This was a gift to me during Clergy Appreciation Month in October. Apparently over 12 years the congregation has gotten to know a bit about my tastes....
As a general rule I really enjoy these "Gospel According to..." style of books. If I recall correctly I have previously read them dealing with Peanuts (which was the first of the genre I believe), Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. I like how the authors engage simultaneously with the faith story and the contemporary text to find intersections.
Sometimes the connections are obvious. Sometimes the contemporary text is one that some/many people of faith have decried as being antagonistic to Christian faith (Harry Potter comes to mind), which often tells me that they have not really engaged those texts very well.
I have long found echoes of Christian values and questions in the world of Star Trek. At the same time I can see why some would see that world as being quite atheistic and devoid of much recognizable spirituality -- unless you look a bit deeper in some of the story lines. I think Neece has done a good job of pulling some of those threads out in this book. At the same time I think his desire to make Spock into a Christ figure, while having some merit, is a bit overdone. He stretches the metaphor a bit far for my taste.
Having never seen the Animated Series or the newer "Kelvin Timeline" movies I can not really speak to Neece's comments on those pieces of the canon. However his chapters on TOS and his explication of where he understands Roddenberry to be coming from are quite good. The chapters on the movies are uneven, as are the movies themselves.
Al in all a good read, and one that has already influenced a couple of sermons this fall.
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