Film, Religion and Education in the Twenty-First Century: The Hollywood Hermeneutic

Abstract

We live in a post-modern, post-Christian and post-literate world where popular films have become the lingua franca of the video generation. Regrettably, their pedagogic utilisation as an extra-ecclesiastical resource within Religion Studies, Theology and Religious Education has frequently been under-utilised, unappreciated or deliberately ignored. For the profession to remain culturally relevant in the twenty-first century, it needs to integrate popular films into the pulpit, home and classroom as soon as practicable. Consciousness-raising via thematic surveys of the field is a valid first step in demonstrating how extensively religion permeates the medium. Consequently, the popular Hollywood cinema was scanned, the critical literature was reviewed, and textually-based, humanist film criticism was employed as the analytical lens. Three taxonomic categories were identified and explicated herein. Namely: (1) Christ-figures: The re-enfleshment of Jesus Christ, (2) Subtextual sacredness: Biblical props, characters and themes, and (3) Holy words: Explicit scriptural references and Bible-quoting. It was concluded that the Hollywood hermeneutic has immense value for both the children-of-the-media and religion scholarship. Further research into the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film and its pedagogic application was recommended.