Editorial: Exploring Religion and Popular Film

During this second century of the age of Hollywood, popular films are making even deeper in-roads into contemporary culture as they continue to evolve from toy to tool to become a universal form of entertainment and education. Although 'the movies' are a fundamental part of the modern religious quest and have significantly aided society in the spiritual explora­tion, interpretation and construction of its meaning, they are often dismissed as escapism and overlooked as a serious site for study within both secular and ecclesiastical institutions. This is regrettable and a gross waste of a com­paratively inexpensive, readily accessible and valuable artistic resource that is already enthusiastically embraced by the video-cum-Internet generation. Furthermore, these proverbial children-of-the-media do not automatically deride popular films as inherently shallow, brain-deadening or philosophi­cally anaemic, as also attested by the ever-increasing publications in the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film (aka sacred cinema, spiritual cinema, holy film, cinematic theology, cinematheology, theo-film, celluloid religion, film-and-faith, film-faith dialogue).