Pasadena Professor Side by Side with Morgan Freeman on the National Geographic Channel

Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture Kutter Callaway of Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary was recently interviewed by actor Morgan Freeman in the six-part TV “The Story of God” by National Geographic.

The show began airing on April 3, 2016 and takes viewers on a trip around the world to explore different cultures and religions on the ultimate quest to uncover the meaning of life, God and all the questions in between.

Morgan interviewed several religious authorities for the series as he explores the nature of the divine, and one of them is Professor Callaway who enthusiastically encourages people to watch the series, even when he himself felt some discomfort at the prospect of being a contributor to the show.

“Participating in endeavors like this will make many of us uncomfortable because we often won’t have control – over the terms of the conversation, who our target audience is, what the final project will look like,” Callaway reflects. “Yet we are being asked to contribute something to a conversation taking place in contemporary culture from which the church has long been absent, in part because it hasn’t aligned with our ready-made agenda. From a theological perspective, it’s a conversation that God initiated and continues to sustain with or without our involvement. But it is one that we are nevertheless called to enter with wit, wisdom, and creativity.”

Callaway himself is working on a book, “Watching TV Religiously,” that he says explores the “many ways God is already at work in and through the current proliferation of television programs and increasingly diverse options for viewing.”

Callaway joined the School of Theology faculty in July 2015 as assistant professor of theology and culture, transitioning from his previous Fuller roles as director of Church Relations and an affiliate assistant professor. He has been actively engaged in writing and speaking on the interaction between theology and culture—particularly film, television, and online media—in both academic and popular forums. His current writing project is “Televisionaries: Theology and TV in Dialogue,” due out from Baker Academic in 2016.

Callaway says he believes that contemporary culture is “haunted by transcendence,” borrowing a phrase from philosopher Charles Taylor.

“I believe it is this very ‘haunted-ness’ that both inspires and animates a TV production like the National Geographic Channel’s ‘The Story of God with Morgan Freeman.’ It is also what generates so much public interest in a television program about God in a context that is supposedly so “secularized.”

In their episode, Callaway and Freeman discuss the Christian understanding of evil, Satan, and original sin. Callaway says he agreed to be on the show not just to meet the man who actually “plays” God, but also as “an attempt to articulate the value and significance of the Christian narrative in the midst of a world in which the Christian story is but one among many others.”

Morgan Freeman won the Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with “Million Dollar Baby,” and has received Oscar nominations for his performances in “Street Smart (1987),” “Driving Miss Daisy (1989),” “The Shawshank Redemption (1994),” and “Invictus (2009).” He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman is known for his distinctively smooth, deep voice.