Redemption and Salvation

This chapter explores the multifaceted ways in which redemption can be conceptualized, acknowledging its roots within Christian theology but also showing how the term has a far wider cultural and disciplinary sphere of activity. The focus will be on how redemption in a Christian sense can be understood as a dialogue-partner with the ‘secular’ medium of film, with respect to various genres, including Christmas movies and films about the afterlife. Connections will be made with notions of ‘salvation,’ and how redemption and salvation are terms which are a preoccupation of cinema, with key theological and Christian terms no less able to be employed and understood through film than through more traditional textual or doctrinal settings. The chapter concludes with an examination of the need to move away from attempts to isolate redemption to one particular religious tradition or community, and to see how it is the dialogue between an eclectic range of secular and religious traditions that ensures that film can be found to comprise an especially fertile repository of redemptive activity.