Star Trek Religion

I notice that today is William Shatner’s birthday. While I missed the first season of Star Trek, the show he is most closely associated with, I followed the subsequent two seasons, joining the rather long list of fans for what would become quite a franchise. I must admit I also am among those who lost interest well before the franchise played itself out. Or, seems to have played out, a quick look at a couple of website shows there continues to be hope for revivals of one sort or another…

My thoughts here tend to religion and thinking of Star Trek is no exception.

I’ve always thought kindly of the gentle religion that seems implied in the various episodes of the various series. Although one web site I found suggests there isn’t really much about religion in Star Trek, and certainly not in the shows that Gene Roddenberry had anything to do with, and goes about systematically supporting that thesis. But this assumption Roddenberry is a relentless anti-religious secularist is challenged by others.

There is a persisting, although I have to note unsubstantiated assertion he was a Unitarian Universalist. What he seemed to me to most clearly be was a humanist of the mid-twentieth century stripe. To my mind this is one of the noble religious perspectives, and one which has indeed marked Unitarian Universalism. And there should be further nuancing of his position, it seems. For instane, among the websites I’ve visited while thinking about Star Trek and religion was a site that claims Roddenberry as a pantheist, a religious sensibility with which I am in close harmony, and which makes to my mind a compelling argument.

This acknowledged, I believe bottom line, Roddenberry, and therefore Star Trek was ultimately inspired by a humanist spirituality. And I feel while it is a dynamic stance, hard to describe with any sense of finality, the rational spirituality that is humanism is one of the great spiritual impulses, worthily expressed in this seminal television and later movie franchise. And for that small bit of spiritual humanist evangelism, I’m grateful. The world has to be better for it…

For those interested in perusing this further Dave Silla wrote a very interesting overview of religion in Science Fiction in general that situates what probably are the core humanistic theological assertions implicit in Star Trek.