Science fiction and religion are two seemingly incongruent concepts that more often than not find themselves deeply intertwined. Religious studies scholar Kimberly Rae Connor provides insight into this connection, writing in “The Speed of Belief: Religion and Science Fiction, an Introduction to the Implicit Religions of Science Fiction,” “[The] impulse behind both religion and speculative literature is the same. Each offers a conception of reality that inclines toward different explanations not just of human behavior but of divine (supernatural) behavior, and each suggests differing ideas about how to respond.” Given this relationship, science fiction, specifically television, is the ideal lens through which to examine societal perceptions of different religions. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction is best suited to consider these perceptions as they depict the collapse of technological civilization and forces characters to reconsider their values, social mores, and perspective on life. Religion can either factor into this explicitly (such as through the establishment of a theocracy as in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale) or implicitly.
This paper focuses on the latter, specifically the manner in which the prioritization of religion can reinforce the supremacy of religious beliefs and morals in society while also characterizing the morals and beliefs of other religions as inferior. By using religious spaces, imagery, and allusions to strategically center a particular religion, almost always Christianity, television subtly suggests the religion in question is morally and theologically superior not only in the context of the show, but also in reality. In analyzing Netflix’s The Society and AMC’s The Walking Dead, I will demonstrate how Christianity is implicitly marked as superior. From there, I will consider the implications of this to better understand the role depictions of religion in science fiction play in constructing social attitudes towards religions other than Christianity.
About the presenterJordan Marie Meyerl
Jordan Meyerl works as a Senior Archives Cataloguer with Historic New England. She graduated from Arcadia University with a B.A. in English Literature in 2018 and received her M.A. in History on the Archives track from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2020. Her research interests are varied, ranging from queer theory in popular culture to concerns of privacy when digitizing archival materials of marginalized communities.