Angels: a pop culture facination theologians are ducking?

Are theologians ducking the once-obligatory study of angels?  While my friend Kelton Cobb was here at Holden teaching on pop culture and faith--the subject of his fine book--I had the thought that even though angels are everywhere in popular culture and religious imagination, they seem to have fallen off the list of subjects getting serious treatment from theologians.  I can easily think of pop songs, movies, and tv shows, along with lots of gift store cards and stautettes of angels. On the book front,  I haven't done a careful bibliographic search, but a check of our library here at Holden offered a recent book by Billy Graham (not serious theology) and a 1957 book by Jean Danielou, S. J. called The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of the Church.  It is lovely, short, and comprehensive.  He states that even in the 1950s when he wrote the subject was already falling out of favor among theologians.  He argues that when angels are raised, and that is not often, it is either treated as a personification of psychological realities or a heretical spiritualism, and neither is an acceptable conclusion from a Christian perspective.  This in the introduction.  Then he moves to discuss a series of topics drawing on the thought of the church fathers (more or less up to Aquinas, to whom he gives highest praise for his discussion of angels in the Summa Theologica). 

What would be really interesting is to see a practical theologian with a lively sense of contemporary discipleship, media, and theological depth write on this topic.  What are the ways angels 'show up' in contemporary culture, and what meaning to people give to them?  What has the Scripture and tradition to say regarding angels and how has this teaching shifted across the centuries?  And what might we say about faithful discipleship today, about God's work in the world, and about the specific role angels play in that?  This has to connect to preaching and worship, but much more, too.  Hmm.  I wish I had time for this one--perhaps a project for a laboratory in practical theology!
Peace,
Chris

Comments

[Andy]

What about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's characters as renegade angels in Kevin Smith's movie Dogma (1999)?

[Katy]

I've always struggled with the theology of angels. I'll definitely check out the resources you list!

[stevehollinghurst]

you might be intertested in the socio-psychologocal study done in the UK on peoples experience of angels, called 'Angels' by Emma Heathcote, they have it on amazon.

in the UK a number of folks have been exploring the cultural phenomenon as part of the rising interest in spirituality and it's media outworkings.

[Grant Miller-Francisco]

One place to start might be Walter Wink's work on the Powers. I was delighted to see his work referenced by, of all people, cyberpunk author Neil Stephenson (http://www.reason.com/news/show/36481.html).