Now, I’ve pondered and dithered for a few weeks on this post. I can’t pinpoint anything I’ve written as being incorrect, but I am not an expert and I am always cautious about proclaiming something this drastic as Absolutely What I Believe. I am still exploring the dark corners of the issue… to wit:
I am wondering whether it is *ever* alright to use a secular source to portray something Biblical. The example in the essay is Doctor Who. Along similar lines (not in the essay, though), is it alright to use a Christian source? For example, Narnia, through which I learned to love Jesus as a child. Do we steer clear on the grounds that the authors are still going to be flawed? On the grounds that Jesus spoke in parables not to illuminate a message but to confuse the Pharisees?* Even paraphrases have issues, and more so allegories…
Do read the opinion piece before you decide to respond! Just so you know where I’m coming from…
I am really very interested in feedback on this topic.
Read on! The first part of the opinion piece is called ‘Daleks in the Belfry‘ and responds to an article sent to me about the use of Doctor Who in church services. The second part is called ‘Whovian Christian Identity‘ and is my personal response to Doctor Who as both Christian and fan.
* (Thank you Mary Jennings 
)
Daleks in the Belfry
By Aimee Smith
A couple of weeks ago, I was sent a link to a very interesting article, “Doctor Who Goes to Church”, written by Alex Stein at Guardian Unlimited. While I would like to think that mine is an obvious reaction to a microscopic issue and that this whole essay is a pointless exercise about a non-event, the fact remains that a whole convention has been held upholding the use of Doctor Who to teach and evangelise Christianity to the wider community. I have heard of this sort of thing happening for a while now, and it surprises me that I have written so strongly (and at such length!) about the issue. Perhaps I needed the essay-writing exercise. Perhaps I am simply perplexed as to why this is happening at church. Perhaps it piques my interest more than most peoples’ because I am both a Christian and a ‘Whovian’.
I’ll quote the first paragraph of Alex Stein’s article, to give you the idea:
In a move that smacks of desperation, Church of England vicars are being encouraged to use Doctor Who in order to reconnect Britain’s youth with Christianity. According to Andrew Wooding, a spokesman for Church Army, “There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain”. At a conference last week, vicars explored this new marketing strategy through sessions such as “Meaningful monsters: Daleks through the decades,” with Reverend Andrew Myers arguing that: “There are many themes relevant to spirituality, such as the Daleks as the supreme embodiment of moral evil.” Having saved the world countless times, now the last surviving Time Lord is being called in to save the church. (Alex Stein, 2008, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_stein/2008/05/the_doctor_goes_to_church.html)
This issue coincides with something I’m reading about at the moment – a chapter of A.W. Tozer’s God Tells The Man Who Cares. I don’t always believe in coincidences where these things are concerned.
I’m a big fan of Tozer. Every time I read him he revolutionises the way I see things, cuts away all the worldly grey-area and makes it all suddenly a whole lot clearer. It’s always deeply confronting. On this subject, I’ll quote him, here discussing something the church gets wrong:
“Christ now stands in need of a patron, a celebrity who will sponsor Him before the world. He looks weakly about for some well-known figure upon whose inside popularity He can ride forth as He once rode into Jerusalem on the back of an ass’s colt. His ability to draw men unto Him is frankly doubted, so He is provided with a gimmick to do the trick for Him. The cheap and tawdry glory which He once rejected [when Satan offered him the world] is placed around His head as a crown.” (Tozer, 1973, God Tells The Man Who Cares – “The Kingdoms of the World”, brackets added)
I’ll pause for a moment and look at the Guardian article itself. It is written by a non-Christian, a person with an evident anti-Christian and sensationalist journalism agenda. He, at first glance, seems to misunderstand the reason Doctor Who is being used. Peel away the writer’s construction on the news and you are left with three quotes from actual clergy involved.
One at a time, then: “There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain“. Now, if the advice given to clergy was simply to illustrate, not to evangelise, it could almost be sound advice. However, let us not forget that the Bible is not out of date. We are not called upon to update it. It is the living Word of God, and as such can speak for itself. It needs no further allegorical propping-up. Furthermore, as we will see below, God speaks to the inner humanity that we all share, not to the surface noise of individual culture and personal interests. He disdains the world and its trappings. This is taken from a chapter called “We Must Be Still To Know”. It’s quite a bit longer, I’m afraid, but it’s terribly good:
As we draw nearer to the ancient Source of our being, we find that we are no longer learned or ignorant, modern or old-fashioned, crude or cultured, white or black; in that awesome Presence we are just men. Artificial distinctions fade away. Thousands of years of education disappear in a moment and we stand again where Adam and Eve stood after the Fall, where Cain stood, and Abel, outside the Garden, frightened and undone and fugitive from the terror of the broken law.
There before the judgment seat which suddenly becomes as real to the trembling sinner as if it were the very last judgement itself, no modern religious techniques avail; none of the carefully thought-out methods work. The civilized man surrounded by his lately invented and noisy gadgets passes back in his heart through the centuries of “progress” and becomes again a terrified, whimpering human thing desperately in need of a Saviour.
Because this is true, any evangelism which by appeal to common interests and chatter about current events seeks to establish a common ground where the sinner can feel at home is as false as the altars of Baal ever were. Every effort to smooth out the road for men and to take away the guilt and the embarrassment is worse than wasted; it is evil and dangerous to the souls of men.
….
The answer is that the soul of a man does not change fundamentally, no matter how external conditions may change. The aborigine in his hut, the college professor in his study, the truck driver in the bedlam of city traffic have all the same basic need: to be rid of their sins, to obtain eternal life and to be brought into communion with God. Civilized noises and activities are surface phenomena, a temporary rash on the epidermis of the human race. To attribute sound values to them and then to try to bring religion into harmony with them is to commit a moral blunder so huge as to stagger the imagination, and one for which we shall surely be paying long after this frenetic extravaganza we call civilization has ended in tragedy and everlasting grief.
(A. W. Tozer, “God Tells the Man Who Cares” – “We Must Be Still To Know”)
Let’s look at the second and third quotes together. The first names a session at the conference called, “Meaningful monsters: Daleks through the decades.” I will answer this simply by offering my own, hypothetical, topic for discussion: “Meaningful Heroes: The Doctor’s scientific atheism through the decades.” It wouldn’t happen at a Christian convention, that’s for sure. The third quote reads thus: “There are many themes relevant to spirituality, such as the Daleks as the supreme embodiment of moral evil.” Have they noticed the postmodern, all-accepting morality of The Doctor? While I think it’s interesting and enjoyable – even gratifying – to see religious themes in things like Doctor Who and Harry Potter, merely the fact that they are written with obscure agendas by (arguable) non-Christians ought to make us step back and treat them carefully. Of course our pop culture and the stories we tell are going to reflect Christian themes – as pointed out in one of the comments to the second article. Our whole culture stems from a Christian tradition. If it stemmed from an Islamic tradition, there would be Islamic religious themes in it. I find myself worried to see Christians holding up a whole show as a Christian light because it has Christian themes, when it has no Christian intent, and therefore no ultimate Christian integrity. Can’t they see it’s dangerous?
While the article may be unhelpfully biased, it does bring to light and encourage another harmful side effect of this theological mistake. This is one of result. It is now the public’s perception that we are so desperate for converts we are grasping at the world for the church’s salvation, and giving up God for dead. Can’t we see that we lose face and credibility in the eyes of the world when we get hyperactive, trusting theology in the hands of someone (the writer) who views Christianity and religion as an interesting fiction? Or worse yet, can’t they see that by discrediting ourselves, we may discredit God in someone’s eyes? We are not of the world. Let’s not pretend we’re cool. God didn’t come to be cool. He can do His work without being socially acceptable. Ask Jesus – he died at the hands of a mob, as a criminal on the cross! Ask the people being tortured and blown up in other parts of the world, weathering the reality of what He promised His disciples.
So – how does this sit with the fact that I’m absolutely mad keen about Doctor Who?
Read Part Two!
Christian Whovian Identity
By Aimee Smith
All this got me thinking. Again. How do I, as a Christian, relate to Doctor Who? How do I relate to the religious themes in Doctor Who?
First, my credentials: I am a bona-fide nut-case for Doctor Who. I’m a geek. I care about what happens to the Doctor in a way that Buffy fans cared whether Buffy died or Firefly fans cared when the show was cancelled. If there were conventions near where I lived, I’d go and I’d pay. I was raised a Trekkie. I read and write fantasy. I watch fantasy and scifi. I go on You-Tube and watch the spoofs and the smeg-ups and the royal gala specials taped on handheld cameras, which can be seen as so geekily geek-fest that in circles like this I’d rather not admit to watching them. Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Takes on the Darleks? Bring it on. I actively campaign to get people watching Who. I claim two converts to Whovianism so far. I haven’t written fanfic, but I’ve thought about it.
Oh – You wanted my other credentials? I’m a Christian. A commitment-phobic, cynical, frequently disobedient, self-deceitful, hypocritical, baptized and believing, church-attending Rich Fool of a Christian. I read my Bible and pray every day. I’d rather edit appallingly written stories than write this paragraph. Converts to Christianity so far? God only knows – zero to my knowledge. But God’s working on it. Thankfully I don’t have to do all the work there.
So to me God is Truth and Doctor Who is my favourite fantasy world. Things I have realized:
• I care and think too much sometimes about The Doctor and What They Do To My Show.
• I was worried in season three that they were insinuating that The Doctor might have been Jesus. Think about it: Time Lord resurrection, his being out of space and time, his forgiving The Master at the end of season three, angels (such as might sing over Bethlehem) being so easily explained in season one as aliens emerging from another dimension, through a rift in the fabric of the universe. I was on the verge of being seriously offended.
• I was blissfully happy when, in the Christmas Special featuring Kylie and a Titanic, this proved not to be the case. He “took the last room”. Ergo, he is not a blasphemer. Hooray for Russel T. Davies avoiding that ugly fan reaction.
• Reading of plans to have Richard Dawkins on the show, I am depressed that they might be coming down off the fence, but on the other side again. You may call it unfair of me to say they shouldn’t come down on the other side of the fence if I’m fine with them being on my side. But I can’t help it. It saddens me, just like it did whenever Colin Baker (Lewis’ Puddleglum, to me) threw off a casual line explaining something by way of evolution, as if that was the only thing sensible and intelligent people believed in. Such arrogance!
I’ll be upset because I love the show for its many qualities. One of these qualities is the Christ-likeness of The Doctor’s character. He saves people. He lays down his life for them. He loves them. His heart breaks for them. He sees the whole of time and space, because he’s been there. He’s charismatic. Once you’ve met him you’ll never be the same. You want to love him. Just like Jesus.
That’s how the show, in the end, is just a show. I know that at one level, because it is not written by and for Christians, to be a true allegory of Christ, it is an allegory that will fail. In the end it will always alienate me. It may dabble with religion and the what-ifs. It may shake The Doctor up with a realization that he doesn’t know everything and that God might still be out there. But eventually it will fall back to The Doctor’s one, great, human, writer-origin flaw: his faith in science and reason, and his humanism.
So it’s complicated. But I’m not as confused about it as I used to be. The show’s in its place. It’s a dear place, but it’s not going to reach out and strangle my Christianity. If it tries, I’ll turn the television off. And I’ll try not to be surprised.
The End.
Congratulations on making it this far.
Questions? Comments?
