What Does the Bible Say? A Critical Conversation with Popular Culture in a Biblically Illiterate World by Mary Ann Beavis and HyeRan Kim-Cragg (review)

Mary Ann Beavis (a biblical scholar) and HyeRan Kim-Cragg (a practical theologian) offer an instantly useful resource for generating thoughtful conversations regarding the intersection of Christianity and popular culture. Writing in one voice, Beavis and Kim-Cragg approach ten paired topics, including Creation and Apocalypse, Sin and Salvation, Heaven and Hell, and God and Satan, in individual chapters. Each chapter gives a remarkably accessible, brief account of how these topics figure in biblical texts, how they arose within particular historical contexts, and how understandings of these topics has shifted over time up to the present day. Their scholarship is admirably clear and concise, aiming not to provide a definitive treatment on these large theological terms but rather to accustom the reader to the intellectual practices of looking closely at scriptural texts, attending to social location and historical developments, and recognizing both the coherence and the ambiguity of Christian concepts. Each chapter then turns to a movie related to the topic, offering discussion questions and notes. In this way, the book itself is a ready-made curriculum for a church group, college course, or seminary classroom. Beavis and Kim-Cragg watched and discussed these films with a variety of groups, so their discussion notes are field-tested and insightful.

The chapter on Gender and God exemplifies the pattern followed throughout the book. It first explores female imagery for God in Jewish Scriptures. Tucked into the biblical scholarship on various ways of addressing God, there is an explanation of the metaphorical nature of all language referring to the Divine and examples of creative ways of avoiding male dominant language that obscures this metaphorical quality, including the work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and The Inclusive Bible. The authors write, "These translation strategies destabilize conventional ways of referring to the divine in masculine terms while remaining faithful to the terminology of the Bible" (115).

Regarding the Christian Testament, Beavis and Kim-Cragg explore the imagery of Christ as Sophia and feminine associations with the Holy Spirit. Turning toward contemporary usage, they utilize Brian Wren's hymn, "Bring Many Names," to ponder how language can express the unknowability, intimacy, mystery, and ambiguity of God (119–120).

At this point in the chapter, the authors take a brief foray into the work of Judith Butler to discuss the fluidity and multiplicity of all forms of identity, including gender, and then move to theologians Susan A. Ross and David Tracy to address the necessary ambiguity of all symbolic expression. As a rule, these short excursions into contemporary scholarship are gems within this text, introducing concepts vital to contemporary theology but often unfamiliar to lay people or pastors who graduated from seminary some years ago. This particular excursus regarding identity and language is ambitious, tackling a great deal in a limited space. However, overall, these engagements with contemporary scholarship display a vital strength of the work as a whole: they respect and challenge the reader with new ideas described with the engaging clarity of skilled, experienced teachers.

The film used in this chapter is Babette's Feast, in which the wisdom of God is glimpsed in an extraordinary meal prepared by a female war refugee. A wide variety of films are used in the book, including Princess Mononoke, Jesus of Montreal, Prince of Egypt, The Chosen, The Virgin Suicides, Chocolat, and Spiderman II. Furthermore, any group that went through the process of reading, watching, and discussing in concert with this book would then be well-equipped to apply the same kind of critical reading to other movies, television shows, or novels.

Developing skills of critical Christian analysis of popular culture is the aim of the book. Beavis and Kim-Cragg recognize that biblical literacy is declining but the power of Christian themes, ideas...