18 May 2007

Vampires and the soul of the west

Steve Hollinghurst is almost always worth reading and he's just been writing about something that had been in idle moments passing through my mind. So it's with gladness I find he's thought it through much more systematically: here's the main question.
the Vampire genre as classically represented by the Dracula character, has within it Christendom assumptions. ...so what happens to vampire slaying in a post-Christendom world? Enter Buffy the Vampire Slayer,

It's all part of a co-operative blogging operation 'synchroblog' and so we are invited to look at other offerings in the series. But Steve, after taking us on a whirlwind tour of some of the major themes from the series germane to his interest, ends by posing the questions more sharply, inviting us to think more, and I think it's an important set of questions.
it is perhaps not surprising if Churches are simply scary places full of demons, evangelists are demonic forces praying on the vulnerably and priests are misogynist devil worshipers bent on brutality that it is to Pagan priestesses, Wiccan magic, mystic weapons, empowered women and good honest human spirit that we must turn to face the ultimate evil. it is easy to dismiss this is be angry with it, but this is how many see the church and Christianity, and we have bought some of this on ourselves. what kind of church might be a force for good in the Buffyverse where evil must be fought and redemption is so important and sensitively handled? on the other hand if we are to leave the modern world in which the demonic and the 'ultimate evil' are as much a fairytale as the Christan God. if we are to enter a world in which supernatural evil is real, how can we fight it? in the end some strange mystic light needs to come and finish off the job, indeed we need God by the back door. but which God in what form? unless the church can become something other than the caricature of the Buffyverse, then what God will come to fill this place?

On Earth as in Heaven: The Gospel according to Buffy (synchroblog)

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