We Want to Believe

Description: From the first episode to the latest feature film, two main symbols provide the driving force for the iconic television series The X-Files: Fox Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster and Dana Scully's cross necklace. Mulder's poster may feature a flying saucer, but the phrase "I want to believe" refers to more than simply the quest for the truth about aliens. The search for extraterrestrial life, the truth that is out there, is a metaphor for the search for God. The desire to believe in something greater than ourselves is part of human nature: we want to believe. Scully's cross represents this desire to believe, as well as the internal struggle between faith and what we can see and prove. The X-Files depicts this struggle by posing questions and exploring possible answers, both natural and supernatural. Why would God let the innocent suffer? Can God forgive even the most heinous criminal? What if God is giving us signs to point the way to the truth, but we're not paying attention? These are some of the questions raised by The X-Files. In the spirit of the show, this book uses the symbols and images presented throughout the series to pose such questions and explore some of the answers, particularly in the Christian tradition. With a focus on key themes of the series--faith, hope, love, and truth--along the way, this book journeys from the desire to believe to the message of the cross. Endorsements: "What a wonderful book. With grace and intelligence, Amy Donaldson explores the questions of faith and mystery that form the secret heart of the The X-Files. Skeptics and believers alike are bound to come away with new insights into the series--and life." --Frank Spotnitz Executive Producer, The X-Files "Amy Donaldson has written the Bible for X-Files fans . . . Written in an easygoing style that is free of the postmodern jargon one finds in much of cultural criticism, Dr. Donaldson raises challenging questions that provoke an engaging conversation between science, faith, and theological reflection. This book is a must-read for Christians interested in fostering intelligent dialogue between contemporary popular culture and Christian faith." --Jeffrey L. Staley Department of Theology and Religious Studies Seattle University "Amy M. Donaldson's We Want To Believe takes The X Files to have been a prolonged, ever-deepening meditation on the modern crisis no less acute in its insights than, say, a critical study by Jacques Ellul or a novel by Hermann Hesse or a poem by T. S. Eliot. Donaldson indeed brings to bear on Carter's nine-season epic the same type of exegetical apparatus that the best scholars of literature and philosophy bring to the objects of their interest . . . We Want To Believe is an informative and enjoyable book that all fans of The X Files, and all serious students of religion and faith, should read." --Thomas F. Bertonneau co-author of The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction "Donaldson utilizes the synergy and convergence of Mulder and Scully's relationship and her impressively vast knowledge of the X-Files universe to uniquely argue that by not giving up on the truths of the heart--faith, hope, and love--one may thereby discover (and become renewed in) the 'truest truths' that are 'out there.'" --Dean A. Kowalski author/editor of The Philosophy of The X-Files About the Contributor(s): Amy M. Donaldson works as an Associate Editor at Baker Publishing Group. She received her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity from the University of Notre Dame.