Near the transition from the Pride to the Wrath Arc, I tried to type up a post clarifying MTEFIL's weird position in religion-based fantasy. Mainly it doesn't just take aesthetics from Christian mythology but genuinely tries to engage with Christian values without just replicating its rhetoric.
Most Christian art falls into two camps. The first is propaganda, often with a goal of evangelism which not only carries certain values but affects its thematic depth. It is hard to really break new ground when your focus is on repeating an already established message. The second camp more takes the aesthetics of Christian mythology to have its own fun and is pretty common in anime/manga. I enjoy this type plenty but most gun-toting nun series don't evoke the same moral worldbuilding that makes MTEFIL stand out.
In MTEFIL evil is ever present and easy to define, to viscerally understand and interact with. Meanwhile connection to that which is good and divine is not only vague and distant, but is often facilitated through institutions that everyone knows are corrupt and just as bad as what it claims to fight. It's a moral quandary I find more interesting and more relevant to how people in real life engage in religion and other organized structures. In a world where Sin is real and undeniable but God remains unknownable and connected to so much injustice, what do you do? Losing your religion might help heal the trauma, but it doesn't stop demons from eating you.
It's also why I never expected an "attack and dethrone God" style plotline. Even though the demon lords are presented as rebels of Heaven, the offer of an eternal paradise never really meant much to MTEFIL's themes. The plot goes to hell and back yet remains unconcerned about eternal damnation. Still I was excited to see how it would try to thread the needle and solve its quandary.
But the issue I saw in the horizon and the Wrath Arc has laid bare is that the solution liberal Christian denominations use to ease their dissonance weren't really available to a narrative like MTEFIL. Liberal Christian denominations can reinterpret their texts, declare certain traditions irrelevant to their current lives, or read certain biblical myths as metaphorical. But when you accept that Adam and Eve are real people in order to make your super-powered priests work, well that gives you a lot less wiggle room to ignore what it means to be made from another's spare rib.
I don't even really think a liberal Christian pov would be a satisfying or interesting direction for MTEFIL to go, but what we currently have isn't either. Just like the demon lords, Lisa is a clearly defined character whose Wrath is given more thought and depth beyond just "angry bad." But unlike the demon lords, she's able to nuke the world and still come out looking more morally principled than the others because she at least believes in something. Which ironically, our protagonists haven't really demonstrated.
And I won't act like MTEFIL hasn't punched its way through handling its thematic questions. It's not like Beelzebub was defeated by demonstrating the values of restraint and generosity. But there's a fascinating dissonance to the antagonist's position being the most developed and nuanced, citing real life history, while our heroes keep looking for a bigger power upgrade that will bring her down.
This far in I don't have any hopes of it subverting its centrist positioning. But even if the next chapter suddenly did an entire 180 and everyone agreed with Lisa, it doesn't change the fact it's spent a lot of pages in boring stagnation. We're over 100 chapters into this narrative but it doesn't feel like it is getting any closer to really digging into the juiciest bits of its premise. Even if the politics were less eye-rolling that would be disappointing.
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