The Spirituality of Stephen King

The other night, Michele and I watched "The Green Mile" on DVD. It's not among my favorite films. But she had never seen it before, was intrigued, and had picked it up along with some other movies at the library.

Just as it got rolling, I warned Michele about the three execution scenes, the second one being especially graphic and ugly and painfully-long. We hid our eyes and fast-forwarded through some of it. I've seen some rougher movies and documentaries. But for some reason, the depictions of hyper sadism in this one just really get to me.

Anyway, this time around I was remembering that, like "The Shawshank Redemption," this movie originates with Stephen King. And, again like Shawshank, "The Green Mile" is loaded with spiritual themes like redemption, retribution, the innocent suffering for the guilty, and on and on it goes. These story lines seem to take "principalities and powers" a lot more seriously than do most other contemporary films. And, in the Green Mile you even have a messiah figure whose initials are J.C.

So my off-handed question is, Why do we always hear about Stephen King as a writer of horror? Or is that merely his pop-culture and surface persona, the most obvious facet of his fiction obscuring the other facets? I also wonder, Are there any writers or discussions out there that deal with the "spirituality" of Stephen King? Also, what about his own religion, formative and current? It seems to be fairly rich and nuanced.

Any help? Thoughts?