The Gospel According to "Peanuts" (Gospel According To...)

Rating:
Summary: A Popular Addiction
Review: I must have read this book long before I moved to Saint Paul, where Charles Schultz may well be more of a saint for these people who pride themselves in everything normal than the overactive apostle that the town is actually named for. As a comic, I would consider Peanuts much closer to the book of Job than to the Gospels. What I remember is a strip discussing Job, in which Lucy complains that Job's wife doesn't get enough credit. If that strip is not in this book, subtract a few stars from my rating and consider me confused by the serial process effect which is more like life than any sure foundation offered here. The main key to popularity in these things is the regularity: daily comics and church once a week form a framework that people can depend on because they fulfill expectations. In our comic society, split along lines of people who know the same jokes, there may be millions of people who would think of this book if I stole the sign from the neighborhood shrink booth, "The Doctor is In" as the title for my review of General Psychopathology by Karl Jaspers, who once wrote that his father had stopped attending church when he reached a certain age because he had been embarrassed by too many things that had been said there. It takes a lifetime of withdrawal from certain addictions to realize what people are going through now, as it may be a sad day when people realize that I have anything to say about this book. A little shared intimacy can hurt a lot more than the typical joke, but the experts spend all their time arguing about what is typical here. Is this the end?

Rating:
Summary: Sound theology AND entertaining
Review: In contrast to an earlier reviewer, I see sound theology here. Mr. Short never says that everyone will be saved regardless of their actions or beliefs; he clearly expresses the true Gospel - that one must be saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. With that out of the way, this is both a solid statement of the Good News of atonement through Jesus' sacrifice but also an entertaining and novel way to illustrate its principles. While some may be put off by the expressions "Good grief!" "Auuuggghhh!" and the like, they represent our reactions to life and show that we all struggle daily. Even the Apostle Paul said that he "die(d) daily" in his struggle with the sin of daily living. The late Charles Schulz (whether intentionally or not) reflects through his Peanuts gang this struggle and the joys that can be experienced if we pursue them, in our case through a true faith in Jesus Christ! God bless Charles Schulz!

Rating:
Summary: Good Book. Great Message. Bad Title
Review: It is, surely, a matter of basic courtesy to an author to read his or her book before reviewing it. The pseudonymous "lexo-2" (see below, six reviews down) knows his Peanuts and his Preachers, and his verdict on Short is "Wrong, wrong, wrong." Well, six months after reading that review I have at last got around to finishing my used-bookstore copy of "The Gospel," and I find myself feeling so annoyed that I simply must respond.

"Whether or not Schulz is a devout Christian I could not say," writes lexo-2. If he had taken the trouble to actually read Short's book, however, he would have found numerous quotations from Schulz himself concerning his religious views. Speaking of a Bible-study group he attended shortly after his return from the Second World War, Schulz says, "The more I thought about it during those study times, the more I realized that I really loved God" (quoted on p. 70). Or again, "I don't even like the expression 'take communion.' You cannot 'take' communion. You are a part of the communion. You are communing with Christ; you are a part of the community of saints" (p. 80). The rhetoric, complete with its anti-Catholic bias against the notion of "taking" communion, is clearly that of a born-again evangelical (in Schulz's case, Church of God). And lest there be any doubt of Schulz's authorial intentions, he is quoted in the very first chapter as saying, "I have a message that I want to present, but I would rather bend a little to put over a point than to have the whole strip dropped because it is too obvious. As a result . . . all sorts of people in religious work have written to thank me for preaching in my own way through the strips. That is one of the things that keeps me going" (p. 20).

Schulz was worried about being too obvious. Clearly he wasn't obvious enough.

Short's book is cogent and well argued; it certainly is not a collection of "homilies." Contrary to what lexo-2 implies, Short does not ignore the darker side of the Peanuts world. Indeed, of lexo- 2's "three phrases," Short uses two or them in chapter titles: "The Wages of Sin Is 'Aaaugh!'" and "Good Grief!" Good grief! Read before you review!

