Longlisted for the 2022 International Gothic Association's Allan Lloyd Smith Prize Surpassing scholarly discourse surrounding the emergent secularism of the 19th century, Theology, Horror and Fiction argues that the Victorian Gothic is a genre fascinated with the immaterial. Through close readings of popular Gothic novels across the 19th century – Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others – Jonathan Greenaway demonstrates that to understand and read Gothic novels is to be drawn into the discourses of theology. Despite the differences in time, place and context that informed the writers of these stories, the Gothic novel is irreducibly fascinated with religious and theological ideas, and this angle has been often overlooked in broader scholarly investigations into the intersections between literature and religion. Combining historical theological awareness with interventions into contemporary theology, particularly around imaginative apologetics and theology and the arts, Jonathan Greenaway offers the beginnings of a modern theology of the Gothic.

Scholars of religion have begun to explore horror and the monstrous, not only within the confines of the biblical text or the traditions of religion, but also as they proliferate into popular culture. This exploration emerges from what has long been present in horror: an engagement with the same questions that animate religious thought – questions about the nature of the divine, humanity's place in the universe, the distribution of justice, and what it means to live a good life, among many others. Such exploration often involves a theological conversation. Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination pursues questions regarding non-physical realities, spaces where both divinity and horror dwell. Through an exploration of theology and horror, the contributors explore how questions of spirituality, divinity, and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.

'Between Horror and Hope' is a study of Paul's metaphorical language of death in Romans 6:1-11. The scholarly debate focuses on two main issues; the origin of the 'commentatio mortis' tradition and its development. Dr. Sabou argues that the origin of this terminology is original to Paul; that it was the apostle's own insight into the meaning of Christ's death (a "death to sin") and his understanding of the identity of Christ in his death (as the anointed davidic king) which guided him to create this metaphor of "dying to sin" as a way of describing the relationship of the believer with sin. On the development of this language of death, the author argues that this language conveys two aspects — horror and hope. The first is discussed in the context of crucifixion in which Paul explains the believer's "death to sin" by presenting Christ's death as the death of the anointed davidic king who won the victory over sin and death by rising from the dead. Paul affirms that believers are "coalesced" with what was "proclaimed" about Christ's death and resurrection, thereby allowing him to assert that the releasing of the body from the power of sin is a result of "crucifixion." This "crucifixion" is the "condemnation" inflicted on our past lives in the age inaugurated by Adam's sin and this is such a horrible event that believers have to stay away from sin since sin leads to such punishment. In contrast, hope is presented in the context of "burial." The believers' "burial with" Christ points to the fact that they are part of Christ's family and this is accomplished by the overwhelming action of God by which he pushes us toward the event of Christ's death, an act pictured in baptism. It is this "burial with" Christ that allows believers to share with Christ in newness of life.

As a companion volume to St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, this volume concentrates "on those types of fiction which may be labelled as horror novels, dark fantasies, ghost stories, gothic novels, tales of terror, supernatural fictions, occult fantasies, black-magic stories, psychological thrillers, tales of unease, "grand-guignol" shockers, creepy stories, shudder-pulp fictions, "contes cruels," uncanny stories, macabre fictions and weird tales."--Editor's note, p. ix.