Friday, March 16, 2012

why christianity would survive the zombie pandemic


The Judeo-Christian worldview--when looked at not as a religion so much as a way of seeing and being in-the-world--would, I think, survive a worldwide zombie pandemic*. Every worldview has its spot of weakness, and Christianity's--with its declaration in a loving and personal God involved in the world--is the persistent fact of suffering in our world. Of course, Christianity is over 2000 years old, and has devoted significant time and effort into plugging the hole of this weakness. In a sense, Christianity has been prepared, by virtue of this weakness and the devotion of its adherents to make sense of it, to survive a zombie pandemic: the zombie phenomenon would be interpreted, I think, not in supernatural but in naturalistic terms, and thus dealing with it would be akin to dealing with some sort of virulent plague. Think back to the Black Plague, which wiped out over 1/3 of Europe. Did Christianity crumble under the plague? No, it survived, albeit in a different form (it was at this juncture that individualism began to color our understanding of the texts; with one out of every three people gone, the remaining individuals became extremely important for trade, business, economics, and religion; thus emphasis came to be placed on the surviving individuals than the swathes of victims stretching throughout entire communities, cities, and societies). 

The Christianity we'd see after a zombie pandemic would certainly be different than the evangelical Christianity we're used to now, a Christianity resplendent with feel-gooderies and lots of ethereal, pie-in-the-sky talk about God having some plan for your life. When Christians become zombies and start tearing the limbs off their frantic and screaming children, some of these more foolish doctrines would, I think, be discarded under the weight of reason. Christianity could evolve in many different ways under such a global crisis: it could become more naturalistic or more spiritual, depending on the tastes of the interpreters; it could easily become marked by cults as organized religion is replaced by communities of survivors trying to make sense of their new world. Because most people, even Christians, have little to no knowledge regarding how to actually interpret the scriptures as a coherent whole, these new off-shoots of Christianity would be markedly different in ways we cannot even imagine, as groups of survivors are left to their own whims, fancies, fears and hopes in sketching out a new way of believing and being in the world. Fundamentally-speaking, I think religion would become more communal rather than individualistic in nature; although the Black Plague spawned individualism, a dog-eat-dog world where the sick become pathological trajectories, and where the survivors can't simply "flee to the hills" but must band together to survive, would probably breed more communal than individualistic temperaments. Christian ethics, too, would change: ethics would become more situational than absolutist, and self-preservation would be more important than evangelism. We'd have to deal with the question, "What makes a human being a person?" since most of the world's human beings have become something straight out of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend: the answer, I think, would probably be more along the lines of "consciousness" rather than "morality," since morals themselves would be in a constant state of flux.

All of this, of course, is speculation; and it's speculation founded on the assumption that people wouldn't toss religion out the window when the dead begin to rise. Historically, religion is embraced in times of crisis because it offers both consolation and answers. Religion gives consolation in the afterlife, and it encourages and sustains the sufferer in the present, even if it's not wholly believed. Religions would seek to provide answer to the crisis. Thus Christianity, I think, would see a swell of church attendance as knowledge of the zombies came to be public knowledge; but the Christianity embraced amidst the crisis would be, in many aspects, unrecognizable to us today just as Christianity today would be, in many aspects, unrecognizable to those a couple hundred years ago. The diversification of Christianity would, in a large part, hinge on how the zombies were perceived: "Is this a natural, physiological phenomenon or is it supernatural, something totally out of the realm of the world of physicality and cause-&-effect?" Speculating on what Christianity would look like 5, 10, or 15 years after a zombie pandemic is fun, but in the end, it's just something we (may) have to just "wait and see": nothing like a zombie pandemic has ever transpired, and thus historically we have nothing comparable not only to the physiological effects of the pandemic but also to the psychological, cultural, philosophical, and theological reworking demanded in light of the walking dead. 


*I've purposefully chosen to title this little Sunday morning excursus as such because the speculation works only in the context of a pandemic (a global outbreak) rather than in an apocalypse (basically, the end of the world). I'm of the camp that believes a zombie outbreak would probably never reach pandemic or even apocalyptic proportions; but a pandemic, eventually contained, is far more plausible than a zombie apocalypse, so we're running with it.

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