Yes, lexo-2 is quite right that the world of Peanuts is a "sunlit hell, in which the characters never grow, never change, etc." Where he goes wrong is in assuming that Short--a Ph.D. in literature and theology, a man who had taken the trouble to study the cartoon in depth and even write a book about it--couldn't see that for himself. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Short's whole point is that we all live in a "sunlit hell," suffering "unimaginable fears" and "wreaking appalling cruelties on each other," and that we will never escape that hell unless we can find . . . (you guessed it!) the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The salvationist message does not come across too strongly in the cartoon (Schulz did not want to be "obvious") but it just as surely is there, between the lines, in the occasional epiphanies of love and reconciliation that illuminate the otherwise bleak moral landscape of Peanutopia.

You can agree or disagree with the Short-Schulz analysis of the human predicament. Personally, I disagree strongly. But in a world in which evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity have so much influence and power, it simply will not do to be idly dismissive. Indeed, I particularly recommend Short's book to freethinkers of every stripe, if only that they may remind themselves just how subtle and persuasive evangelical discourse can be. There is more, much more, to Short's little book than "pious ramblings" and that is precisely what makes it, depending on your point of view, so inspiring or so insidious.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding work of popular theology
Review: Robert L. Short has written a few books ostensibly attempting to interpret Schulz's Peanuts cartoons as Christian parables (another title of his is "The Parables of Peanuts"). What he really does is write short Christian homilies and use cartoons (or more frequently, isolated frames from a cartoon) to illustrate his points. Whether or not Schulz himself is a devout Christian, I couldn't say; I know he's spoken about his churchgoing, but not having read his biography I can't say anything for certain about his belief. What I would suggest with some force is that there is no Christian spirit in the Peanuts cartoons (I speak both as the son of a preacher and as a big fan of Peanuts - I've got sixty-odd books of them, more than I have by any other author.) Peanuts is, if anything, a kind of deadpan, sunlit hell, in which the characters never grow, never change, never escape from childhood, suffer unimaginable fears (think of Charlie Brown, always terrified of actually approaching the red-haired girl), labour under never-dispelled illusions (think of Charlie again, always believing he can kick the football; or Linus, who for all his theological acumen still believes in the Great Pumpkin - surely Schulz's most scathing comment on Christianity); they wreak appalling cruelties on each other (Lucy and her fists, Violet and her sharp tongue, Snoopy and his utter indifference to his owner), and generally remain locked into static relationships. This is not what most people think about Peanuts, but read them often enough and you soon discern the chilly pedal-point beneath the unassuming surface. What three phrases are the most used in the strip? "Good grief!", "AAUUGH!" and "I can't stand it..." I recall one strip, in particular, set at a summer camp, in which Charlie Brown helped an even shyer little boy to come out of his shell and join in. The other boy then went home, and Charlie was left feeling proud of himself for having helped another. The following strip depicted the boy on the bus home, reflecting that that wasn't such a bad camp after all, and thinking of all the friends he made: "...and then there was that round-headed kid...what was his name?" Don't be put off by the Hallmark cards and sanctimonious books like Mr. Short's. There ain't no redemption in Peanuts. It's one of the great dark masterpieces of American fiction, and the pious ramblings of a book like this only trivialise it.

Rating:
Summary: "Must" reading for all Charles Schultz fans.
Review: Robert Short's The Gospel According To Peanuts is a timeless classic of religious insight based on the enduring legacy of the late Charles Shultz, creator of the Peanuts newspaper comic strip. Short examines the religious content of Schultz's beloved little universe of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, and the rest to reveal, from a Christian perspective, the prophetic and theologic meanings manifested by these charming and universally known cartoon characters that became pop culture icons the whole world over. The Gospel According To Peanuts is highly recommended reading all Schultz fans and anyone who has ever noted the enduring wisdom embedded and embraced by the little folks who inhabited his daily and Sunday cartoon stories.

