What's Superman's religious background?

[LordUltimus]

Just asking if this has ever been explored before. Have we ever gotten confirmation on what religion the Kents are/were?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Just asking if this has ever been explored before. Have we ever gotten confirmation on what religion the Kents are/were?

They've generally left it vague. All that we really know is that Jor-El & Lara are most definitely Space Jews and Ma & Pa Kent are Christian, but which denomination hasn't ever been nailed down. The reason for this is most likely because National/DC had a long-standing policy of using Superman as a fictional spokesman for religious and racial tolerance since as far back as the 50s so they never really wanted the character to be defined by a specific religious group.

[superduperman]

Someone did some kind of actual research into this and estimated, based on where his rocket would have landed, that the Kents would probably be Methodist..

[Vordan]

They've generally left it vague. All that we really know is that Jor-El & Lara are most definitely Space Jews and Ma & Pa Kent are Christian, but which denomination hasn't ever been nailed down. The reason for this is most likely because National/DC had a long-standing policy of using Superman as a fictional spokesman for religious and racial tolerance since as far back as the 50s so they never really wanted the character to be defined by a specific religious group.

This, although Clark himself is usually left vague as well concerning specifics of belief aside from the general understanding he was probably raised Christian.

[Adekis]

From what I've heard, Martha was Methodist and raised Clark that way; Jon was a little more of a syncretist in some versions. In TomDeHaven's novel "It's Superman", Jon Kent might be the only man in rural Kansas to have books about Buddhism and other various world religions on his bookshelf. I like it because it adds to the sense of both thoughtfulness and alienation Clark grows up with, and I like him being Methodist too because I like the sense of community and social justice apparently associated with Methodists, allegedly.

[bat39]

A more interesting question I feel would be what's Superman's attitude to spirituality and faith in general, leaving aside any specific religious affiliations.

Growing up, did Clark Kent believe in some notion of God? Before he learnt about his alien heritage, did he believe there could be a divine explanation for his powers? How did his worldview about spirituality, if he had any, change when he learnt he was an alien? And how did it continue to evolve in the face of him meeting Wonder Woman and Shazam and the New Gods, among others? And how might he feel about the possibility that some people on earth, and on other planets, may view him as a God?

[seismic-2]

A quick Google search of the religious demographics of Kansas shows that over half of the population are either evangelical Protestants or mainline Protestants, so the odds are good that the Kent family would fall into one of those two groups (especially since most of the other groups are concentrated in the urban areas). Perhaps a more interesting question is: what religion does the Lane family belong to? Can that be determined from what we saw of the church and the minister in the Wedding Album? Are they Methodists, Episcopalians, or what? It should also be noted that the Earth-2 Superman and Lois (i.e., the "original" Superman and Lois) held a second and private wedding ceremony according to Kryptonian ritual:



so maybe the Superman and Lois union is a mixed Episcopalian / Raoist marriage?

[Jim Kelly]

This seems like a topic that should be a sticky, so we don't have to go over and over it again.

Of course, the "Kansas is Methodist" idea only applies if the Kents are in Kansas. Since 1986, they have mostly been located there. But before that only the Christopher Reeve Superman is located there--and actually the farm was filmed in Alberta.

Even so, doing a quick internet search, I find that 15% are Catholic and 8% are Methodist in Kansas--and then smaller percentages for other denominations and religions. Those statistics don't make a convincing argument for the Kents being Methodist.

Pre-1986 in the comics, Smallville was close to Metropolis. For Earth-Two Superman that should be the case also. Granted in the official version of Earth-Two (not the same as the actual 1940s comics), Clark wasn't Superboy. But when Superboy did appear in the 1940s (1943 and onward), he first seemed to reside in Metropolis or very close to it.

In the 1920s--around when Clark would have been a boy, if he was Superman in 1938--there was still a lot of farmland in the eastern part of the U.S. I imagine that Siegel and Shuster were thinking of that area of the country--somewhere close to Cleveland or Toronto. There would be no reason to place the Kents so far away from where they grew up.

I wouldn't go so hard on trying to identify the Kents' religion exactly. Given Siegel and Shuster were Jewish, they just made the Kents ambiguously W.A.S.P. so Superman would be acceptable to the dominant culture.