Kate Hawley: By now, most of us have been sufficiently primed for the coming of Revelations, NBC’s New Testament-inspired miniseries opening April 13. But when the trailer came on last night as I was (yes, I’ll admit it) watching an episode of Vegas, I gasped and nearly dropped my Nutella. There was something about Bill Pullman and Natascha McElhone debating the end-times amidst shots of thunder-filled skies that struck me as obscene.

And it wasn’t because the network, desperate for what The Los Angeles Times called a “programming miracle,” is milking religion to boost its declining ratings. Nor was it the implications of a major TV network appealing to the same audiences as the thoroughly right-wing Mel Gibson or Timothy LaHaye, whose Left Behind popularized rapture culture. The New York Times points out that the series is meant to bridge a cultural divide, quoting Pullman as saying, “We’re going to become part of the discussion about what everybody’s agendas are.”

The obscenity came from the deep familiarity of the images in front of me, obscene in the sense of something secret, sacred, even, suddenly exposed. Revelations makes explicit what has been implicit since The Wind debuted in 1928 — the religious undertones of the disaster epic. By now, these movies are the stuff of parody: the cheesy, portentous dialogue, the shots of feet running, of fearful people looking over their shoulders as they try to outrun giant waves, meteors, lava (and now, eternal damnation). We’ve all seen The Day After Tomorrow, The Perfect Storm, Titanic, Deep Impact and the appropriately titled Armageddon (or at least I have, but I’ve already confessed my penchant for pop culture.)

The common theme: salvation from ultimate destruction, a notion rooted in the book of Revelation. Apocalypse makes great drama, not least because it offers the ultimate catharsis, the destruction of the world. But must we mix religion and TV? I’d say I’m a strict separatist, but I can’t quite. I’ve already worshiped at the accidental shrine, the flickering screen.