When I found one comic with a Jesus that scientists had cloned from relics, I chuckled at its clever premise. When I found the third Jesus Clone comic, I realized that something had to be going on. As a biblical scholar with professional interests in comics, I had come upon one of those ideas that will not let me go.[1]

I find that Jesus Clone reflects an anxiety about human control and biblical promises in a underexplored corner of U.S. popular culture. There are other thinkers who linger over questions about the worth of popular culture and comics in addressing such ideas, but I am convinced that these comics, and others like them, offer insight into how people conceive of and combine elements from science, religion, and imagination to make sense of our world. These comics bring emotion and narrative to our effort to sort our identity as a species.

Human beings are having a geological effect on the planet we inhabit.[2] Once we allow ourselves to conceive of our role in climate change, we humans have to make sense of the control we have on the planet. Control that was once seen as solely divine is all too human, often with stomach-churning consequences. We have agency, but what have we done with it? What’s there to do when science pronounces planetary doom and religion is seen to falter when asked to answer? Why, combine the two! Bring the Second Coming with Science!
Continue reading Cloning Enchantment: Jesuses After Climate Change →