Robert Jewett (1933–2020)

Jewett, a professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary at the time the book was written (1993), enjoys watching movies. In this volume, he looks at several motion pictures through the lens of the Apostle Paul's New Testament writings. The movies included are Star Wars, Amadeus, A Separate Peace, Tender Mercies, Grand Canyon, Tootsie, Ordinary People, Empire of the Sun, Pale Rider, Red Dawn, and Dead Poet's Society. I'm not a huge movie fan, but I have seen several of these. I felt show more he was stretching Scripture in many places to try to make it fit with what he wanted his students to "take away" from the movie. Christianity and culture remains a popular topic in religious studies. I wonder what films would be included in a 2026 sequel if someone were to tackle it. Christian approaches are likely to be much further divided than they were at that time, so we might get some very different interpretations by persons on the conservative and liberal spectrums. show less

I am reviewing the second revised 1984 edition of this book. The first edition was 1973. A much updated version of Jewett's theory - which develops the superhero motif and also takes into account the 'war on terror' was published in 2002 in conjunction with John Shelton Lawrence with the modified tile of 'Captain America and the Crusade against Evil'. The subtitle 'The Dilemma of Religious Nationalism' remains.

Jewett’s thesis is relatively simply stated. Much American politics and rhetoric show more has swallowed the myth of being the 'New Israel' that is 'Righteous' and has the selfless duty of civilizing the world. The roots of this are to be found in the Puritan theology of the settlers, which itself is founded in a particular reading of the Old Testament, and especially its Deuteronomic strands.

As this ideology states that the righteous nation will have victory through conquest of evil, then military force becomes not just a sad pragmatic and necessity but a patriotic duty. The image of the superhero perpetuates culturally and in a secularised sense the myth of redemption through violence.

Further, because righteousness guarantees victory, defeat cannot be entertained even in distant conflicts - Jewett initially wrote very shortly after the Vietnam War – as that would be a ‘psychic threat’ to national identity.

The solution, for Jewett, is to reject the ‘idolatrous’ identification of righteousness with the American way, and read more closely the ‘prophetic realism’ of Amos and Isaiah et. al. which shows that sin and evil are not simply extrinsic to the nation.

Jewett’s thesis is quite compelling, and it was quite sobering to come to realise as I read it that it translates quite easily into the conflicts with various terrorist groups and middle eastern regimes of the past decade (as I read Jewett I was not aware of the 2002 update – which retains many of the chapter headings of the 1984 version). The self belief and sense of righteousness of our former Prime Minister would probably fall within the sphere of Jewett’s criticism also.

Where I part company somewhat with Jewett is in his rather un-nuanced reading of the Deuteronomistic author. Jewett himself points out some contradictory aspects of the Deuteronomistic history – he pick particularly on the death of Josiah in battle – which to me suggests that the narrative as we have it has more subtlety than Jewett gives it credit for.

That aside, however, the book raises many important questions which remain very current. While it may be better to read the 2002 collaboration with Lawrence, this edition has the merit of being almost half the length. show less

An interesting take on American popular culture and society, this book takes Joseph Campbell's monomyth as its starting point and tries to construct an American monomyth - an archetypal story that is a backdrop to all the different heroes in America's popular imagination. The authors cover a wide range of material, from comic books to video games and Hollywood blockbusters. And the picture that emerges is in stark contrast with a popular self-image that America has of itself - the American show more monomyth has nothing to do with democratic ideals of the nation. show less