Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; Phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Reading: Pinsky, M.I. (2001). The gospel according to The Simpsons: The spiritual life of the world's most animated family. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

Note: These comments are not designed to "summarize" the reading. Rather, they are available to highlight key ideas that will emerge in our classroom discussion. As always, it's best to read the original text to gain full value from the course.

In chapter six, Pinsky considers the nature of Hell. Is it a real and tangible place, a punishment from God? Or, in contrast, is Hell a more subtle result of the soul permanently dislocated from God? To Pinsky, this debate over the nature of Hell (and its less dramatically imagined counterpart, Heaven) orients many episodes of The Simpsons. However, the show offers a somewhat more traditional notion of Heaven and Hell: the souls of good people experience pleasure in the former, the souls of evil people suffer in the latter. So, what about the "soul" that presumably travels to one abode or the other? A fair amount of the chapter concentrates on one Simpsons episode that explores this issue: "Bart Sells His Soul." Throughout the episode, we encounter attempts by Reverend Lovejoy, Lisa Simpson, Milhouse Van Houten and Bart to define the soul as the reflection of choices one makes, for good or for ill. Beyond the show, we might question: what roles do heaven and hell play in shaping how we imagine our choices in public life?

Activity: Define one character's definition of the soul in "Bart Sells His Soul." Be prepared to answer the following question: What kind of public life would we experience if all people believed in that notion of soul?

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