An Implicit Theology of Mad Men

One of the most striking sites of secular-religious encounter in narrative fiction of the decade has been the baptismal imagery of the television serial drama Mad Men. Set in an era which may be said to be the high-water mark of the secularization of American culture, Mad Men’s encoding of meaning in symbolic representation in effect re-sacralizes the secular world into which those symbols are transplanted. The symbolism’s divergences from Christian doctrine and ritual that give Mad Men its distinct theological significance. This paper will explore the literary implications of Paul Ricoeur’s theory of religious symbolism. This paper conducts several close readings of key moments in the show’s use of baptismal symbolism, and offers thoughts about how Mad Men’s constellation of originally religious symbols to convey narrative significance empowers the show to perform a religious function for its audience.

The Westminster Standards

The Westminster Standards were penned at the end of England’s second Reformation, and symbolized the high-water mark of Protestant scholasticism. The cluster of 1640s texts both codified prior developments in Reformed doctrine and standardized theological vocabulary, with the result that they have played an enduring role in the history of theology. This chapter addresses the unique contributions of the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and the flow and coherence of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Doctrinal topics, and the manner in which the Westminster assembly linked these loci, are discussed, and themes which find their place throughout the Standards are given particular emphasis. Since soteriological concerns dominate the Standards, they are given special attention in this précis. Select revisions of the Standards are also discussed.

The Exotic Other and the Other Within

A. C. Doyle praised R. L. Stevenson’s tale The Pavilion on the Links as »the high-water mark of his genius«. He also imitated it very closely in one of his own tales, The Mystery of Cloomber. The present article details the many parallels between the two texts. It also analyses the remaining differences, which are primarily related to the role played by a group of foreigners. Doyle exoticises the foreigners, representing them as Eastern mystics whose mental powers are infinitely superior to those of the British characters. By contrast, Stevenson’s foreigners are ordinary mortals. They are not strange or exotic in themselves; they rather act as a catalyst of strange, incongruous and surprising elements in the personalities of the British characters.

The Cardinal Importance of Names

Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth makes four substantive changes to the traditional titles of the tarot trumps. Three of these relate to the cardinal virtues which had remained in the deck despite the almost complete esoteric revisioning of the tarot that had taken place over the preceding two centuries; the fourth is an integral part of the same topic. This article focuses on why Crowley felt impelled to make these changes as well as the significance of the new names (and associated iconography). The discussion centres around Crowley’s rejection of the cardinal virtues that underly Christian ethics in favour of the new system of morality laid out in The Book of the Law and subsequently encapsulated in Thelema. Consequently, the article first examines the development of the cardinal virtues in patristic and medieval theology and then shows how Crowley sought to overturn these values in his agenda of cultural reprogramming of which The Book of Thoth arguably constitutes the high-water mark.