Supernatural and Spirituality pt 4
One of the things I like about Supernatural is their in addition to the DtWoF Test, and the Frank Miller Test and whatever the one about race is called, I have my own private evaluations of how religion is treated in books, tv and movies. And it tends to weigh a lot to me, a story that handles religion well just might get fewer complaints about other flaws and I'd rather see no mention of religion at all then have it handled badly ( I don't want to give the impression I look for religious themes in order to give myself a reason to watch things). The criteria goes something like this;

Does not have to include religious people, but if it does, it must not treat them as freakish anomalies.
Religious people featured must not be portrayed only as scary, mentally ill, deluded, too nice to be real, fundamentalist or stupid.
Must contain at least one reasonable, educated, thinking, questioning person who is also a believer and does not lose their faith

It could use some polishing, ideally it should be one simple to remember sentence, but you get the idea.

On SPN, they take faith seriously. It’s not a “religious” show, not by a long shot. I certainly am not sure if, or what kind of, religious people are involved at all but I do know what I see on screen. And what I see is most religious characters handled sensitively, with a willingness from the writers to see more than one side of the issue. Most Christian characters are portrayed as well intentioned, helpful people who usually make the right choice in the end. There are only two human Christians who have appeared on the show who were actually villains- Kubrick the borderline psychotic hunter, and Roy LeGrange’s wife, who used black magic to cut down those she saw as “immoral”. In the case of Kubrick, he may have been psychotic but killing demons *was* his job and he was very sincere in believing that Sam Winchester’s demon powers placed him in the “Must Die” category. To be fair to Kurbick, Sam does have demon powers and he is a danger to himself and others, we only see Kubrick as wrong because we know Sam and he doesn't. Also, to his sort of credit, he wasn't willing to let vampire!Gordon walk out that door alive even if it would've meant the death of Sam Winchester.

Sue Ellen Le Grange was awful, pure and simple, but two awful Christians isn’t so bad when the show is actually giving us plenty of non awful Christians on a regular basis. Which has always been the problem on tv, if a show only contains one, or only ever had one, religious Christian character, that person is almost always a less than stellar example of Christianity*. Or, they are used to exemplify their very strangeness in connection with the other characters , this person is a devout Christian in addition to all the other ways they don’t fit in with the group. On BtVS, the fact that Riley Finn was a regular church goer was used as yet another example of the ways he and Buffy were incompatible.

SPN not only acknowledges that religion is at least in a casual sense, part of the lives of the majority of Americans but it takes their questions and concerns about God seriously. SPN says “these questions are not silly or irrelevant.”

It also pulled off a little surprise in playing against cliché to make Dean, the uneducated, working class hick with somewhat old fashioned ideas into the emphatic non believer, while Sam, the genius former Ivy Leaguer with the modern views and love of questioning and free thought is the one who is, if not traditionally devout, someone who prays every day, believes in angels and is devastated to near tears at the suspicion that there might be no God. Dean didn't believe, but he had his reasons, instead of the show just assuming that non belief is the default for all sensible independent adults (unless you're Ethnic, because you know how Ethnic people are).

And the show does not force you to side with either one of them-just as Sam is getting ready to give up on angels, Dean witnesses something that might’ve been angelic intervention. Angels raise Dean from Hell, but it turns out angels can be dicks, but then there are two angels that really aren’t, Zachariah says God has left the building but the phrase “left the building” implies that he once resided in the building and anyway, Zachariah has been established as an extremely unreliable narrator by then. Many fans have speculated that God is still around and desperately trying to get through to his soldiers on the ground in spite of Zachariah's interference, even wondering if a previously seen character may or may not have actually *been* God.

Incidentally, angels Castiel and Anna are both occupying the "vessels" of mortals who were, in fact, extremely devout Christians (Anna's in the body she was born in). The fact that they were believers seems to count for them and not against them in Show canon. If Jimmy Novak had not been a Christian who prayed for a chance to be used by God***, Castiel would never have come to him.

Jimmy and his family learn a traumatic lesson about just how literal minded angels are, but it's a harsh, yet realistic, portrayal of what it really means to serve God. This is not anti Christian at all, quite the opposite.

Some of the plot twists would be seen as blasphemous by a very traditional type of Christian- including the part where Dean has sex with an angel in the back of a 67 Impala, but it all depends on your attitude. I think it’s awesome, on the other hand, more traditional Christians don’t judge popular culture based on what I think is awesome- I am not to be trusted, after all, considering. Right up my religious alley is “right up you’re going to Hell and by the way, I’m writing angry letters as we speak” alley for my parents and anyone to the right of them.

It's not like Sam and Dean are all that into organized religion, they are willing to use anything from anywhere to accomplish their goals but the show is very clear that canon's ideas of good and evil are fairly Christian traditional. There's no vague referring to TPTB here. We don't see any religious people who are members of organzied religions other than Christianity- and some pagans have even been offended by the show's attitude toward witches and pagan gods.

But I like the idea of Christianity coming into this at all. This isn’t like Buffy, where they constantly sidestepped the issue to ridiculous lengths except when doing things that sounded suspiciously like advancing Joss Whedon’s emphatic non belief, or AtS, where they actually dealt with Angel’s former Catholicism but only when it came to the heavy handed, negative, guilt and Hell stuff.

I also like that I've seen a lot less of the awful wank over religious issues that I keep running into in the Narnia fandom. In the Narnia fandom, despite the fact that C.S Lewis is one of the most famous and popular explicitly Christian authors of the twentieth century, I still keep running into Narnia fans who didn't know this, or are in denial or downright hostile about it. There are some SPN fans who have complained that they want the show they thought they were watching back (two brothers on a road trip to investigate urban legends) but most people seem to have just enthusiastically gone with it. Nobody is under the impression that acknowleging you're working with Christian themes means you have to agree with them, or believe in them, or that not agreeing with/believing in them means you're free not to do the research or insist that the canon answers to your questions don't count cause you're not a Christian.

People heard we were getting some angel characters, and excitedly began researching angels, and starting communities to talk about it, and correcting people who got stuff wrong. Maybe it has to do with not knowing the religion of the show's writers and producers? It comes off as much more unbiased-if people knew for sure what Kripke's beliefs were, they might be less inclined to embrace these ideas?

notes
*on typical portrayals of Christians: "Bones" did a great reversal of this, in the first season Christmas episode, the characters are all quarantined in the lab and get to talking. Bones makes a scoffing remark about religion and is confronted with the fact that, contrary to what she'd expected, she's the only person in the room who doesn't have some kind of religious faith.

***Yeah- Dean's current two love interests are angels using Christian vessels. Which has me picturing Anna and Castiel enjoying the music of Air One in the Impala.

Dean: I want some NORMAL music. Sam, you hate this stuff too, right?
Sam: (awkwardly) Well, I kinda like Lifehouse, and The Fray.
Dean: (gives Sam the same look my sister gave me when I admitted to liking the occasional Lifehouse song).

There WAS a Dean/Castiel vid to this Flyleaf song though. I think this one works so much better. IMO (maybe it WAS that one instead of "Fully Alive, I can't remember and I do't have the link).

I'm voting for this one as either a Castiel solo thing or a C/Dean (there is another song by the same artist that is PERFECT but it doesn't seem to be available online yet). But aside from "Those Nights" by Skillet, I think we're about done with this genre of music for that show.