“When a Marvel movie features a hero who is a born-again Christian..”
I read that they are thinking about introducing a Muslim “super-hero,” possibly in the next Captain Marvel movie. They will if Brie Larson get what she wants. Haven’t read anything about having one who is a devout Christian.
Fox pretty much completed a New Mutants movie. I don’t know about the movie, but in the comics they had Cannonball, Sam Guthrie, who was Christian. I’m hard-pressed to remember in others in the comics...and I have about 20,000 of them.
For the most part I am fine with not including Christianity in the MCU because it would tend to mock Christian faith even done with the best intentions. If you look at the background for comics they are really a pagan mythology I like to punfully refer to as Geek mythology. In the comic universe there are cosmic forces and beings that imbue the heros and villains with godlike powers and abilities. While this makes interesting stories that can explore aspects of human failings like the Greek myths of old, people who believe in a Judeo-Christian God against that background would just come off as superstitious and foolish.
The Daredevil character in the Netflix series (technically part of the MCU) is portrayed as Catholic. I was actually bothered by the depiction and it turned me off from the series because it felt too out of place and sometimes disrespectful. His faith, such as it is, is pointless when as a viewer you know the larger scale of things. As St Paul pointed out if the things we believe as Christians is in vain then we are the most miserable of all people. So I say leave Christianity and Christians out of it.
“Haven’t read anything about having one who is a devout Christian.”
Well, the closest in the movies is Captain America, who is from another era when most everyone in the country was Christian. They don’t do much with it, but at least in the first Avengers they gave him that one line where he says “There’s only one God, ma’am, and he doesn’t dress like that”, about Thor.
The other Marvel Studios property that actually does “flirt” with Christianity is Daredevil on Netflix. Matt Murdock is more of a lapsed Christian, but he was raised in a Catholic orphanage, his mom is a nun, one of his only real friends is a priest, and his struggle with his faith is a recurring theme throughout the series, even if it isn’t the main focus of the show.
Nightcrawler, one of the X-Men, is a devout Roman Catholic in the comics. I don’t know how much that aspect has been explored in the films as I gave up on X-Movies long ago.
The only other heroes I remember as being Christian were Nightcrawler and Firebird (who even wore her cross outside of her costume). But only Nightcrawler would be considered A or B list.