MARVEL Movies and the Creed:
Defend, Guard, Protect and Avenge By Rev. Ted Giese
“There’s only one God, Ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” - Steve Rogers, Captain America
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his sarcastic remark by Captain America in Avengers: Avengers Assemble probably took some movie viewers by surprise. After all, there doesn’t seem to be too much public expression of faith in God in the entertainment industry. As Christians, “We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity ... For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another,”1 as we say in the Athanasian Creed. However, one of the best ways to keep all of this straight is to learn, mark and inwardly digest the more concise Apostles’ Creed. It’s direct, to the point and easy to memorize. You confess it with your congregation, it’s one of the six chief parts of the Catechism that you are studying or have studied during confirmation classes, and Dr. Luther in the Small Catechism suggests that you include it in your daily prayer life, along with the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning and close of each day. The Apostles’ Creed is an amazing summary of our faith, confessed for centuries.
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It’s one thing to have this Creed memorized and to understand it, but what’s the point of learning something if you never apply it to anything? It would be like learning math and then never solving an equation. I know some of you would rather skip math altogether but I guarantee you it’s not a good idea to skip solving equations any more than you should skip applying your faith to the world in which you live. There are the serious situations to which we apply our faith, but there are also times when we engage in the gift of entertainment, like
watching movies (something I enjoy greatly). As with books, music, or any kind of art, production film makers are busy trying to express ideas to you—ideas you might find entertaining or thought provoking, interesting, or boring. In light of that, as you watch movies in the incredibly popular superhero genre of movies, in particular MARVEL movies, there is a place for analyzing these flicks through the lens of the Creed. Doing so gives us practice in learning to confess what is true and what isn’t about the faith we believe. So in the case of the character of Captain
