Before the surprising success of Facing the Giants, Alex and Stephen Kendrick, produced their first feature film, Flywheel. With a budget of only $20,000, these relatively new filmmakers cast community and church members to tell a morally uplifting story about the power of prayer and the necessity of placing God first in your life.
Over the next year, I will be co-directing the sociology of religion movie night along with Pop Theology contributor Wendy Arce under the supervision of Jerome Baggett, Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. A monthly film screening that started over a year ago, the series features documentaries about religious subject matter, as [...]
I am no anime or manga expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I recognize the artistic value, beauty, and potential for these art forms. They, or animation in general, can image the limitless possibilities of our imagination. Theology and film scholars are starting to catch on to the implications of great works like [...]
In college, I read a book that began to drastically change the way I thought about God and the ways in which God worked in the world. For a young person from a conservative Southern Baptist background, Leslie D. Weatherhead‘s The Will of God was a radical reading experience. Faced with theological inconsistencies during World [...]
Congratulations to Dr. Brad Braxton, former homiletics and New Testament professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School, on his election as the sixth senior pastor at Riverside Church in New York City. Follow the link after the jump for more.
Occasional Pop Theology contributor Daniel Skidmore provides a quick review of the Coen brothers’ latest film, Burn After Reading.
During the Olympics, President Bush sat down for a rather lengthy interview with Bob Costas. Costas began a question about China’s problems by saying, “I know America has its share of problems, but….” Almost before Costas could finish his question, Bush rushed and said, “America doesn’t have problems.” Clearly President Bush and David Simon are [...]
Pop Theology contributor Wendy Arce reviews a Hitchcock classic, Lifeboat.
I received my favorite issues of Entertainment Weekly recently, the Fall telvision and movie previews. I thought I would comb through them and create my own version of each. So here it is, the first ever Pop Theology Fall TV Preview or, rather, the contets to the Pop Theology DVR Box.
For two weeks during the summer, I took a course on American slavery and the Holocaust. Talk about summer time fun time! From the start, we sought to avoid “invidious comparisons” between the two events that would eternally debate who suffered more or which event was more horrific. Instead, we looked at issues of race, [...]