Rating:
Summary: The Gospel According to "Peanuts" (Gospel According To...)
Review: The Gospel According to "Peanuts" (Gospel According To...)
by Robert L. Short is an amazing little book that shows the spiritual side of the cartoon peanuts. To think that so much religion was crammed into one cartoon is an utter surprise.

Rating:
Summary: A convincing argument for the use of modern-day parables
Review: The Gospel According to Peanuts is a truly fascinating little book filled with insight, wisdom, and the type of joy that Christians should naturally espouse. Robert L. Short certainly does not argue that every single Peanuts cartoon carries a theological message, but he offers up an amazing selection of comic strips that do in fact encapsulate a number of important Christian beliefs. He begins the book with a justification for Christians embracing the arts as a means of spreading the Gospel to those around them. The fact that Charles Schulz himself was a Christian is, in a sense, immaterial; as Short argues, Christians should embrace all manner of things which will allow them to connect with others in a subtle and less holier-than-thou manner. You can't go around beating people over the head with God and get results, no matter how good your intentions. Engage them in the arts or some other object of mutual interest, and you open up innumerable outlets for Christian witnessing. For those who would scoff at the notion of linking Christianity with comedy, Short reminds us that, to the world, Christianity is itself rather comical. It is a wonderful argument that offers up much food for thought.

In the same vein as the parables of Jesus, Short makes use of dozens of Peanuts comic strips to shed light on a clear and understandable theology, finding many illustrative parallels in the lives of the Peanuts gang. Charlie Brown, in a very real sense, represents Everyman, a jolly good fellow who is always looking for something to improve a life that is, by and large, rather miserable - he never wins, just as mankind, on its own, never wins. Charlie Brown is also prone to moments of great anxiety, a fear of nothingness and emptiness. Short's most memorable comparisons, though, are to be found in the other central characters of Peanuts. Lucy's psychiatric business represents the rather modern fad of humans looking toward psychiatry to solve their problems and to reveal to them why they are so unhappy. Then there is Linus, who tends to try to run away from his problems and finds comfort only in his blanket. In Short's hands, the Great Pumpkin becomes a symbol of popular religious sentiment - Linus says, at one point, that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Of course, the Great Pumpkin never appears. Even more interesting is Linus' attitude toward Santa Claus, for, in Short's analysis, it represents the attitude of many professed Christians toward God. As Linus expects to be rewarded by Santa for his good behavior, some Christians seem to believe that by obeying God's commandments and doing good works, God owes them a reward. You can't pretend to be good and get to heaven, Short reminds us. Eternal life is a gift from God that no man can possibly earn on his own merits.

Short also expounds upon the dual nature of God's love, illustrating his argument with comic strips featuring, for example, the positive and negative qualities of rain. He concludes by offering a brilliant analysis of the words uttered so often by Charlie Brown: "Goof grief." Because you must become lost before you can be found and seek before you can find, grief can ultimately be a good thing, thanks solely to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

I was amazed at the insights into Christianity this book delivered. Non-Christians, even the Peanuts fans amongst them, may not enjoy this book because of its tenaciously theological design and purpose, but the truths that can be found in the comic strips of Charles Schulz can very effectively serve as the individual's exposure to and understanding of Christian faith. This is a remarkable book, and its importance goes far beyond its pages. Short shows how modern art and entertainment can help redefine and improve the effectiveness of the church in spreading the message of the Gospel to all men, women, and children.

Rating:
Summary: A convincing argument for the use of modern-day parables
Review: The Gospel According to Peanuts is a truly fascinating little book filled with insight, wisdom, and the type of joy that Christians should naturally espouse. Robert L. Short certainly does not argue that every single Peanuts cartoon carries a theological message, but he offers up an amazing selection of comic strips that do in fact encapsulate a number of important Christian beliefs. He begins the book with a justification for Christians embracing the arts as a means of spreading the Gospel to those around them. The fact that Charles Schulz himself was a Christian is, in a sense, immaterial; as Short argues, Christians should embrace all manner of things which will allow them to connect with others in a subtle and less holier-than-thou manner. You can't go around beating people over the head with God and get results, no matter how good your intentions. Engage them in the arts or some other object of mutual interest, and you open up innumerable outlets for Christian witnessing. For those who would scoff at the notion of linking Christianity with comedy, Short reminds us that, to the world, Christianity is itself rather comical. It is a wonderful argument that offers up much food for thought.

