Finding the ‘echoes of faith’ in the stories we love
By Heather Excell
“If you want to know what our culture truly believes, what it fears, what it worships and what it aches for, it’s no use looking at political debates or newspaper columns. We want to look at the box office records.”
This was the starting point of Fr Steven Smith’s address to young adults gathered at the Crescent Hotel on 3 September for the Big Pub Night.
Drawing on St Paul’s encounter with the culture at the marketplace of Athens, in Acts 17, Fr Steven described today’s films, shows, gaming and streaming platforms as the ‘modern marketplace’. He proposed three lenses through which Christians can understand the stories emerging from it: the ‘echo’, the ‘inversion’ and the ‘subversive counterfeit’.
The ‘echo’, an unconscious reflection of grace breaking through the secular noise.
He pointed to Marvel’s Tony Stark as an example. In ‘Iron Man’, Stark brazenly declares, ‘I am Iron Man’, representing an almost total commitment to himself. However, by ‘Avengers: Endgame’, that same declaration accompanies his decision to sacrifice himself so that others can live. What began as an expression of ego becomes an act of self-emptying love, an echo of the truth that life is not found in clinging to power, but in giving ourselves for others.
The second is what Fr Steven described as the ‘inversion’: stories that celebrate an idea such as radical autonomy, only to reveal that it cannot deliver what it promises.
“In 2013, ‘Let it go’ became the secular hymn of expressive individualism,” he said. “The culture cheered Elsa. She had finally thrown off the oppressive shackles of family, tradition and her kingdom to live her authentic truth. But it didn’t work out that way.”
Elsa’s attempt to live entirely on her own terms leaves her isolated and brings destruction upon her kingdom. Ultimately, it was Anna’s self-sacrificial love that broke the curse.
“Real freedom isn’t the absence of boundaries,” Fr Steven said. “It’s the capacity to love rightly.”
The third is the more troubling ‘subversive counterfeit’: “the plundering of Christian sacred law and aesthetics while emptying them of what matters most: holiness”.
Churches, angels, demons, bishops, sacred architecture and religious language are borrowed to create compelling fictional worlds, while the faith itself is presented as inherently corrupt or oppressive.
Despite this, Fr Steven stressed that the medium itself is not the enemy.
“When storytellers treat the human soul with genuine honesty, these mediums can deliver profound, moving truths,” he said.
A follow-up panel discussion featuring Fr Steven Smith, Eilidh Direen and Daniel de la Motte, explored examples of popular culture raised by those gathered, emphasising that culture is not something to fear or reject.
The challenge posed for Christians is not to retreat from the cultural marketplace, but to enter it with discernment, recognising the echoes of the Gospel, challenging false ideas of freedom, and pointing towards the greater story of salvation history.