Charlie Brown’s noble truths

The Revealer has an interesting essay about the work of Charles Schulz (a hometown kind of guy, from here in St. Paul), particularly the religious themes in his cartoons. The essay touches on a number of other more recent pop culture phenomena with religious memes in them, and as the author notes: <blockquote>So Maury, like Schulz often did, is presenting a parable, a story about one thing that is really about another. So, too, do most writers who explore religion and culture. The trick is to understand the story you’re telling, and why you’re telling it. Revealing religion in pop culture requires looking beyond the artist’s intentions, to the swirl of cultural influences in which he or she worked and the whirlwind of cultural influences in which we receive the fruits of the artist’s labor — the pop culture blizzard in which the zazen of a silent beagle offers some kind of serenity, if not redemption. </blockquote>