Shayna Watson (who was ordained the day after the con – congratulations!) was the organizer and mastermind behind the event. Hopefully you listened to the episode of the ReligionProf Podcast that featured her – if not, I encourage you to do so!
There were two respondents to Chuck’s keynote. One was Rev. Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams, who I learned when I met her the evening before the convention started was a longtime comic book and Star Trek fan. She talked about the experience (as a Hebrew Bible/Old Testament professor) of interacting with students who, reading Exodus for apparently the first time, wondered where Nefretiri was. She realized that they knew the movie, but not the book.
The other respondent in the session was Rev. Dr. Patricia Lyons, author of Teaching Faith with Harry Potter, who essentially preached a sermon on Harry Potter fandom. It was a sermon full of historical insight as well as contemporary relevance, engaging with the popularity (despite not being particularly good literature) of Pilgrim’s Progress in centuries past, and how public perception and reception of the Bible has always been mediated through or accompanied by more widespread use of interpretative popular literature.
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