Theology: Good Grief, Charlie Schulz!

Is Charlie Brown's "good grief!" an exclamation of fundamental Angst? Does Linus' blanket have a deep symbolic meaning? Such questions may sound like ways to take the fun out of Charles Schulz's famous comic strip Peanuts. But Robert L. Short, 32, a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, argues not only amusingly but also convincingly that Peanuts indeed has intentional theological significance.

The Nameless Woe. In a new paperback called The Gospel According to Peanuts (Knox; $1.50), Short contends that the cartoon, whose creator is a lay preacher in...