Faith in Film. Religious Themes in Contemporary Cinema. By Christopher Deacy.

Abstract

Christopher Deacy's new book Faith in Film argues the case for the recognition of the cinema as ‘a viable and fertile repository of religious significance in contemporary, western culture’ (4). In its early chapters, Deacy outlines his presuppositions and his methodology. First, he queries the secularisation thesis, suggesting that religion in the west has not been displaced by new cultural forms, but has colonised them, and has been transformed in the process. Accordingly, the ongoing neglect of religion by cultural theorists is ill-founded, and for their part scholars of religion must engage popular culture. Second, films are not unambiguously or intrinsically religious; their meanings and functions are (at least partly) the result of viewer activity. Narrative analysis of ‘religious films’ and approaches grounded in auteurism are, therefore, of limited value; a study of reception is necessary for an appreciation of the cinema's relationship to faith. In articulating...