The God Tube: Uncovering the Hidden Spiritual Message in Pop Culture

A new global religious consciousness is emerging from the least expected place: popular culture. That's the unsettling, convincing, and inspiring message of The God Tube.

In The Simpsons Movie, Homer Simpson has to be dragged from his couch to church on Sunday morning. But when faced with a family and social crisis, he's guided by an Inuit Shaman woman into a spiritual experience that offers him existential and moral truth.

George Lucas, commenting on his preparation for the Star Wars saga, says that he distilled fifty books on the history of world religions into his concept of 'The Force', and then, he says, "I played with it."

In The Da Vinci Code, Robert Langdon ponders the traditional alternative of orthodox religion: "Why does it have to be human or divine? Perhaps the human is the divine."

James Lawler looks closely at some of the huge and potent works of modern popular culture-The Da Vinci Code, The Simpsons, The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, The Passion of the Christ, and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors-showing how these artistic creations offer alternative perspectives on the human condition, conveying new visions of reality and new sacred meanings.

Throughout, Professor Lawler relates these ideas to the history of philosophical thought, showing a consistently spiritual orientation from ancient thinkers such as Socrates and Plato down to more recent philosophers like Kant and Hegel.