Glenn Sparks, a communications professor at Purdue University in Indiana, says television shows may influence what people believe about the supernatural. He studied how television in the 1990s influenced people’s belief in UFOs and alien abductions.

Stephen Prothero is former professor of Religion in America in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of numerous books including Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions (W.W. Norton 2020), Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (HarperOne, 2016), God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010), and […]

Bruce David Forbes is a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, specializing in religion in America and religion and popular culture. He is co-editor of Rapture, Revelation and the End Times: Exploring the ‘Left Behind’ Series. Forbes also co-edited the book Religion and Popular Culture in America.

An article by Kimberly Roots, from the January 2005 issue of Science & Theology News, posted by Beliefnet.

A Christian perspective on narrative myths by Roberto Rivera, a former fellow at the Wilberforce Forum at Prison Fellowship.

A 2003 Vatican report on “the complex phenomenon of ‘New Age,’” which is influencing many aspects of contemporary culture.

This article by James L. Ford, assistant religion professor at Wake Forest University, appeared in the October 2000 issue of The Journal of Religion & Film.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was also a science fiction writer. Read an overview of the movement’s development (posted by the Religious Movements Homepage Project at the University of Virginia), beginning with its launch after an article in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1950 promoted Hubbard’s book Dianetics.

The interfaith website adherents.com maintains a page that documents religious references in science fiction writing. It also keeps track of the religious affiliation of science fiction writers. According to this list, there are more Mormon science fiction writers than there are science fiction writers of any other single religion.