Conférence du professeur Adam Barkman

Résumé de la conférence : 

Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the religious life of Christians in America has, for the most part, been sharply divided between rational “de-mythologizers” on the one hand, and fundamentalist literalists on the other. According to the 20th century “Oxford Inklings,” who include luminaries such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, this sort of division should never have come to be. On the one hand, the rationalists are correct that overly literal readings of the Bible are problematic; on the other hand, the fundamentalists are right that many of the mythical elements in the Bible are spiritually nourishing and, indeed, our borrowing of these elements in contemporary myth-making is an important part of our spiritual food. According to the Inklings, a diet of superhero stories—the greatest of the American mythologies—is, because of its approximation to biblical mythology, a great source of spiritual nutrition not only for Americans, but also, through superhero myths told through cinema, the entire world.