religion, and with Christian faith in particular? What is worthwhile about a genre in which evil is portrayed so vividly? Horror filmmaker Scott Derrickson suggests an answer: For me, [horror] is the…
Despite its unpopularity among many Christian audiences, the horror genre is rife with theological suggestion. Typically, the horror films I enjoy cleverly twist our presumptions about reality against us. They upset our settled metaphysical frameworks by which we too-often render…
A prevailing theme within the canon of Christian Scripture is the meeting of God and humanity. On the one hand is a Being of incalculable power, intelligence, and glory, on the other is mortal man. Despite the chasm between these…
Despite Dante Alighieri’s distinctive absence, Hozier’s latest album Unreal Unearth, released on the 18th of August, brings the listener on a journey through the Inferno. In this iteration it is not Dante who is the protagonist but indie-folk-pop hero Hozier who…
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity. — Opening caption of Oppenheimer Recently I asked a friend if he’d seen ‘Barbenheimer’, this summer’s Frankenstein’s monster…
Though it’s not everyone’s favourite genre, horror comprises a large part of our cultural imagination. Cryptids and monsters, haunted houses, jump scares and gore, there’s no shortage of things that go bump in the night. From a Christian or broadly religious perspective, these elements and their portrayal in…
The 2023 film Barbie has been interpreted as many things: feminist manifesto, two-hour long Mattel commercial, Biblical retelling. The latter is not a niche reading circulating solely in my carefully crafted bubble; even mainstream platforms have noticed that the film…