This review, however, is intended to survey the English language literature on film and religion and to corral various research trends into suitable academic categories. (For a remarkable review of relevant literature in other languages, see May, 1997a, and Hasenberg, 1992.) Rather than looking at the critical posture or interpretative mode of the writings, I will be examining the works according to a set of scholarly and pedagogical research motives. In the larger framework, I am less concerned with theological positions or critical attitudes toward film, than I am with what methods of research or postures of intent have been appropriated and practiced by various scholars engaged in the commingled disciplines of religion and film studies, and which ones are emerging as the most heuristic (or merely fashionable) at this time. However, my debt is great as I borrow heavily from the aforementioned authors in organizing appropriate categories.
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