"Everyone" is in church

After the lecture about television and Christianity, a lot of television shows come up in my mind, a lot of details I never thought about before pops up. Shows in North America have always have Christian involvement, include the background of stories, Christian disciplines, stories from bible, Christian elements as well as Christian figures.

But the representation of Christianity becomes really complicated now; humanity and religion are intertwining together. The television show “the walking dead” is a kind of disaster horror show, talking about doomsday, and how a small group of survivors living in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, and during their way searching a haven, they struggle to balance their humanity with their survival.

Doomsday always makes people link it with the punishment from God, in this show, it’s not explicit until second season, and it’s also more complicated than just punishment. In the first episode, when the group is searching for the lost girl Sophia, a sound of ringing bell lead them to a church, the church is a symbolic place encapsulates almost everything. The mother who lost her girl is praying and confesses her sin as devote Christian, the protagonist Rick who claimed non-Christian is praying in his way as well, even the zombie sit quietly gazing on and maybe “praying” to the Crucifixion, and the Jesus is “bleeding” on the Cross. All these explicit Christian contents constructed the complexity of Christianity in this show, and also reveal the nature of the religion. “Everyone” is in church, Christians, non-Christians, and even zombies.

When there is no society, there is still faith, when there is no society, the vigilante becomes more like a savior, in the broadcasting television nowadays, people consider more than just faith or just humanity, but also the interaction between them. This change causes the change in representation of Christianity in popular culture like broadcasting television nowadays.