The Theology of Superheroes: Engaging Secular Society with Modern Mythology

People need stories to make sense of life. Sometimes these stories or myths are true and other times they are fabrications or caricatures of reality. The people of old used myths and spiritual folktales for entertainment, and then these evolved into narratives to give coherence to the world they inhabited. Fyodor Dostoevsky said it best; "At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art. Then life will find its very existence from the arts." Today these myths are told in many forms with the most popular form being that of superheroes: Superman, the Avengers, and Spiderman to name a few. This talk will discuss effective ways to engage this secular culture using the modern mythos of superheroes.