Thursday, April 08, 2010

Theology and The Legend of Zelda: CFP

I was contacted by Jonny Walls about and interesting project on theology and gaming. He is looking for contributors for a book tentatively title: The Legend of Zelda and Theology. I promised I would help him out by posting is Call for abstract here, so if you are interested check out the details below...

I (Jonny Walls) am editing the book, The Legend of Zelda and Theology, which is to be published by Sideshow Media Group, a Los Angeles based multi-media company.

The articles will be roughly 3500-4500 words in length. Within them we will focus on the way that the symbolism, storytelling, characters and imagery within the Zelda universe can be used to reflect the Christian story. We are NOT trying to prove that the Zelda games are in fact preaching a Christian message; we will be using Zelda’s rich mythology as a lens through which we may examine Christian theology, and give others another approach to the faith.

Some possible topics for articles include but are not limited to:

-The great flood of the Wind Waker and the great flood of the Old Testament; The theology of a loving yet wrathful God.

-The twilight realm from Twilight Princess and the shadow world from A Link to the Past, and the theology of Purgatory.

-Awaiting the Hero of Time (specifically the people in The Wind Waker) and awaiting the Messiah.

-The nature of the Video Game and the theology of Predestination.

-Theology of Life, death, the afterlife and the soul as seen in Majora’s Mask.

-Ganondorf and the Theology of the Devil.

-The Triforce and the Trinity

These are just a few very surface level suggestions. To, for example, point out the way the Triforce and the Trinity share some shallow similarities would not alone suffice. What we want to do is use these types of topics as starting off points that our readers may use to get oriented and feel at home within the Zelda universe, and then go into a much deeper look at the Christian virtues that are present in all great fantasy, Zelda included. Please feel free to come up with your own ideas and submit them. If you are interested please e-mail me back at walls.jonny@gmail.com

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,

My name is Rev Robert Wright, Editor for Christian.com, a social network made specifically for Christians, by Christians. We embarked on this endeavor to offer the entire Christian community an outlet to join together and better spread the good word of Christianity. Christian.com has many great features like Christian TV, prayer requests, finding a church, receiving church updates and advice. We have emailed you to collaborate with you and your blog to help spread the good word of Christianity. I look forward to your response regarding this matter. Thanks!


Rev. Robert Wright
rev.robertwright@gmail.com
www.christian.com

Joshua WIse said...

Thanks for the heads up, I contacted Jonny about this. I also thought you might be interested in what we are doing over at http://www.TheCrossAndTheController.com where we are looking at video games and theology. We also have a podcast where we talk about these topics, "No Avatars Allowed."

Keep up the great work on here.

Joshua Wise