Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
~ Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip
"There is often great wisdom in comic strips. In 1976, Charles Schultz had Snoopy write a book on theology called: Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong? In 1980, he had Linus ask his Sunday School teacher the exact same question.
"Schulz touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible (Luke 2:8-14) to explain "what Christmas is all about."
"Though his philosophical views evolved over the years--The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist,'" Schultz explained--his characters continued to quote biblical passages, occasionally musing about the darker inconsistencies of religion.
"In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God (Anderson) as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. By the late 1980s he told one of his biographers (Rheta Grimsley Johnson, 1989) that he identified with Secular Humanism.
"In the Sixties, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, as he (Short) explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts. Schulz did not endorse Short's specific interpretations and often said that the only theology is no theology, yet Schulz gave permission to use many of his strips in the book, and his newspaper comics continued to have enough theological themes to fill many Sunday School lessons."Schulz seemed concerned about having his strip narrowly viewed as a religious themed comic, and believed it had many more simple insights into life that went beyond a specifically defined theology."
Charles M. Schultz, Wikipedia & Answers.com
Robert L. Short's, The Gospel According to Peanuts
The Official Peanuts Website
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