This God-talk Miscellany focuses mostly on film and television:1. Here’s another article about how Hollywood finds religion, but not everyone sees the same light, looking at both those who seek to partake of The Passion’s cash cow as well as those who want to burn it alive.
2. Looks like The Da Vinci Code isn’t the only thing bugging Britians’ churches: apparently Damien's second coming is a bad omen for Church, though you wouldn’t be able to guess it from the Church's Damien Plea, in which Britian’s SundayMail reports that the “Catholic Church is urging parents whose babies are born on June 6, 2006 to defy superstition and name their sons Damien.” Ack. For more on The Omen (which opens June 6) on this blog, see here and here.
3. The NY Times ran a story on NBC’s fall line up, which includes a couple of intriguing dramas from this blog’s perspective, including: Heroes, which reportedly follows in Lost’s footsteps as it tags along with a “group of young people discover they have sudden, unusual powers — an office worker can teleport at will to any location, a cop can hear other people's thoughts — just as a menacing force seems to be threatening the world”; Raines, a detective series with Jeff Goldblum who plays “a highly eccentric policeman who communicates — psychologically, not supernaturally — with murder victims, enlisting them as partners of a sort as he pursues their killers”; and—from a purely Southern point-of-view—Friday Night Lights, a tale of big-time Texas high school football. . .. based on the celebrated book by H. G. Bissinger. . . [about] the new coach of a team whose town lives and dies with football” (and, believe me, towns in the South really do live and die with football—I’ve never seen anything like it). Why the interest on this blog? Well, I think comic book films and shows are promising for themes relevant to Christians, detective shows often deal with justice issues (also a relevant theme to Christians), and the football-thing, well, let's just say it's an on-going cultural study (plus, if it stays true to the South, religion will have to show up in the plot lines).
4. Last but not least (or maybe they are), a couple of DaVinci Code articles, including one from my beloved home desert state of Arizona (which also falls into the category of articles-that-make-me-go-GRRR) and another with a quote from emerging church guru Brian McLaren (with whom I happen to agree on this one).
(Image: Wikipedia)