In the same vein as the parables of Jesus, Short makes use of dozens of Peanuts comic strips to shed light on a clear and understandable theology, finding many illustrative parallels in the lives of the Peanuts gang. Charlie Brown, in a very real sense, represents Everyman, a jolly good fellow who is always looking for something to improve a life that is, by and large, rather miserable - he never wins, just as mankind, on its own, never wins. Charlie Brown is also prone to moments of great anxiety, a fear of nothingness and emptiness. Short's most memorable comparisons, though, are to be found in the other central characters of Peanuts. Lucy's psychiatric business represents the rather modern fad of humans looking toward psychiatry to solve their problems and to reveal to them why they are so unhappy. Then there is Linus, who tends to try to run away from his problems and finds comfort only in his blanket. In Short's hands, the Great Pumpkin becomes a symbol of popular religious sentiment - Linus says, at one point, that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Of course, the Great Pumpkin never appears. Even more interesting is Linus' attitude toward Santa Claus, for, in Short's analysis, it represents the attitude of many professed Christians toward God. As Linus expects to be rewarded by Santa for his good behavior, some Christians seem to believe that by obeying God's commandments and doing good works, God owes them a reward. You can't pretend to be good and get to heaven, Short reminds us. Eternal life is a gift from God that no man can possibly earn on his own merits.

Short also expounds upon the dual nature of God's love, illustrating his argument with comic strips featuring, for example, the positive and negative qualities of rain. He concludes by offering a brilliant analysis of the words uttered so often by Charlie Brown: "Goof grief." Because you must become lost before you can be found and seek before you can find, grief can ultimately be a good thing, thanks solely to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

I was amazed at the insights into Christianity this book delivered. Non-Christians, even the Peanuts fans amongst them, may not enjoy this book because of its tenaciously theological design and purpose, but the truths that can be found in the comic strips of Charles Schulz can very effectively serve as the individual's exposure to and understanding of Christian faith. This is a remarkable book, and its importance goes far beyond its pages. Short shows how modern art and entertainment can help redefine and improve the effectiveness of the church in spreading the message of the Gospel to all men, women, and children.

Rating:
Summary: first and best
Review: This is the first book of theology that I ever read - and what a great introduction to theology! Short pulls out the theology of love and grace, the very human-ness of Christian faith (rightly understood), from the cartoon Peanuts, written by the unique Charles Schultz. This is actually the best introduction to real Christian theology that is available. Tillich, Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, Luther, Kafka, T. S. Eliot, and Karl Barth are only of the people you'll encounter in this splendid summary of essential Christian thought. I have valued this book for years, from when I first read it in high school to when I gave it as a gift to a lay minister in the diocese that I serve when I was consecrated as a bishop. Of all the dull and boring books of theology out there, this one is fun, and one of the best ever!

Rating:
Summary: first and best
Review: This is the first book of theology that I ever read - and what a great introduction to theology! Short pulls out the theology of love and grace, the very human-ness of Christian faith (rightly understood), from the cartoon Peanuts, written by the unique Charles Schultz. This is actually the best introduction to real Christian theology that is available. Tillich, Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, Luther, Kafka, T. S. Eliot, and Karl Barth are only of the people you'll encounter in this splendid summary of essential Christian thought. I have valued this book for years, from when I first read it in high school to when I gave it as a gift to a lay minister in the diocese that I serve when I was consecrated as a bishop. Of all the dull and boring books of theology out there, this one is fun, and one of the best ever!