(Editor's note: Recent years have seen a rash of Gospel According to... books from Westminster John Knox, including The Gospel According to Peanuts, The Gospel According to the Simpsons, The Gospel According to Disney and The Gospel According to Tolkien. We are pleased to present an excerpt from Robert Fulton's (Ph.D. Columbia University, Comparative Religions) ground-breaking research on the original source material, the comic strip Thimble Theatre, which ran in American newspapers in the 1930s and introduced the character of Popeye to a breathless world. The Gospel According to Popeye is slated for a Summer 2005 release from WJK.)

      Bud Sagendorf and his creation Popeye provide a splendid model for reimaging outmoded theological constructs. While the popular comic strip appeared to most observers in the '30s to be little more than a mindless children's "slug fest," in truth, it plumbed hitherto uncharted depths of syncretism.
      The choice of appellations, the characters' professions, even their physiology all combine in a rapturously elegant — yet sublimely accessible — new theophany.
      That Popeye himself is the heroic Christ-figure is plain enough even for conservative Southern Baptists in Dallas to grasp. His constant battles with the brutish Brutus, a brilliantly conceived anthromorphized realization of man's sinful nature, evokes the toils of Sisyphus, forever rolling his rock up the mountain, only to have it roll down again.
      Just as sinful man sins, repents, and yet sins again, the battles of Popeye and Brutus echo Paul's "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." (Romans 7:19).       In fact, Popeye's iconic "Blow me down!" will find its greatest expression in latter-day televangelist Benny Hinn's breathless, ritualistic summonsing of the Holy Spirit. What are we to make, then of Popeye's miraculous draught — spinach? Is it not clearly "the bread of life" that, when consumed, revitalizes the sinful man? Why spinach? In the immortal words of Bonhoeffer, "Eh? Vy not?"
      Consider then his princess, the perpetually virginal Olive Oyl who is, to Popeye, as the earthly representation of the "church" is to Christ. Their chaste relationship, splintered occasionally by her symbolic "whoring" after Brutus, is a remarkably accurate depiction of the apostate church prior to the Diet of Worms.
      And like the Church Universal, Olive is remarkably consistent. Fads may come and go, but Olive remains forever demurely dressed in her long, straight skirt, Doc Marten boots and kicky little top with the white fringe.
      Perhaps the richest archetype, one who deserves a fuller exploration by later doctoral candidates, is J. Wellington Wimpy, the Holy Fool, the Trickster, the Scapegoat. No figure in the Thimble Theatre canon is more expressively human than Wimpy. He is the epitome of modern man, forever asking for grace ("I would gladly pay Tuesday for a hamburger today."), reneging on his promises, then demanding justice for everyone else.
      In Wimpy, we find the fullest expression of the Calvinistic doctrine of TULIP — Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints.
      We all think we're Popeye, but in reality, we are all really Wimpy. And, just as Arthur sent his knights on a fool's quest to find the Grail that would heal his wounded land, Wimpy is forever in search of another hamburger to mooch, not knowing that it will in no way fill the God-shaped void in his belly.
      There are, of course, many more characters to examine, and we will do just that in the chapters ahead:
      · The infant Swee'pea, whom the original texts state was originally sent to Popeye for safekeeping as the Crown Prince of Demonia — we know, of course, he is a perfectly splendid representation of the Virgin Birth.
      · The curmudgeonly Poopdeck Pappy, unscrupulous and unrepentant, teaches us much about Samuel, who works assiduously to undermine King Saul.
      · The magical Sea Hag, of course, is the Witch of Endor.
      · And the Goons are the Philistines, or maybe the Religious Right. I forget.
      In sum, it is inconceivable to me that so many so-called religious scholars dismiss this latter-day revelation when the prolepsis is as plain as the pimpled noses on their spotted faces! In doing so, they're all guilty of the sin of praeterition! Now with our main characters in place, let us begin our examination of the theology of Thimble Theatre.
      "I yam what I yam, an' tha's all that I yam." — Popeye
      "And God said to Moses, 'I AM THAT I AM.'" — Exodus 3:14

      The Gospel According to Popeye: Meditations on Substitutionary Grace for a Pre-millennial Age, by Robert Fulton, is available for pre-order from WJK. $39.95

By Robert Fulton
Illustrations by Robert Darden
Issue #196, November/December 2004