#fantasy culture and #faith & what it means

In the long history of Christianity, Western literature changed after Jesus came upon the scene, then fairy tales…

(also, too I’d love to do a long history of anime and its reflection/fascination with the Christ story…letme know if you ever get to studying that!!)

Fairy tales: you know, where people are loved into being/transformed into what they really are supposed to be.

Fairy tales, where resurrection and happy endings are possible.

Cupid & Psyche is the last myth (Petty Greek Gods who are messing with humanity)

and the First Fairy Tale: Beauty and the Beast

Since then, fantastic literature has tended to mirror spirituality

the Discovery Mythos (think Gulliver’s Travels) about Christianity “taking over” and “conquering” the world civilizing people<–NOTE we are still not recovered and must Decolonize both our theology and our fantastique literature (Sci-Fi/Fantasy etc)

But Also there was the mythology of Human progress…the myth that science and humanity would continually evolve into perfection–that religion/God/magic will become inconsequential and fade like the elves of Lord of the Rings & the invisibility of Oz.

Today the fantastique myth talks about parallel and intersecting realities of magic and reality. Think Muggles & Wizarding Folk, Urban Fantasy, Neil Gaiman

On the whole I find it a more (w)holistic stance.

and so no I don’t think faith and church will die out, I think it will become more (w)holistically part of our lives…

This is my good news for 2017 🙂

Have hope

PS someday I may write a complex thesis on all this..but for now I continue to purport it in conversation that the few who are fluent in religion and or fantasy lit understand…

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times. View all posts by katyandtheword