Jim McDermott

CREATION STORIES, WHETHER modern or ancient, share an impulse to explain the situation of those telling it. Consider the first creation story we encounter in Genesis. In six wondrously efficient days, God transforms “the complete chaos, and darkness” covering the Earth into an organized universe. The orderly creation of Genesis 1-2:4a, written during a catastrophic period in ancient Israel, is meant to reassure the Israelites that God is indeed fully in charge of the world, and all is not lost, no matter how terrible things seem. Stories of the “founding” of America by the Puritans likewise imbued the country’s early self-understanding with a supposedly divine mandate. That way of thinking continues to inform and justify the behavior of the U.S. to this day.

MORE THAN FIVE decades ago, two young Brits with dreams of writing musicals came up with the audacious idea of a rock opera about the Passion of Jesus Christ, told from the point of view of Jesus’ betrayer, Judas Iscariot. From the very moment composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and songwriter Tim Rice proposed it, Jesus Christ Superstar provoked both adulation and condemnation. And five decades have done nothing to diminish either the show’s fire or the intensity of audience reactions.

In August, the Hollywood Bowl will host the musical with another innovative twist: Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo plays Jesus and rock star Adam Lambert takes on Judas, in a one-weekend-only production directed by Tony and Emmy Award winner Sergio Trujillo. Some have already condemned the production for giving a queer Black woman the role of Jesus, decrying it as “intentionally blasphemous” — a complaint that has been made about various aspects of the show (including its casting) from the beginning. But the show’s actual history reveals that Superstar has been anything but a blight upon Christianity. Generations of artists have found within it fertile ground to reflect on faith and justice, sacrifice and society.

When Pope Francis’ condition first began to worsen in February, I found myself suddenly feeling the kind of vertiginous paradigm shift usually reserved for the loss of close family or friends, that sense of a curtain being torn aside and a truth being revealed. The detail that really broke me was the news that as he had gotten sicker, Francis continued to text and call the people of Holy Family Parish in Gaza. It was so far beyond what anyone would expect of a critically ill 88-year-old man. And yet it crystallized for me what has been so personally important about Pope Francis: his dedication to welcoming those on the margins.

IN SOME WAYS it’s hard to appreciate today the significance of Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Much of what he wrote that was then viewed as heresy by the Catholic Jesuit Order — that the story of Adam and Eve is not scientific fact; that God’s creative work did not end with Genesis, but rather continues through evolution; that the entire material universe is at its core spiritual and grace-filled — are ideas that are now widely accepted within the church. In fact, Teilhard’s thoughts on the sacramentality of the world lie unabashedly at the heart of much of what Pope Francis has said about the environment.

The new PBS documentary Teilhard: Visionary Scientist paints a masterful and unexpectedly emotional portrait of this French priest who spent his life suffering for his love of the church and the world. Beginning with his youth and drawing frequently on his own words, Visionary Scientist walks with Teilhard as he is dazzled by the wonders of nature around his family’s home in Auvergne, then follows him into the Jesuits, where he’s taught that a religious vocation requires one to shun the world, to view it with contempt.

IN THE LAST nine months, John Patrick Shanley has had three plays on and off Broadway: revivals of “Doubt” and “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” and the debut of “Brooklyn Laundry.” While the timing is completely coincidental, the three plays cover much of his career: “Danny” premiered more than 40 years ago, and “Doubt” recently turned 20.

Despite the decades between them, these plays share a surprisingly consistent take on faith. Though raised Catholic, today Shanley demurs from identifying with any one religion. In a recent interview he told me, “It’s like when you’re among theists, you get handed a piano with 88 keys and told you can only use 13. I think that human spiritual experience is first of all mysterious and second of all, extremely rich and varied. Any reduction is just that, a subtraction from the breathtaking panoply available to us through the history of the spirit.”

In “Danny,” “Doubt,” and “Brooklyn,” God is not a comfort. Instead, Shanley’s characters are confronted with the radical, unavoidable uncertainty of reality — and challenged to go forward anyway. For Shanley, the whole idea of faith demands stripping away anything sentimental or reassuring. It isn’t faith if it isn’t well and truly a leap.