Perhaps the most interesting storytelling initiative undertaken by Disney since its acquisition of the Star Wars franchise comes in the form of The High Republic, a multi-platform publishing enterprise begun in January of 2021. Set 200 years before Lucas’s The Phantom Menace, this interconnected series of books, comic books, and future television series, looks to chart a course for the future of Star Wars by taking audiences into uncharted territory—the golden age of the Jedi. The Jedis’ connection to the Force, the pseudo-magical energy that flows through every living being in the Star Wars universe, is more pronounced here as well. The Jedi are far more open to different approaches and methods of using the Force than in the prequel films. It would be safe to say that the High Republic era is meant to channel the kind of chivalric adventures of yore; only, instead of knights-errant, the heroes are Jedi. Everything is happy and glorious in the High Republic—and the Jedi have the most progressive ideologies of the day. Why should Christians care about and interact with one of the most popular mythic series of our modern time? Christian author C.S. Lewis once wrote, “The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” The story of Christianity is the great, true story. 

This episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Cole Burgett about the Star Wars universe and how the Christian can use other myth tales to point to the truth of the gospel and his online-exclusive article, “Happy and Glorious in The High Republic: A Review of The High Republic Era beginning with Star Wars: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule.” 

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