In my chaplaincy work over the years, I’ve found myself leaning more and more into movies and television and other popular media. This “Pop Culture Chaplaincy” seems to resonate strongly with my patients (especially teens and children), but I’m aware it’s not always taken seriously by more traditional chaplains. As such, I want to present a case— no, three cases for Pop Culture Chaplaincy…

(1) The Biblical Argument
Let’s go ahead and get the preachiest one out of the way first.

In Acts 17, while traveling through Athens, Paul famously observed an altar bearing the inscription “to an unknown god.” Mindful of the context in which he was speaking, Paul used this idea of an “unknown god” to tell his Athenian audience about Jesus. Paul used something familiar to his listeners to teach them something new. So it goes when providing spiritual counsel in the modern setting too.

Like the Athenians, our society has a shared culture. Of course, we don’t have altars in the streets anymore, but we do have billboards advertising movies and TV shows and albums. Most of my patients have never heard of Ecclesiastes, but the vast majority have seen Encanto. They don’t all know about Israel and Judah, but they certainly know about Iron Man and Thanos. If I’m going to help them process their emotions around their illnesses, I have to present stories they know and can identify with. Like Paul appealing to the unknown god, I can use Harry Potter to talk about unconditional love. I can use Coco to talk about family and authenticity. I can use any number of superheroes and video games to talk about bravery and creativity. Like Paul, I can appeal to my context to hit home bigger points about spirituality. So why wouldn’t I?

(2) The Scholarly Argument
Fair warning: this one may get a little dense.

Lawyer and professor Michael Uslan famously stated that the gods of ancient Greece and Mesopotamia didn’t go away; they just put on capes and spandex. While Uslan was one of the first academics to explicitly describe superheroes as modern mythology, Joseph Campbell laid the groundwork for him with his concept of the “hero’s journey” or “monomyth”— a set of common story elements repeated across traditions. While Campbell spoke of the monomyth in connection to legends, fairy tales, and important cultural stories, one of Campbell’s biggest fans adopted the concept into possibly the most lucrative film franchise of all time. Yep, George Lucas absolutely bought into the idea that we can create modern mythology, and decades later, we’re still talking about Star Wars, so I’d say he was onto something. (And don’t even get me started on how authors like Jack Kirby and Neil Gaiman have brought literal mythological characters into modern comics!)

Now, when I use the term “myth,” I don’t mean a falsehood; I’m talking about a story which speaks something true about our culture. Myths tell us who we are, and they help us find our place in the world. For a contemporary American example: Did George Washington ever really chop down a cherry tree? Did Abe Lincoln ever walk miles out of his way to return a penny to a store? Truthfully, it doesn’t matter; what matters is that we tell these stories to emphasize the importance of honesty in our culture. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if Spider-Man is “real.” There are stories about him told in comics and movies which people find relatable and which speak a truth about our social order: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The story of Spider-Man and the stories of Lincoln and Washington and the stories of Jesus all have significance to us because they all present us with information about our identities— who we are, what we value, what we want to be, and what binds us together. They show us the collective morals of our society and present our hopes for our culture.

So many popular movies and comics and video games not only fit Campbell’s monomyth structure; they fit the notion that we use these media to tell the stories of us. And as John Savage teaches with the concept of “deep listening,” the stories we tell so often present metaphors about our own lives. So pay close attention to a child who talks nonstop about Paw Patrol; they may be telling you about who they are, what they value, what they long to be, and how they relate to the culture around them.

(3) The Personal Argument
I’ve lived this myself. Over the years, I’ve found some of the stories which resonate most with me come not as much from the Bible as they do from comic books and cartoons. (No offense to Paul and those other writers, but it’s just a different medium, you know?) As a child grieving my sister’s death, I couldn’t always understand the words of the Bible, but I could relate to the orphaned heroes Batman and Robin. When I’ve felt out of place in the world, sure, characters like Moses and Hannah and Timothy come to mind, but the X-Men usually show up first. When I’ve felt like I had too much on my plate, and I couldn’t figure out what to do next, Peter Parker has preceded Proverbs persistently. These characters have brought me comfort and have helped me reevaluate my goals and values time and again. Many of my patients seem to feel the same.

Once, on a whim, I went around the pediatric emergency department waiting room asking every patient’s favorite character from Encanto. Sure enough, most of the answers yielded conversations about my patients’ spiritual and emotional health, but I knew the tool really worked when an exhausted coworker answered “Luisa” with a sigh, and a heavy conversation about self-care ensued. (For my full “Encanto Assessment” tool, see last week’s post.)

Similarly, I pay a lot of attention to the movies my patients watch in their rooms. One boy had been watching Guardians of the Galaxy over and over again, and that movie is all about found family. I gently pointed this out to him, and sure enough, he started to open up about feeling isolated and distant from his biological family, but he described a rock solid group of friends.

And then there was the time the nursing staff were having difficulty getting a young patient to share when she was in pain. As we talked, she started talking about the video games she played and the stoicism of the protagonists. Through knowing those games, I was able to help her explore the main characters’ feelings (and, by proxy, hers), and sure enough, she started being more open with the nurses when she was in pain.

And don’t even get me started on the parents. I’ve seen parents cry when an episode of Bluey touched on their insecurities. Back when I was a youth minister, I used episodes of The Office and King of the Hill to help parents explore their ideal parenting styles. Increasingly too, the parents I work with are close to my own age, so the movies and video games and cartoons from my childhood are a common point of connection.

I don’t just advocate for Pop Culture Chaplaincy because it’s a fun idea or because I really like superheroes. I advocate for it because I’ve seen it work time and again. If you’re a spiritual or emotional caregiver, I’d encourage you to try this approach as well. What media are the people in your care consuming, and how might the themes of these movies and shows and albums and games speak to what patients are feeling and thinking?