Michael P. Foley, "A Secular Stage: Religion through the Lens of Hollywood"

About This Event

Michael P. Foley, Professor of Patristics in the Honors College of Baylor University, addresses the view of religion conveyed by Hollywood films over the years in his talk "A Secular Stage: Religion through the Lens of Hollywood."

The thorny relationship between Divine Revelation and the motion picture industry runs deeper than an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood or a current shortage of Christian screenwriters, as real as these problems are; the problem is as old as cinema itself. Drawing from Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, which argues that secularism is above all a predisposition that is closed to transcendence, Dr. Michael Foley will offer a brief history of the tension between Christianity and the modern entertainment industry, recent developments that have made that tension worse, and possible ways to move forward.

Michael P. Foley's academic research and writing focuses on the thought of St. Augustine, early and medieval Christianity, liturgy, and comedy and tragedy. He has written and spoken on a number of topics in film, including Catholicism and film, mystery films, and the films of Andrew Niccol and Whit Stillman. In addition to his scholarly work, Foley is a popular writer and speaker on Catholic history and culture.

A public lecture in the series Faith, Film, and Philosophy 2024: Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age, sponsored by the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute.