3 Reasons the Church should understand the Zombie Apocalypse

In anticipation of last nights premiere of AMC's "The Walking Dead" I tweeted about zombies most of the weekend.  I thought that this might turn off some of my more theological subscribers that felt my fascination wasn't serious enough, but my excitement overran any worries (it was worse at my other twitter handle @chaddbrooks, because I was involved in several conversations about the McRib being back).  I have a two fold approach to the way I handle eschatology, and one of them is involving myself playfully.  A big part of this is my interest in popular culture and the way that they view any sort of apocalyptic situation.

What I want to do today is offer 3 reasons the church should understand the entire genre of the zombie apocalypse.

1.  The Zombie Movie as Social Criticism:
This is one of the lesser known themes behind many entries into the zombie corpus, but is the guiding principle of the modern zombie.  George Romero (the director of Night of the Living Dead and the zombie Grandfather) generally started the idea of zombie stories/movies being a form of social critique.

What directors and writers in this genre have done is to take multiple angles in story telling to point out flaws and injustices in our society.  At other times, they use the response of the survivors to point towards the depths of human animistic action.  Night of the Living Dead explores both power relations as well as the tumultuous events of the late 1960's. Other zombie films critically present the idea that as humans we have dehumanized ourselves through an aggressive pattern of capitalism.  Finally, last years Zombieland explored narcissism and the need for community from the perspective of a ragtag group of survivors on a quest to visit a theme park in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.

As Christians, zombie movies provide an interesting glimpse into the way that secular culture views itself prophetically.

2. Zombies provide a hermeneutic for understanding culture:
A good friend at my church has an interesting way of looking at Christian life currently as residing inside the zombie apocalypse.  This provides a framework of understanding the Christan life as a pilgrim people, living in a foreign world.  My Pastor ran with this theme in a blog post this weekend about Leadership in the Zombie Apocalypse.

I wrote a sermon a few years ago about the Sacraments and Zombies; how the idea of being undead provides a way for us to encourage devotion and formation towards God. If anything, the idea that popular culture is fascinated with Zombies, the situation (due to their nature as social critique) allows us to engage inside of it and at the same level. 

This isn't taking advantage and hijacking something for the kitsch factor (like a Lord of the Rings bible study), but realizing that the zombie apocalypse is a figurative playground in which we can call things out, provide contrast and deal with subliminal issues.

3. Zombies as punishment:
In last nights "The Walking Dead" premiere, there was a scene where the main character looked inside an abandoned house and found two corpses that appeared to be an assisted and an unassisted suicide.  On the wall, scrawled in blood, was the phrase "God Save Us'.  In many zombie movies and stories, there is the idea that the disease/virus is the result of divine judgement and the survivors either recognizing or at least mentioning it.  Inside of this judgement, man is allowed to completely consume himself. It is as though God as stepped away, pulled the incarnation out of the world and taken away prevenient grace.

The desires of materialism, lust, power, food, and many other things are what disintegrate society and turn us into consumptive monsters that have reached the ultimate of sins. In our final grasp, we begin to literally feed on each other, and the remaining few metaphorically understand the ills of society and run from being consumed by them.

This gives the Church a dramatic look into how society is satirically looking at what it believes deep down.  I think that the popularity of these films is Western Culture's hidden admission of these sins.  Christian leaders should be realizing what and how popular culture is analyzing open and willing sins, and the genre of Zombie films provide this confession.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be

Comments

[JD Swartz]

I have yet to read this entry, and before I do I wanted to say - just because you wrote this and posted it, I love you.

[BamaHank]

Very thoughtful insights man. I think you hit some very key factors here. Why people make Zombie films (reason 1), why we are obsessed with them (2), and how they speak to how we view God (3). I had discussed each of these (more often than not with you) but never put them together. Great post!

[julie]

This post is why I love watching and reading almost any Zombie material I can get my hands on.

Another metaphor I love about Zombies is that they walk, seemingly "alive," but not ALIVE. I consider this an interesting thing because so many of us are "alive," but so dead spiritually. I sometimes wonder if pop culture has unwittingly clued in to this truth.

[JohnWMorehead]

You are surely on to something here. I would add that the church needs to consider the zombie as critique of Christian resurrection and Eucharist, and yet also reflective of a "signal of transcendence," a lingering desire for the survival of bodily death and resurrection however implausible this may seem in postmodernity. So here we have a nihilistic eschatology of the survival of the person and the flesh. I have touched on this in various ways at www.theofantastique.com and will be writing on it in connection with Zombie Jesus and the zombie walks for the forthcoming book The Undead and Theology through Wipf & Stock.