Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an edited volume that explores the intersection of religion and cinema through the lenses of critical discourse. The focus of the shared inquiry are various films comprising the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and corresponding Netflix series. The contributors explore various religious themes and how they intersect with culture through the canon on the MCU. The first part focuses on responses to the societal, governmental, and cultural context that solidified with clarity during the 2016 Presidential Election cycle in the United States and in the following administration. Additionally, it provides lenses and resources for engaging in productive public actions. Part two explores cultural resources of sustaining activism and resistance as well as some of the key issues at stake in public action. The third part centers on militarization and resistance to state violence. Taken in concert, these three sections work together to provide frames for understanding while also keeping us engaged in the concrete action to mobilize social change. The overarching aim of the volume is to promote critical discourse regarding the dynamics of activism and political resistance.

Jennifer Baldwin is director of Grounding Flight Wellness Center, Woodstock, Georgia. Her primary area of scholarship is the intersection of traumatology and systematic theology.

Daniel White Hodge is associate professor of intercultural communication and chair of the communication arts department at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois.

Preface: Marveling Religion: Visual Culture as a Common Tongue

Daniel White Hodge and Jennifer Baldwin

Technology, Violence, and Sacrifice

Chapter One: I See A Suit of Armor Around the World: Tony Starks Techno-Idolatry and Self-Sacrificial Love

George A. Dunn and Jason T. Eberl

Chapter Two: Mimesis, Conflict, and Sacrificial Crisis in Black Panther

Matthew Brake

Chapter Three: Bulletproof Love:Luke Cage (2016) and Religion

Ken Derry, Daniel White Hodge, Laurel Zwissler, Stanley Talbert, Matthew J. Cressler, and Jon Ivan Gill

Power, Worth, and Society

Chapter Four: Old Gods in New Films: History, Culture, and Religion inBlack Panther,Doctor Strange, andThor: Ragnarok

Rhiannon Gran and Jo Henderson-Merrygold

Chapter Five: The Worthiness of Thor

Adam Barkman and Bennett Soenen

Chapter Six: Who Are You?:René Girard, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Black Panther

Ryan Smock

Chapter Seven: The Failure of a God: Thor, the Snap, and Post-Holocaust Political Theology

Andrew T. Vink

Chapter Eight: Mysterio as Antichrist inSpiderMan: Far From Home

George Tsakiridis

Deconstructing Norms, Imagining the New

Chapter Nine: Science and the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Deconstructing the Boundary between Science, Technology, and Religion

Lisa Stenmark

Chapter Ten: Religion, Science, and the Marvel Universe: Re-Imagining Human-Earth Relations

Whitney Bauman and Imran Khan

Chapter Eleven: Open Your Eye: Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Trauma Resolution

Jennifer Baldwin

Forming Identity

Chapter Twelve: Marvelling at Captain Danvers, Or What is So Super About Our Heroes: Contesting the Identity Politics of Self-Other

John C. McDowell

Chapter Thirteen: The Super Muslim and the Marvel Cinematic Universe: A Complicated Trajectory of Fantasy and Agency

Dilyana Mincheva

Chapter Fourteen: Bad Girls Turned Superwomen: A Critical Appraisal of the MCU Archetype for Superheroines

Will Abney