Superman turns 75 this year, and in the latest cinematic retelling of his story, “Man of Steel,” Clark Kent is looking as youthful as ever. In fact, the coming Superman movie is one of a number of new superhero and sci-fi epics that demonstrate again our appetite for action flicks – and religious themes.
America’s Founding Fathers serve as patriarchs of the nation’s civil religion, but also as flashpoints in debates about faith in U.S. society. The President’s Day holiday spotlights this enduring focus on religion and the nation’s leaders – then and now – a theme running through recent books and movies, and in ongoing arguments about church and state.
Predictions about the world’s demise are not new but rumors of apocalypse have spiked as Dec. 21 approaches, a date when many say an ancient Mayan calendar will wind down – and signal the end of the world as we know it. Experts debunk this idea but the story illustrates our fascination with The End.
News that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing is fodder for glossy celebrity magazines, but there is an important religion angle to the story because Cruise’s involvement in Scientology is central to the marriage and the media coverage. ReligionLink has an extensive source guide for writing about Scientology.
New York City is often cast as a modern-day Babylon, but Tim Tebow’s trade to the Jets makes him another marquee Christian in the Big Apple’s sports circus, along with Knicks guard Jeremy Lin. The media buzz has revealed a deep evangelical presence in the city but raises questions about sports and faith.
Easter is an annual rite of spring, and so it seems are new claims and books and television programs about the Jesus of history. This year is no exception, as a number of developments related to the Bible and archaeology are coinciding with the Christian remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
After organized worship, athletic competition is perhaps the oldest communal impulse known to mankind, and today sports and religion mirror each other as never before, experts say. But that correlation has negative as well as positive aspects. This edition of ReligionLink provides a guide to these issues.
Jesus is bigger than Justin Bieber? Christians would say that’s true, of course. But when a Facebook page on Jesus outranks the teen idol, then the wider culture begins to take notice.
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