What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Comics have always been a part of my life. I don’t mean the superheroes, although I did read Archie and TMNT and, of course, Nintendo comics growing up, but mainly comic strips. I still check to see the new Fox Trot every Sunday.
Peanuts was always an important part of that. I loved the adventures of Charlie Brown and Snoopy. I would regularly go to the library and check out Peanuts books for my reading and can still quote numerous strips to this day. I still need to watch the movie someday.
Peanuts also often had a decisively religious tone to it and not just religious, but specifically Christian. Linus was a brilliant young theologian who knew the most obscure Scriptural references and would bring to Sunday School items about the Dead Sea Scrolls and their impact on textual criticism. Charlie Brown’s fire truck just couldn’t compete.
And who can forget the first Charlie Brown Christmas special? The event that makes it for so many of us is that scene where Linus tells us what Christmas is all about by quoting Luke 2. To this day, over 50 years later, this show is still a classic.
But didn’t Charles Schulz abandon Christianity later in his life? Didn’t he become a secular humanist? What did he do in his comic strips exactly with Christianity? Is there anything we can learn from this?
To discuss these matters, I have brought on the author of A Charlie Brown Religion. I was looking for a good biography of Schulz one night and saw that one of the Schulz family members endorsed this one. It’s hard to argue against that recommendation! The author’s name is Stephen Lind and he’s my guest this Saturday.
So who is he?
According to his bio:
Stephen Lind is an assistant professor of business at Washington and Lee University where he teaches courses on the entertainment industry and business communication. He has presented on his research worldwide – from academic conventions to Comic-Con. He holds a PhD in rhetoric from Clemson University, an MA in communication from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a BS in speech (minor in philosophy) from Liberty University.
I hope you’ll be looking forward to this episode. I’ve always enjoyed Peanuts as I said so expect some of my fanboy to come out in this one. Let’s get set to talk about Snoopy and Charlie Brown!
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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