Bible Studies with Buffy

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Courier Journal, June 21, 2004, with the headline: “The Gospel of Buffy—Two academic women were laughing over the absurdity of writing a book about the spirituality of the teen TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer in May 2002. But by fall of that year, Jana Riess, Religion Book Review editor at Publisher’s Weekly was writing a book proposal.

“When the popular show first came out, Riess was anything but interested. Then a year later, while suffering from morning sickness, she was flipping channels and by fluke ended up watching the show about a teenage girl, Buffy, who slays vampires. Riess has been hooked ever since. And What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, by Jossey-Bass $14.95, is the result.

“Riess feels there are many things people can learn from television’s beautiful vanquisher of vampires. Each of the eleven chapters in her book outlines a different theme such as self-sacrifice, which appears in the first chapter, “Be a Hero, Even When You’d Rather Go to the Mall.” Riess illustrates how Buffy and her friends and enemies in the fictional town of Sunnydale, teach us about forgiveness, redemption, consequences, and the role of humor.

“For those who missed the show, which has become something of a cult classic, Kerry Ose who helped Riess come up with the original idea for the book has written character and season guides that appear in the back of the book. It is here that characters such as Anya, a 1,120 year old vengeance demon and Adam, a hybrid of demon, human, and robot parts are outlined.

“But the book isn’t just about the supernatural. In every chapter, squeezed between the recounting of vampires rampaging in churches, slayers killing demons, and invisible teenagers wreaking havoc, are quotes from Confucius, Martin Luther, and Mark Twain. Riess finds many religious symbols and meaning in the show. In the book’s introduction, she explains there are 144 episodes, the biblical number of fullness and completeness.

“Later, she outlines how Buffy, Zander, and Angel are bodhisattvas, beings who according to Buddhist teaching are more concerned with others’ welfare than their own.

“Last month there was even a scholarly meeting conference in Nashville devoted solely to Buffy. The organizer, David Lavery, an English professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said Buffy is part of the curriculum in Australian secondary schools. This summer he devoted an entire course to her. Buffy deals constantly with issues of morality, choice and religion. And she does it in a way that is a lot more accessible to a college student than the plays of Ben Johnson.”

Tom:  Dave, this is exciting. See Buffy is developing, or the program and so on, developing other people of faith. So what could be wrong with that? 

Dave:  Well, Tom, I’ve never heard of Buffy or of this—

Tom:  You lead a very sheltered life.

Dave:  I do live a very sheltered life. My wife won’t let me watch TV.

Tom:  Except Wimbledon, Dave.

Dave:  Wimbledon. Well, yeah, but she doesn’t even like me to take a peek at that. And I don’t sit there and watch it. I kind of run down and see who’s winning.

Tom:  But you haven’t missed anything with missing Buffy here. But on the other hand, this is a point of faith. This is, as we talked about academia. Academia is drawn to this. We now have this Buffy the Vampire Slayer 101.

Dave:  But, Tom, you see how out of touch I am. If I were not a Christian—let’s say I just want to write a book that would sell well, I would never come up with something like this. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who’s going to be interested in that? And then, Tom, when they come out with something like that and you find that it really intrigues people, it’s shocking. Do I dare to say, Tom, my grandson just forced me to watch Lord of the Rings or something like that.

Tom:  Oh, Dave, now you’re moving onto dangerous territory.

Dave:  Yeah, and I couldn’t get interested in it. I thought it was ridiculous! You know who the good guys are, the bad guys are. You know who’s going to win.

Tom:  Dave, this is supposed to be a Christian classic. Now what’s wrong here?

Dave:  It is not a Christian film. It’s all about magic and so forth. But anyway, Tom, walking trees, and it’s just so far out that I couldn’t take it seriously. I couldn’t get interested, I couldn’t get excited—I’m not intrigued at all.

Tom:  But, Dave, that’s an interesting point. Whether it be Lord of the Rings, whatever fiction, we are turning whatever it is into some religious icon; some teacher wherever we go. We’ve talked in the past about the Beverly Hillbillies Bible Study. Now, Dave, we’re finding faith in religion in everything. Even Buffy here. Isn’t that good?

Dave:  And they were preaching the gospel from Star Wars way back, if you remember. The force was God. No, God is not a force. He cannot be symbolized by a force.

So Tom, it’s like what we’ve talked about a number of times—the so-called paraphrases, whether it’s The Message by Eugene Peterson, whoever it is, or films trying to dramatize the Bible. We are, step by step, getting away from the Bible. We are getting away from the written Word of God. The truth. “Thy word is truth.” And we’re coming up with all kinds of other things, and I kind of question whether this author of this even had in mind—I’m talking about the television show now—ever hand in mind that she was going to be presenting anything that was biblical.

Tom:  No, Dave, they were complete atheists. But why would that stop anybody? Again, we’ve moved into the realm of subjectivity, feelings, emotions, whatever turns you on, whatever makes you feel good, whatever seems to apply. I mean isn’t this what Carl Jung was all about? These are archetypal images of….

Dave:  Well, Tom, I guess it goes back to where we began this program. There is a Creator. We are nonphysical beings. And when the body dies, we step out into eternity. The person who made the decisions, who made the choices, is accountable to God, and that will determine your eternal destiny. Now, we can’t guess. We can’t play fictional games. We can’t be symbolizing and hoping and dreaming. We’ve got to get down to the facts. And there are facts. Some people think there aren’t any facts in faith. You just take a leap, and you just decide to believe something, and so long as you really believe it you’re okay. Obviously, that won’t work.

Tom:  Dave, God has revealed Himself. So you’re either going to go to His revelation or whatever we make up, and the sad thing is, even within Christianity today, many circles, professing Christendom, people are making it up as they go along.

Dave:  I’ll go back to what I said earlier, Tom. You don’t make it up when it comes to mathematics or physics or chemistry or getting to the moon. Then why would you think you could make it up when it comes to getting to heaven?