Religious Superheroes

(musim superheroes, above)

It seems superheroes, like any other, non-super being, has religious afflictions after all. The only question is why would we bother with their belief, as would this not be rather the private business of these marvelous persons?
Should we because these (fictional) characters private life is becoming as much interesting for us as the private life of our not-so-super celebrities?
Or this just another chapter of moral reevaluation of the pop culture by religious groups?


The largest compendium of superheroes can be found at The Religious Affiliation of
Comic Book Characters, where they are not only listed regarding of their religious affiliation, but also give extensive information on the particular heroes practice.
Those who know this subculture well, and has some critical distance to it, might very well know, that these comics are heavily woven with the issues of belief, also due the fact, that supernatural is an inherent part of the genre.
But is seems, that the supernatural is not coming from a sacral source - as in the case of most of the religions, but from an inherent source stemming not from a deistic system.
If the case would be the opposite, and all super power would came inherently from god, or gods, these "personnel" would rather be called saints, or angels.
And since in most of the cases, they do not receive their powers from heavenly sources, they, the superheroes, seems to have the same attitude towards religion as the rest of our society, with the only exception, that they are living wonders themselves.

Regarding of the connection between supernatural belief and supernatural deites, there is a good remark on Jack Constantine, a skeptic superhero from the publisher DC comics:

"In the comics, Constantine lives in a world where all the gods and their pantheons exist simultaneously, feeding off the beliefs of mortals."

This short sentence might enlighten many of the issues regarding religion and comics - which is a highly relativistic system and hard to answer if it is secular or not. Yet in the same time it is also hard to interpret the statement in this sentence as a religious phenomenon, since the same relativism is making the entire culture into a highly agnostic, or rather skeptic position. The simultaneously existence of god or gods might fit into some sort of religious framework, but the "feeding off the beliefs of mortals" hardly: it either sounds like a satanic statement or a Marxist one...

No to speak about religious superheroes, who were created intentionally for promoting a particular religion or moral values, the affiliation of these wonderful persons seems to be not as neutral as we would think - and this might have something to do with the fact that most superhero stories has a certain moral development process implemented into them. After all, they are all fabula, tales to convey certain moral values. The only question is, if the message the deliver is a secular one or not...

(superman is actually listed as a methodist)

As Quasar, Wendell Vaughn was for a long time the appointed protect of the universe and personally met and interacted with many cosmic-level beings. Quasar did not regard this beings as manifestations of a divine realm or spiritual realities, but viewed them all from a purely materialistic viewpoint.
- from the description of the religious affliction of Quasar, an atheist superhero. What is to be a cosmic level being? The definition is open to either secular and non-secular interpretations.