In pursuing this question, I turned to two areas of scholarship: film criticism and
the academic study of religion. I expected to find models of how to analyze the re-
lationship of religion and film. What I found was disappointing. Scholars engaged
in prevailing modes of film criticism have had almost nothing to say about reli-
gion. And scholars who study religion have had almost nothing to say about Hol-
lywood film. Instead of encountering an ongoing and stimulating dialogue about
religion and film, I encountered silence. ¹

Whether influenced by Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, post-structuralist, or
auteur theory, film critics ignore religion and the academic study of religion. Ap-
parently, critics assume that secular values, forces, and perspectives matter more
than religious ones. If this is the case, film critics are like those historians, sociolo-
gists, economists, or psychologists who, in Bryan R. Wilson's words, "take secular-
ization for granted. Their overwhelming tendency . . . is to regard religion as a pe-
ripheral phenomenon in contemporary social organization, and one which, in
their studies of the broad contours of social change, productivity, economic
growth, or human psychology, they rarely find need to consider." ² Similarly, rarely
does a film critic publish an article that deals with religion.

It is almost as if the discourse of cutting-edge film criticism is designed to ex-
clude attention to religion. The index of a recent introduction to the vocabulary of
contemporary film criticism is revealing. Terms such as alienation, ideology, pleni-
tude, and resistance appear. Six types of realism and four types of discourse are in-
dexed. Freudian terms abound--hysteria, ego, drive, oedipal complex--as do key
words from the theoretical lexicons of Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, and Saussure. But
religion is not listed; nor is myth or ritual, let alone eschatology, soteriology, or
theology. ³

If religion is not in the vocabulary of film scholars, it is also true that they give
almost no attention to the academic field of religious studies. In an introduction
to a series of books on film, Edward Buscombe and Phil Rosen declare that the
field of cinema studies has been hugely enriched "in interaction with a wide vari-
ety of other disciplines." They list "literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, his-
tory, economics and psychology." ⁴ They do not mention religious studies, even
though this well-established, widespread discipline involves the labors of tens of
thousands of professional scholars. Perhaps this is a simple oversight. Perhaps it
reveals an assumption that film studies has little to learn from religious studies.
Whatever the cause, it is hoped that the present collection will make such omis-
sions less likely in the future.

It behooves students of American film to take religion more seriously, especially
as historians and sociologists argue that religion, particularly varieties of funda-
mentalism, is increasing in importance throughout the world and will likely do so
at an accelerated rate as the dawn of the new millennium approaches and passes. ⁵
Ironically, the power of religion was recognized by many of the thinkers whose
theories have influenced contemporary film criticism. Several wrote extensively

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