"Explores how Christians can connect with culture using movies and biblical accounts, helping Christians learn to apply their faith to the world around them"--

This informative guide helps readers combine their love of movies with their desire to grow closer to God. Foremost experts on faith and film, all connected with the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Seminary, explore forty leading movies from the last four decades to encourage movie lovers and small groups to reflect critically and theologically on their film choices. God in the Movies introduces and analyzes the spiritual content of top films from the 1980s through the 2010s, opening viewers up to a conversation about life, faith, and God. Following a format similar to Barsotti and Johnston's successful Finding God in the Movies, this completely new book covers different films spanning four decades. This engaging resource contains production notes and film synopses, relevant Scripture texts, theological reflection, discussion questions, film stills, recommended film clips, and more, serving as a treasure chest for hours of film viewing, discussion, and ministry. Clips from the movies referenced in each chapter are available online.

In this book the author reveals the truth behind what you see on screen. Movies are much more than just flickering lights on a wall. Movies matter. Movies impact your life every day, even if you never watch one. Why can movies affect us so deeply? How can one producer, actor, director, or writer change the way we think? Movies will continue to radically modify our culture. Find out how -- and why. Learn how you can play a part in changing our cluture for the dacades ahead, and how to guide your children to do the same. -- from back cover

This contemporary classic gets a limited edition makeover with movie art and a new preface from Donald Miller. In print for nearly a decade, Blue Like Jazz has earned a coveted spot on readers' shelves and in their hearts. Many have said that Donald Miller expressed exactly what they were feeling but couldn't find the words to say themselves. In this landmark book that changed what people expected from Christian writers, that changed what people needed for their spiritual journeys, Donald Miller takes readers through a real life striving to understand relationship with God. Heartwarming and hilarious, poignant and unexpected, Blue Like Jazz has become a contemporary classic. For anyone wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant in a postmodern culture, thirsting for a genuine encounter with a God who is real, or yearning for a renewed sense of passion in life . . . Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption.

Bryan Stone engages the cinema to open a discussion of theology and the culture of our time by pairing specific Christian doctrines found in the Apostles' Creed with popular movies and videos.

Contains summaries of nearly two hundred Christian-themed movies made between 1905 and 2008, each with commentary; arranged chronologically by decade to highlight the decline in positive portrayals.

Drawing on his storied career as a pop-culture wallflower, Steve Turner provides an all-access pass to the pervasive cultures of style, media and celebrity. Passing on his uniquely Christian way of viewing these cultures, Turner opens our eyes to a world of ideas lying just beneath the hype.

Themes of faith and religion have been threaded through popular representations of the zombie so often that they now seem inextricably linked. Whether as mindless servants to a Vodou Bokor or as evidence of the impending apocalypse, the ravenous undead have long captured something of society's relationships with spirituality, religion and belief. By the start of the 21st century, religious beliefs are as varied as the many manifestations of the zombie itself, and both themes intersect with various ideological, environmental and even post-human concerns.This book surveys the various modern religious associations in zombie media. Some characters believe that the undead are part of God's plan, others theorize that the environment might be saving itself or that zombies might be predicting life and hybridity beyond human existence. Timely and important, this work is a meditation on how faith might not just be a forerunner to the apocalypse, but the catalyst to new kinds of life beyond it.

Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture and society in turmoil. This book captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination and tracks the interlacing of the medium’s technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious aspects. Stepping into the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other. Birgit Meyer analyzes Ghanaian video as a powerful, sensational form. Colliding with the state film industry’s representations of culture, these movies are indebted to religious notions of divination and revelation. Exploring the format of "film as revelation," Meyer unpacks the affinity between cinematic and popular Christian modes of looking and showcases the transgressive potential haunting figurations of the occult. In this brilliant study, Meyer offers a deep, conceptually innovative analysis of the role of visual culture within the politics and aesthetics of religious world making.

This collection presents essays that lay out the author’s Christian approach to film criticism and reviews that exemplify this critic at his most perceptive. Including interviews with award-winning actors and directors, this volume draws heavily on the author’s academic expertise and his decade of experience as an acclaimed film journalist. Whether examining the latest Hollywood blockbuster, a topical documentary, or an indie festival favorite, the book subtly, but carefully, draws attention to how films can speak to Christians and how Christian voices can enrich the conversations around their meaning and relevance.