Show Notes:

Dr. Bryan Stone has spent roughly a decade researching a single question: what does horror cinema reveal about Christianity? Watching hundreds of films across several sub-genres — ghosts, witches, vampires, zombies, nature horror, the demonic, and psychological horror — he built a case that the monsters of Western horror aren't random. They're the monsters Christianity is responsible for: reflections of centuries of Christian anxiety about bodies, nature, and sin. He's Dean of Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University and author of Christianity and Horror Cinema(Routledge, 2025).

Chris and Eddie sit down with Stone for a conversation that starts with horror movies and doesn't stay there. They talk about leading a seminary in a post-Christendom culture, where a generation is walking into church for the first time in their mid-20s. And they dig into what AI is already doing to theological education — term papers no detector can catch, a discipline forced to rethink what it means to know anything, and what can't be automated out of ministry.

In this episode:

Why Western horror is shaped by Christian theology — and why that pattern doesn't hold in Asian cinema
What changed in horror after Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Leading a seminary in a post-Christendom culture
The growing role of chaplaincy in theological education
AI, term papers, and what ministry can't outsource

Guest:

Dr. Bryan Stone, Dean of Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Book: Christianity and Horror Cinema (Routledge, 2025) — https://www.routledge.com/Christianity-and-Horror-Cinema/Stone/p/book/9781032968407

Perkins School of Theology: https://www.smu.edu/perkins

Mentioned in this episode — DELTA: Human Formation in the Age of AI, a faith-based AI ethics framework from Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good — https://ethics.nd.edu/programs/delta/

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