Godly Play; Superman's Staying Power

Understanding Religious Playthings; Superman, 'Our Hero' 1

Sebastian Scheiner, AP Photo

Fulla, a Middle Eastern doll, comes with the option of full hijab.

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By Nina Ayoub

For Nikki Bado-Fralick, it began with the board game Mormon-Opoly. For Rebecca Sachs Norris, the object was an action figure of Job, boils covering his plastic body. Both scholars would eventually amass huge collections of religious playthings that became prompts for both research and pedagogy. Their work, they say, counters a tendency to marginalize such objects. "That we may not readily associate games and dolls with religion says more about the artificial lines drawn around religion than