Buffy the Vampire Slayer slaying church attendance among women, study claims [Ecumenical]

Telegraph ^ | August 23, 2008 | Martin Beckford

[cammie]

Sorry, but Nothing Sacred was GREAT television that wasn’t given a chance due to everyone running scared from the Catholic League.

[Poe White Trash]

>>> Buffy almost always wore what religious symbol around her neck? <<<

Well, she wore a cross (and not a crucifix — do you think Whedon was promoting Protestantism over Catholicism?). When I lived in Taiwan, I met several young ladies, none Christian, who wore a cross around their necks. They thought it looked “cool.” Religious symbols, like other sorts of symbols, can be decontextualized or have their significance radically changed, don’tcha know.

>>> When Buffy died where did she go...until she was brought back? <<<

I’d lost track of the series by then, but I heard she was brought back (neat trick, that; do tell, how does that fit in with orthodox Christian theology?) from some generic heaven. You do know that many religious traditions, both East and West, have a belief in a heaven or heavens?

>>> A Vampire recoils when confronted with what religious symbol? <<<

In the series, the vampire would recoil from a cross. However, in the series the vampires were affected by dozens of different “objects” that were clearly magic (in a mumbo-jumbo kinda way) and non-Christian. What does it say about the respect one is showing a religious symbol when it is shorn of its theological context, thrown in with a bunch of made-up magical devices, and essentially used as a stage prop?

>>> The evil that Buffy confronted in the form of a nexus of evil under her city was a portal to where? <<<

It was called a “hell-mouth,” I seem to remember. A lot of religious traditions refer not just to a hell or hells (Buddhism, Taoism, Greek and Roman “paganism,” etc.), but the Greek and Roman religious traditions specifically refer to earthly entrances to Hell. What’s your point? To refer to a hell or entrance to that hell doesn’t amount to a Christian world-view.

I’d say Whedon is a master of pastiche and he uses whatever “works” for his creative vision. I imagine that the cross and other elements were used because they are part of the common tropes and symbols of Western vampire and supernatural literature.

That some of these symbols are Christian hardly seems evidence of promoting Christianity given that they have been thoroughly decontextualized and recontextualized as little more than magical stage props or stage settings in the Buffyverse.