The majority of Americans believe in some form of life after death. Often, this is shaped by Christian traditions of eternal reward for a moral life. Other religions also offer some form of enlightenment or reincarnation that has found followers outside of the faith community as well. Religious practices and beliefs, moreover, have intersected with scientific examinations of “out-of-body” experiences and attempts to communicate with the dead through spiritualism and mediums. This has been a goldmine for popular publications as well as theological speculation.

This topic has also been a rich area of speculation for American media. Horror films, for example, have long explored malign elements of evil and revenge associated with widespread concepts of hell and Satan; threats of Satanism have also flared in community witch-hunts across the country (sometimes focused on childcare). While these concepts are not as popular nor as well-defined as heaven, they nonetheless remain part of a substrate of American theology.

Meanwhile other, lighter films and television have focused on the activities of angels in everyday life, from Frank Capra’s classic postwar angelic alternative to noir, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), to several television series of the 1980s and 1990s (Highway to Heaven, 1984–91, Touched by an Angel, 1996–). Angels, drawing on European representations, have also become widely marketed jewelry items, sometimes divorced from any particular religious meaning.

Other versions of heaven also stand out for their differences in time and perspective.

These would include all-black heavens as Hollywood minstrelsy (Cabin in the Sky, 1943), a spate of yuppie heavens, involving litigation (Defending your Life, 1991) and technicolor consumption (What Dreams May Come, 1999). Diane Keaton also created Heaven (1987), a talkative documentary with interviews and film clips. Reincarnation has also been used to tackle issues of gender stereotyping in All of Me (1984) and Switch (1991). While these are scarcely philosophical reflections, their use of normative expectations underscores the pervasiveness of the basic tenets of civic religion in the nation.