“Peanuts” and theology

I used to assidulously read “Peanuts” cartoons when I was a kid, but the religion in them—and apparently there was quite a bit—went over my head. Atlantic has an 2016 article called “The Spirituality of Snoopy,” which recounts how often the artist Charles Schulz used religious themes in his strips.

“Many familiar with the Peanuts strip don’t think of Charles Schulz as a Christian pioneer,” said Stephen Lind, the author of A Charlie Brown Religion: Exploring the Spiritual Life and Work of Charles M. Schulz. “But he was a leader in American media when it comes to both the strength and frequency of religious references.”

More than 560 of Schulz’s nearly 17,800 Peanuts newspaper strips contain a religious, spiritual, or theological reference. To put this into perspective, Schulz only produced 61 strips featuring the famous scene where Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown as he tries to kick it. Particularly later in his career, the religious references came so frequently that pastors and religious publications regularly requested permission to reprint Peanuts strips, which Schulz almost always granted.

Although Schulz was a Christian and often preached and quoted Gospel—sometimes indirectly—he became less religious as he aged:

Later in his life, Schulz’s began to refer to himself as a “secular humanist,” as his theology became less traditional. This did not mean he was no longer a Christian, but rather that he now believed other faiths might also provide legitimate paths to God. He was also less certain about other Christian doctrines, such as the existence of a literal heaven.

The more Schulz wrestled with faith, the more he led his readers to do the same. In a 1985 strip, Sally asked Charlie Brown, “When we die, will we go to Heaven?” Charlie responded, “I like to think so.” This mixture of hope and skepticism reflects Schulz’s own evolving faith, which came to assume an increasingly central role in his work. When you map religious references in Peanuts over time, the trend line shoots up and to the right.

At any rate, here are two of Schulz’s more thoughtful cartoons about theology, with the first reflecting his doubt about the claims of a given faith:

I don’t have the dates of these, but this one sounds a bit sarcastic: