Arts & Culture
CREATION STORIES, WHETHER modern or ancient, share an impulse to explain the situation of those telling it. Consider the first creation story we encounter in Genesis. In six wondrously efficient days, God transforms “the complete chaos, and darkness” covering the Earth into an organized universe. The orderly creation of Genesis 1-2:4a, written during a catastrophic period in ancient Israel, is meant to reassure the Israelites that God is indeed fully in charge of the world, and all is not lost, no matter how terrible things seem. Stories of the “founding” of America by the Puritans likewise imbued the country’s early self-understanding with a supposedly divine mandate. That way of thinking continues to inform and justify the behavior of the U.S. to this day.
On his grieving, folksy, Afro-Appalachian debut album Bloodline, Liberian-born singer Mon Rovîa reflects on war, violence, and staking out meaningful space for growth.
WHEN I READ Acts 2, I imagine that those first Christians experienced both profound beauty and aggravation. On Pentecost, disparate people came together to serve each other and bear one another’s burdens: “They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (verses 45-46). It’s a beautiful portrait, and yet anyone who has lived in intentional community knows that such tight-knit bonds can be as draining as they are rewarding; sharing meals in large groups is fun, until it’s time to do the dishes.
AS ANTI-GOVERNMENT protests in 2025 erupted in Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Morocco, Madagascar, France, and the U.S., observers and journalists noticed demonstrators flying an unusual flag. The “Jolly Roger”—a white skull and crossbones on a black field—wearing a distinctive yellow hat was instantly recognizable to fans of Japanese anime culture. This flag belongs to the fictional Straw Hat Pirates from One Piece, a Japanese manga by Eiichiro Oda. This particular shonen (“youth”) graphic novel series has become a global symbol of revolution, resistance, and hope against government oppression and corruption among young protesters.
First published in 1997, One Piece, with more than 500 million copies sold, is the most popular manga in the world. It has spun off more than 1,100 animated episodes and a live-action Netflix adaptation and continues—three decades on—to run in Shonen Jump, Japan’s influential weekly manga anthology.
It has been a joy to deconstruct my religious trauma alongside 32-year-old comedian Taylor Tomlinson. Four years ago, as I was coming out as queer to my family, I found her Netflix special Taylor Tomlinson: Look at You to be a warm welcome into the community of formerly Christian queer kids and purity culture survivors. Dark humor gave all of us a silly sort of grace, a space where we could grieve and grow.
Tomlinson, who was raised in a conservative Christian household in Temecula, Calif., got her start in stand-up through the church comedy circuit. But as she grew up, she began deconstructing how her conservative Christian upbringing was hurting her mental health and sexual development, deciding instead to be a “secular” comic.
During a global press conference for Project Hail Mary, director Chris Miller explained that when he and his co-director, Phil Lord, make films, they’re not “building Macs”—Apple’s slick, impenetrable white computers.—they’re making PCs: films where “you can see how it works, you can get into it, and you can see the wires.” This PC aesthetic is apparent in watching the film, a sumptuous visual feast with awe-inspiring cinematography and frenetic editing. But this exposed- wire philosophy also drives the plot and heart of Project Hail Mary—a story of duct tape, musical chords, and the hard, holy necessity of empathy.
Based on the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary introduces us to Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, making a case for being the most capable physical comedian of his generation), a dorky middle school teacher drafted to save Earth from “astrophage,” a microscopic star-plague eating the sun. If Grace cannot find a cure, humanity will go extinct within a generation. Our only hope lies more than 11 light-years away, at the one star immune to the infection.
I don’t often think of the romance genre as a cinematic vehicle for social commentary. When your film is exploring the complications of modern love in the straitjacket of a “will they/won’t they” story, it can be hard to comment on larger themes. While there are, of course, exceptions to my bias, I often feel that romance films are too preoccupied with the inner lives of their characters to turn their lens outward to societal ailments. While director Vanessa Caswill didn’t entirely abandon the cheesy or saccharine for her latest film, Reminders of Him challenged my pre-conceived romance biases. Based on the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, Reminders of Him is a tender love story that offers pointed commentary about forgiveness and redemption, as it delivers a humanizing portrait of those who have been victims of the criminal legal system.
