Christians talk about the Holy Spirit, but rarely know how to recognize the Spirit's presence and activity in the world. Luke is the most illuminating gospel writer on the topic of the Holy Spirit. Luke writes about Jesus as the messiah anointed by the Holy Spirit, and about the church as the Spirit-empowered fellowship in the Mediterranean world of the first century. These meditations on Luke-Acts attempt to discern how the winds of the Spirit have blown in the lives of Jesus, his disciples, and the earliest Christians so that we can track and participate in the works of the Holy Spirit in the global village of the 21st century.

This is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between religion, film, and ideology. It shows how religion is imagined, constructed, and interpreted in film and film criticism. The films analyzed include The Last Jedi, Terminator, Cloud Atlas, Darjeeling Limited, Hellboy, The Revenant, Religulous, and The Secret of my Success. Each chapter offers: - an explanation of the particular representation of religion that appears in film - a discussion of how this representation has been interpreted in film criticism and religious studies scholarship - an in-depth study of a Hollywood or popular film to highlight the rhetorical, social, and political functions this representation accomplishes on the silver screen - a discussion about how such analysis might be applied to other films of a similar genre Written in an accessible style, and focusing on Hollywood and popular cinema, this book will be of interest to both movie lovers and experts alike.