As movies like "Legion" and TV shows such as Supernatural make clear, angels are once again pop culture commodities, though the kinder, gentler sort (think Roma Downey or Michael Landon) are definitely passe.

Our era's closest facsimile to the gentle, selfless helpmate of the last century is Earl, the unkempt, tobacco-chewing angel on Saving Grace. He is a representative of God, but one who could just as easily pass as your local sinner. In contrast, a wide variety of angels in contemporary popular culture are misanthropic bad-asses. For example, in the recent film "Legion," God is through with humanity and sends angels to deliver an apocalyptic punishment. Angels in these new narratives are either angry at God for privileging humans or at war with each other, siding with Lucifer or heaven. In most cases, flawed humans are simply pawns in the larger battle. This storyline has dominated the CW show Supernatural for the last season and a half.

Angels are also popular in the paranormal romance genre. While vampires and shape-shifters are still the alpha heroes of choice, a few series are featuring angels as warrior protagonists. Being touched by an angel does not necessarily lead to salvation in these books, but it can lead to lots and lots of orgasms. In The Guardians series by Meljean Brook, angels and demons are in a war over earth, and the angels have all the earthly, sensual desires of humans because they were once human.

God is not present nor is he even mentioned in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter books. In her series, angels create vampires and are violent, vengeful world leaders. In the most recent entry, released this week, the protagonist struggles to contain another archangel who has started raising zombies, but manages to find time to have mind-blowing sex with the woman he loves.

Over the last decade, the paranormal romance sub-genre has grown exponentially in romance sales, becoming the biggest seller in genre fiction. While there is no clear correlation between what people consume for pleasure and what they believe, this new model of dangerous and often sexy angels does speak to new trends in moral imagination. While we in academia as well as our colleagues in the journalistic profession have been looking to megachurches and popular nonfiction as pointers to new trends in how people envision God and spirituality, the emergence of angels that are far from angelic gestures toward other ways that people are imagining their universe. 

In a Twilight-saturated world where a vampire is constructed as angelic—Edward sparkles in the sunlight!—it would behoove us to explore how various communities imagine danger, distance and the earthy in the divine. Why are dark-angel narratives becoming popular? Are these consumers different from the half of the population that allegedly believes in guardian angels? Do these narratives, so mired in the battle between good and evil, speak to a feeling that God is distant or even absent in current events?

Reporters might look into online forums as well as local book groups and congregations to see what's turning on readers—and why.

Rebecca Wanzo is an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the Ohio State University. Her first book, The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling, looks at how citizens frame stories about suffering to make their claims intelligible to the state. Her current book project, The Melancholic Patriot, examines representations of African American citizenship in comic art.