Protestants on Screen explores the Protestant contributions to American and European film from the silent era to the present day. The authors analyze how Protestant filmmakers, beliefs, theology, symbols, sensibilities, and cultural patterns have shaped the history of film. Challenging the stereotype of Protestants as world-denouncing-and-defying puritans and iconoclasts who stood in the way of film's maturation as an art, the authors contend that Protestants were among the key catalysts in the origins and development of film, bringing an identifiably Protestant aesthetic to the medium. The essays in this volume track key Protestant themes like faith and doubt, sin and depravity, biblical literalism, personal conversion and personal redemption, holiness and sanctification, moralism and pietism, Providence and secularism, apocalypticism, righteousness and justice, religion and race, the priesthood of all believers and its offshoots-democratization and individualism. Protestants, the essays in this volume demonstrate, helped birth and shape the film industry and harness the power of motion pictures for spiritual instruction, edification, and cultural influence.

While Roman Catholicism's influence on film is well known, the corresponding influence of Protestantism is frequently ignored. This volume remedies that through attention to the ways in which Protestant themes and representation are expressed in films, as well as how Protestant filmmakers and audiences have contributed to the art form and its reception. A must read for anyone interested in the multiple ways in which Protestantism and film have interacted over the last century! * John Lyden, Blizek Professor of Religion and Film, University of Nebraska Omaha *
In Protestants on Screen, an impressive transatlantic group of scholars offers engaging insights into the pivotal role of diverse Protestants groups have played in challenging, reforming, and promoting the film industry. Blending history and case studies, this volume advances the scholarship of religion and film and furnishes an indispensable foundation for future study. * Terry Lindvall, C. S. Lewis Professor of Communication and Christian Thought, Virginia Wesleyan University *
Protestants on Screen opens with an introduction that provides an informative overview of Protestantism,...The collection makes insightful connections between religion and cinema and is commendable for taking Protestantism and the art it inspires seriously. * Choice *
Where this book succeeds is in highlighting the diversity and many fruitful areas that can be explored further around this topic, as well as providing a range of essays that will be of interest to both specialist and general readers. * Andrew Crome, The Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society *

Gastón Espinosa is Department Chair and the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. Erik Redling is Professor of American Literature and Culture and Managing Director of the Muhlenberg Center for American Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Jason Stevens has taught at Harvard University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he has been a fellow of the National Humanities Center (Durham, NC) and the University of Pittsburgh, (Humanities Center).