Dean – SMU Perkins School of Theology

Perkins Dean featured on KERA Think and SMU’s “Why We Love Being Scared” exploring faith, fear, and the theology of horror

As spooky season arrives, Bryan P. Stone, Leighton K. Farrell Endowed Dean at Perkins School of Theology, appeared in two major media features unpacking the unlikely spiritual power of horror cinema. His recent interviews with KERA Think and SMU News invited audiences to explore how theology and fear intertwine—and what horror films can teach us about human vulnerability, culture, and faith.

These conversations follow the release of his new book, Christianity and Horror Cinema (Routledge, 2025), which examines how Christian symbols, beliefs, and anxieties have shaped the monsters and moral questions that haunt Western horror films.

The Christian Core of Horror Movies — KERA Think

In October, Stone joined KERA Think host, Krys Boyd, for a Halloween episode titled The Christian Core of Horror Movies. Together, they explored how ghosts, witches, vampires, and demons often draw from Christian imagery — sometimes reinforcing faith, and other times subverting it.r

“Horror cinema preys on Christianity’s narrative, moral, cultural, and aesthetic traditions; reverses them; upends them; inverts them; and offends them,” Stone explained. “But it also reflects and relies on them.”

He emphasized that horror is not simply about fear — it’s about confrontation. “What horror film does is confront us,” he said. “It confronts us with our vulnerabilities, our finitude — those things we’ve buried deep. And it brings them back up in front of us.”

Read more about the Podcast Show: The Christian core of horror movies

Why We Love Being Scared — SMU News Feature

In a companion feature produced by SMU News, Stone joined Rick Worland, film professor at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, in a video conversation titled Why We Love Being Scared. Filmed at the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection in the Hamon Arts Library, the discussion explored the psychological and cultural fascination with horror.

Reflecting on footage of audiences leaving The Exorcist in 1974, Stone and Worland traced how the genre has shifted from classic monsters to deeply personal fears that mirror modern life. Together, they considered how horror reflects moral questions and spiritual anxieties in every generation.

“Horror films are mirrors,” Stone noted. “They show us what we most fear about ourselves — and sometimes, what we most long for.”

Watch the SMU video: Why We Love Being Scared

Charles Wesley once penned the Advent hymn “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” which many of us will soon be singing again with more frequency as we move toward Advent and the close of another calendar year. But while Jesus may well have been long-expected by those with deep messianic longing, the Jesus who came was, in almost every respect, unexpected. He appeared not in palaces and throne rooms but in a manger; not as a conqueror, but as a servant; not to confirm our expectations, but to upend them.

This rhythm of expectation and surprise feels especially familiar at this point in the semester. Study, ministry, and service are in full stride, plans are well-laid, calendars full—and yet God has a way of showing up between the lines, interrupting even our most sophisticated proposals (and syllabi!) with grace, insight, and renewal. Theological education at Perkins lives in that same tension: deeply grounded in Scripture, tradition, and scholarship, yet ever alert to how theology meets the world in new and unpredictable ways.

In recent months, I’ve been struck by how theology emerges in places we might not think to look—especially in the context of the multiple conversations I have had related to my recent book Christianity and Horror Cinema (October is my month!), where what is faithful and frightening intertwine and confront one another in ways that invite wonder rather than avoidance. Not for everyone, I know! But encounters like these remind us that theology is not confined to pulpits or classrooms; it breathes in art, film, conversation, and the cultural spaces that probe what it means to be human before God.

Students at Perkins are constantly discovering the unexpected in their classes, their formation together, their internships, and community worship. The renovation of Kirby Parlor into Kirby Commons is another sign of this meeting place between the sacred and the ordinary—a renewed space for fellowship, friendship, and reflection. I am deeply thankful for the generosity and vision that has brought that project to completion.

As Advent approaches, may we continue to look for God’s presence not only in the expected but in the startling, creative, and grace-filled surprises that define the life of faith.