Romances tap into the universal longing to be desired, seen, and known. But Reminders of Him raises those emotional stakes by centering Kenna (Maika Monroe), a woman recently released from prison who has been told by both the state and her community that she’s not worthy of redemption or love.
In January, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners made history in becoming the Oscars’ all time most-nominated film with 16 total nominations, resurfacing discourse on the film’s many merits: a deep storyline filled with layers of meaning, stellar cinematography and acting, and a breathtaking soundtrack and score. What is truly unique about this movie, however, is how it criticizes Christianity from an anti-imperialist perspective. Sinners displays the importance of resisting the false religious binaries of sacred and demonic that victims of imperialism have had forced upon them for far too long.
“I have a purpose. If you think that it’s some kind of blessing, it’s not,” says Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme. “It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.”
That very specific thing, for Marty, is the nearly impossible task of somehow pulling enough money out of thin air to pay his debts and fund his trip to compete in a ping-pong championship taking place in Japan. Ironically, Marty Supreme features very little actual ping pong. The majority of the movie is about one particularly audacious young man going to often comically absurd (and morally dubious) lengths to “achieve his dreams,” and more specifically, to somehow acquire the money to fund those dreams.
As artificial intelligence-generated songs and musicians multiply across streaming platforms, Contemporary Christian music audiences and creators are reckoning with the technology’s meaning for the booming genre, the opaque industry, and the very heart of Christian music.
In November 2025, Christianity Today reported on Solomon Ray—an AI-generated artist who boasts 499,000 listeners on Spotify. But Ray is not the only CCM AI artist garnering thousands of listeners. Minimal artist descriptions, quick release schedules, no contact methods, no website, and no tours or physical appearances are all indicators of potential AI-generated artists, and CCM has no shortage. Smaller accounts still have thousands of monthly listeners, including the likes of Jaxon Maverick Phoenix at over 39,000, The River Sons 59,000, and Glory in the Ruins 68,000.
Their music is nothing elaborate and draws firmly from the CCM tradition: “I’ve read the words, I know they’re true but some days they feel far from view / I’m still holding on to what you said, even when the lies scream loud instead,” are some lyrics to “Faith Over Fear,” by The River Sons. The band’s page description is equally vague.
The film Midwinter Break opens with an intimate flashback to the Troubles of Ireland: A very pregnant Stella is shot by an Irish Republican Army sniper; the milk bottle she just purchased shatters to the ground, her own blood pooling alongside the spilt milk. The trauma is vivid, but its extent is not yet known.
The novel on which the film is based, also named Midwinter Break, begins far more quietly. Rather than announcing its central wound at once, it allows the trauma to surface gradually, disclosed in fragments as the chapters unfold.
It’s 2026, the world is on fire, and against all odds, the Muppets are back on television.
In the first week of February, Disney released a special episode of The Muppet Show, serving as a backdoor pilot to a potential revival, with Sabrina Carpenter as a special guest and the Muppets back to their old antics. It’s been 45 years since The Muppet Show was officially on television, but despite all the time that has passed, something about it feels just as resonant today as it did decades ago. And part of that resonance, I think, comes from the Muppets’ affectionate relationship with chaos.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio gave us a revelation.
At every turn of his spectacular Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny countered death-dealing hatred with unabashed joy. He sang in his native tongue, and in all the glory of his unmistakable Puerto Rican accent. From tall, sugarcane fields tended by jíbaros in pavas to the bustling streets outside the marqueta and barbershop, there was dancing and singing from performers across generations and nationalities. In the middle of the show, we witnessed an actual wedding and fell in love with a little boy who held Benito’s Grammy tight to his chest as Bad Bunny whispered in his ear: Cree siempre en ti (“Always believe in yourself”). Echoing Kendrick Lamar on top of an ’87 Buick GNX in last year’s show, Benito stood on the cab of an old truck and paid tribute to reggaeton legends like Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Tego Calderón, who first gave the genre an international stage. He climbed electric poles and sang “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), reminding the world of how Puerto Ricans flourish even as their power grids falter.
If things ever do go belly up, and we nuke ourselves into oblivion, I’m sure the Golden Rule will survive.
Part of my certainty is thanks to the retro-futuristic, darkly absurd, post-apocalyptic TV series Fallout. As a huge fan of the role-playing video games that the series is based on, I was skeptical that the show could live up to the legacy of the games; it surpassed my expectations. Fallout is brimming with stellar performances, superb writing, and deft political commentary that is relevant without being preachy. All eight episodes of Season Two are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, which, given the series’ anti-corporate and anti-capitalist overtones, is rather strange.
LITERATURE IS PEPPERED with powerful men who, after lives of dangerous consequence on Earth, grapple with the eternal judgment of heaven. Dante filled his inferno with the writhing wrongdoers of his day. Dickens gave us Ebenezer Scrooge, whose festive ghosts spooked him into more socialistic thinking. And who can forget the time when President Donald Trump himself publicly mused that he might not make it to heaven, after all? Literature and, every once in a rare while, life.
In his crackling new novel, Vigil, George Saunders offers another such fable for the climate crisis. Unrepentant on his death bed, oil tycoon K.J. Boone receives visitors from the past, present, and future who hope to hold him to account for his sins. Species of birds wiped out by habitat loss fly over his hospice setup; human casualties of heat waves and droughts testify. Bearing witness to the barrage is Jill, a ghost-angel charged with comforting Boone as he crosses over.
IN THE EARLY 2000s, Christian women were flooded with commentary about female bodies, both from secular and religious camps. A societal fixation on weight filled tabloid and magazine covers in grocery stores. Pastors preached against premarital sex by comparing teenage bodies to dirty water.
“So many sermon illustrations compared my body to food waiting to be consumed by men,” writes Anna Rollins in her new memoir, Famished. Rollins, who grew up in a white Appalachian fundamentalist Christian community, situates cultures of diet and sexual purity on the same continuum.
I’ve never seen spiritual ecstasy put to screen in quite the unvarnished manner as director Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee. The film follows the life of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), tracing her ascension to matriarch and religious leader of the Shakers, a religious sect in the 18th century. Fixtures of the Shakers’ expression of faith include religious rhapsody, often manifesting with their members shaking, shouting, dancing, and singing as a way to express prayer and communion with God.
Lee’s theology may be questionable to those who cling to orthodox views of Christianity. Known by the Shakers as Mother Ann Lee, the trailblazing leader was regarded as the female manifestation of God’s dual nature (i.e., the female equivalent of male divinity) and was regarded by her followers as the second incarnation of Christ. Yet the community Lee strove to create was one of radical inclusivity and belonging—a lesson churches today could stand to learn from.
ON A HILL in occupied East Jerusalem, there’s a large mural of brown-green eyes: They are the eyes of the blind man who consented to be healed by Jesus at the Pool of Siloam, known by many locals today as Silwan pool. Silwan is a Palestinian village just outside the Old City. Painted by Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, the eyes gaze at the pool where the biblical figure gained sight, now surrounded by soldiers with guns. He gazes at the rubble of demolished homes, surveillance cameras, children walking to school. Do you see? I felt this biblical ancestor asking me, the question hanging ripe in the tangled-wire air. Do you see?
Resistance and Reverence
The State of Belief podcast aims to deliver “a potent mix of spiritual wisdom, political strategy, and hopeful commentary.” Weekly, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush talks with faith leaders and activists about topics ranging from book bans to religious liberty to nonviolent resistance. Interfaith Alliance
WHEN MARTIN SCORSESE’S Silence was released in 2016, many reviewers invoked the “L” word: legacy, a capstone for a lauded director with nearly five decades of films under his belt. But looking back, Silence is less like a summation and more like a fresh exploration of the themes that had always fascinated the director.
Scorsese, who based the film on the 1966 novel by Shūsaku Endō, spent more than 25 years laboring over its script and production. Two Portuguese Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), journey into fog-shrouded Japan to find their former mentor, who seems to have abdicated his evangelizing responsibilities under fear of persecution and death. To restore his name and maintain their own faith, the two venture into a country where the government offers large cash rewards for exposing hidden priests.