What Replaces the Biblical Cinematic Universe?

Apr 02, 2024

I have a new piece up at Discourse asking, “What Replaces the Biblical Cinematic Universe?”

This is part of a series of articles I’ve written in the past few years responding to the precipitous decline in religious belief and trying to figure out what a secular culture—which is where we are clearly headed—can and should look like. Except that in this piece, I am trying to describe what it already looks like.

Specifically, I look at the role of “shared spirituality,” that is, “a set of common experiences and references that help us talk about these issues and find a sense of community and fellowship.”

The answer to that need is already here, and chances are you are already a fan. Secular art and literature deal with the same spiritual issues as religion, and this includes mass popular culture with its franchises and fandoms, to which we are already transferring some of the sense of loyalty and personal identity that used to be the hallmarks of religion.
Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Hollywood produced a series of grand-scale Biblical epics that you might think of as the Biblical Cinematic Universe. These days, we are replacing that with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its various rivals and copycats.

A lot of this is based on an article I wrote eight years ago about the proliferation of fictional “universes,” which holds up really well. For the present purpose, I zero in on one aspect of this phenomenon.

Each of these sci-fi and fantasy series is not just a franchise but a literary universe, not only in the sense of a shared setting with distinctive terminology, but also in a more esthetic and even spiritual sense.
All works of art create their own “universe” in the sense of a distinctive view of the universe, of human beings and what we ought to expect from the world. Taking what is probably the most universally known example, consider the values you might draw out of the Star Wars films and stories. There is a longing for adventure, the importance of loyalty to friends, a certain amount of irreverence toward authority, and of course resistance against tyranny; but also an injunction to trust your feelings and intuitions (if we don’t take all that stuff about the Force too literally), and a warning against letting fear, anger and hatred control your life.
Or consider my own favored denomination: Star Trek. Its advantage over other franchises is its projection of an ideal future in which we have risen above war, tyranny, and poverty, and achieved a utopia of peace, prosperity, and technological advancement. Anyone who has watched some of the shows has a sense of the “Federation values” that make this utopia possible and what is expected of a Starfleet officer: rationality, professionalism, respect for the individual, tolerance, and intellectual curiosity….
So in addition to matching the scope of religious mythology, these fictional universes also serve the same spiritual function as religion.

Yes, a lot of this is just me justifying the fact that I occasionally like write about the latest Star Trek series. It’s not just my personal interest—it says something about the values of our culture! And while “I would personally prefer if people were spending more time reading long, highbrow philosophical novels”—there is not, as yet, an Ayn Rand Cinematic Universe—I point out that a widely shared cultural touchstone needs to draw from popular culture, which is less intellectually demanding.

This outlook helps explain a lot of things that otherwise make no sense, such as “the recent tribulations of J.K. Rowling, who has been attacked for relatively minor deviations from the ‘progressive’ orthodoxy held by some of the fans who grew up on her Harry Potter stories.”

If you describe their complaint in ordinary terms—“an author I like expressed a political opinion I disagree with”—the intensity of this controversy makes no sense. But if you realize that the “wizarding world” of Harry Potter is one of our new stand-ins for religion, it makes more sense. To this breakaway sect, Rowling is like a prophet-turned-apostate who has betrayed the true religion.
But note that this controversy is really a clash between two approaches to a shared public spirituality. Our fictional universes and their fandoms tend to express their creed in general terms that leave room for interpretation. By contrast, the overtly political creeds that offer themselves as new outlets for the old religious fervor tend to require adherence to very specific dogmas and the repetition of exact formulas. You tell me which is healthier.

And the biggest advantage of these literary alternatives to religion is that this time around, we know it’s all fiction.

We might roll our eyes at some of Gene Roddenberry’s woozy utopianism, or we might not like the direction some of the Star Trek stories take. Or if George Lucas re-edits a film so that Han doesn’t shoot first, we can hoard the original version, a bit like traditional Catholics protesting Vatican II by clinging to the Latin mass. But we know that none of these opinions is the “true” faith because it was all made up to begin with.

The result: “Our participation in these fictional universes satisfies our spiritual need for a coherent view of the world and a way to express our values, and it helps us share our enthusiasm with like-minded people. But it does so in a way that leaves each of us, individually, as the arbiter of what we think is true and right.”