Jesus, Captain America Take Center Stage

The Visiting Scholars program at St. Bonaventure University is sponsoring a lecture March 16 by Dr. Robert Jewett titled “Jesus, Captain America, and Barack Obama: The Superhero Myth in Contemporary American Culture.”

The talk will look at the various ways in which popular images of superheroes have influenced American thinking about both religion and politics, often to our collective detriment. It will take place in the auditorium of the William F. Walsh Science Center at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Jewett is one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world. Since his retirement in 2000 from his longtime position as professor of New Testament Interpretation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill., he has served as visiting professor of New Testament at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Dr. Jewett has published 20 books and nearly 150 academic articles covering a wide range of topics across the discipline of New Testament studies, including “Paul's Anthropological Terms” (1971), “A Chronology of Paul's Life” (1979), “Paul the Apostle to America” (1994), “Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil” (2003), “Romans: A Commentary” (2007), and “Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal” (2008).

He has also held a number of leadership positions in the Society of Biblical Literature (the principal professional organization in the field of New Testament studies), the Society for New Testament Studies, and the Catholic Biblical Association, and served on the editorial board of a number of the leading professional journals in the field.