THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

[T]he podcast Taking on the Devil is notable for its heady, intellectual interrogation of The Exorcist's theological implications. The host is horror movie scholar Gina Brandolino, who teaches at the University of Michigan. (Full disclosure, I became friends with Brandolino while on a fellowship there.) Her partner in the podcast is Gabrielle Thomas, an ordained priest and Emory University professor of early Christianity, who has written about representations of the devil. The two debate questions such as how The Exorcist helps us think about evil in the world. [...]

[U]ltimately, Thomas said, The Exorcist is not really concerned with the devil. It's about the people who observe his possession of a 12-year-old girl named Regan who did nothing worse than play with a Ouija board. Which raises the question: why Regan? And that in turn, Thomas notes, raises an even older question: "Why hasn't God stepped in and solved all of this? Which is a question that lots of people are asking all the time."

Why do bad things happen to good people? Thomas says this is not an inquiry for God. This is a question for humans.

"What I loved about The Exorcist is that it gives us a [sense of] how to respond, in the sense of these two priests," she said, referring to the characters Father Karras and Father Merrin, who perform the film's dramatic exorcism. "They're not perfect. They're completely messed up, just as many people on the street would be. But they respond with love," she said. "They're absolutely not the most successful in the way that they approach it ... but they're present in it. So Regan is not alone ultimately."

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