By John W. Morehead

I have roots in the conservative Evangelical Christian tradition, even though I see myself staking out more of a centrist position. When evangelicals “do theology,” whether biblical, systematic, or whatever form it takes, rarely is there an effort to wrestle with the darker aspects of the Hebrew and Christian Bible. For example, instead of ethical questions arising about the story of Noah’s ark and the extermination of the bulk of humanity by drowning, it is reduced to a Sunday school type of story that can be told to children using books and felt boards. Or with the Conquest narratives and Joshua’s alleged destruction of Canaanites, discomfort with divinely commanded genocide gives way to a hermeneutic and interpretation of an evil people given over to the most extreme sins who are worthy of being wiped out.

Previously, I have referred to this tendency in conservative Evangelicalism, and other conservative Protestant groups, as a form of sanitization of the biblical text. In interpreting the text in more positive ways, and creating theologies that understand the Bible, God, and the Christian tradition in the most favorable light, the darker aspects of the tradition, and the human imagination behind it, are more easily ignored. But as I see it, we are missing a real opportunity to deal with the horrific aspects that can be found not only in Christianity, but in all the so-called Abrahamic religions, and other religious traditions as well. Religion binds people together, often to do great things, but it can also be a force for horrific violence as well. Religious adherents often draw upon the “no true Scotsman fallacy” (e.g., “no real Christian would engage in that violence”), but it doesn’t fairly represent the deep commitment of those religious actors who do terrible things. Commenting on this after 9/11 Rabbi Brad Herschfield said:

Religion drove those planes into those buildings. And that’s upsetting, but that’s what happened. And this idea that somehow that’s not Islam, so we shouldn’t worry, is- it’s not only naive, it’s stupid! It’s wrong. There’s a very rich tradition which they, you know, delved into to justify what they did.

By the way, hating doing it and fighting against it ever happening again is also Islam, just like within Jewish tradition. The guy who went into the mosque in the city of Hebron and murdered 29 human beings didn’t do that out of the air. He had a deep connection to a tradition, a religious tradition in Judaism that pushed him there. Keeping him from doing it is also a serious religious tradition.

You don’t sterilize these traditions and say, “No, no. They don’t do anything wrong” because what’s really going on when we do that is that we don’t want- if Islam is clean and that’s not real Islam, then I don’t have to ask where is it real Jewish. And Christians don’t have to ask where is it real Christian. And the worst thing we can do is make some kind of compact where none of us admit the blood on our hands. What we really have to do is admit the blood on all of our hands, not because it’s equal blood, but because we’ve all been bloodied by these traditions. (Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, FRONTLINE documentary)

Unfortunately, we don’t have to look as far back as September 11, 2001, for an example of the scary side of the religious imagination. At the time of writing, the nation of Israel and Hamas are fighting one another yet again in Gaza, this time while exchanging some of the most extreme brutality and war crimes ever seen in their decades-long enmity. Several elements are included in this complex conflict, including the bone-chilling side of religion.

The horrific element of religion provides us with an opportunity shine a light on it if we dare. One way this can be done in a less threatening manner, one that avoids a direct examination of our sacred texts and theology, is to look at how this is expressed in popular culture, how horror and religion intersect in the various forms of entertainment we consume. This was the intent behind the volume I co-edited with Brandon R. Grafius, Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination. As we note in the Introduction, “Horror attempts to wrestle with the same questions that animate religious thought – questions about the nature of the divine, humanity’s place in the universe, the distribution of justice, and what it means to live a good life, among many others. For decades, horror has been ‘doing’ theology, even if it proceeds in a very different manner from the academic disciple of theology” (p. x-xi). By drawing upon horror and monster theory, contributors were able to look at a few ways in which the terrifying aspects of religion are on display. By reflecting on theology and horror in popular culture we are then able to take what we learn and look more critically on the religious traditions from which entertainment draws.

While Theology and Horror doesn’t directly address religious horrors like 9/11 or the conflict in Gaza, its basic thesis that religion and horror share much in common, and that we can learn uncomfortable truths about religion through reflection on horror, provide us with a perspective and tools that we can use to not only be more appreciative of entertainment in popular culture, but also how the dark religious imagination works itself out in some of our greatest national and international challenges.

John W. Morehead is an independent scholar who specializes in new religious movements, religion and popular culture, and interreligious conflict.