{"id":96,"date":"2012-07-02T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion\/"},"modified":"2012-07-02T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T21:43:00","slug":"true-blood-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"True Blood and Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire<\/i> \u2013 from \u201cTrue Blood\u201d\u2019s Vampire Bible<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

While most of my reading<\/a> is in the realms of religion, science and history, I still do some reading for pleasure. And when I do, my genre of choice is Urban Fantasy<\/a>, the blending of science fiction, fantasy and horror in a contemporary setting. There are a lot of good books in Urban Fantasy right now \u2013 and as with any genre, more than a few mediocre ones. My favorites are Laurell Hamilton\u2019s Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series, Kim Harrison\u2019s Rachel Morgan series, and Charlaine Harris\u2019 Sookie Stackhouse series. <\/p>\n

The Sookie Stackhouse books form the basis of HBO\u2019s \u201cTrue Blood\u201d series, now in its fifth season. The stories have long departed from the books \u2013 what we\u2019re seeing now is the creation of producer Alan Ball and the \u201cTrue Blood\u201d writers. And while there are multiple plot lines going, what\u2019s grabbed my interest this season is the storyline on vampire religion.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen religion in \u201cTrue Blood\u201d since Season One. The opening credits feature stock images of Southern religion, including an open water baptism, ecstatic scenes from a Pentecostal<\/a> church, and a sign proclaiming \u201cGod hates fangs.\u201d One of the early villains was Rev. Steve Newlin, a Joel Osteen clone whose Fellowship of the Sun was preparing to exterminate vampires. At the end of last season he was turned into a vampire, and now conveniently (and humorously) proclaims that God loves him just as he is. Vampirism has been a proxy for homosexuality, with many of the arguments for and against equal rights for vampires pulled straight out of the current debates on marriage equality. <\/p>\n

This season, though, we\u2019re starting to see the inner workings of the religion and government of the vampires themselves. In an interview with USA Today<\/i><\/a>, Alan Ball said \u201cSome of the things being said by some people during the Republican primary were so horrifying to me that I thought, \u2018What if vampires wanted a theocracy? What would that look like?\u2019 Whenever anybody thinks they know what God wants and wants to apply that to government, whether Americans or the Taliban, it\u2019s kind of a terrifying thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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So far we\u2019ve been told that the vampires have a bible, which is older than the Old Testament. It claims that God is a vampire and his first creation was Lilith, who became the mother of all vampires.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon, who 2500 years ago said that if horses had gods they would look like horses<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This vampire bible says that humans are no more than food for vampires and should be treated as such. The sanguinistas are the vampire fundamentalists \u2013 they read this literally and want to rule over humans through terror. The mainstreamers in the vampire government (the \u201cAuthority\u201d) reject this and want to peacefully coexist with humans. <\/p>\n

The mainstreamers should be the good guys, but they torture and kill their enemies just like the \u201cmonsters\u201d they oppose. The writers seem to be making the point that mixing religion with the pursuit of power inevitably perverts the religion and leads to abuses. And they\u2019re right, but they\u2019re presenting it rather clumsily. The Authority\u2019s blood communion ritual is lifted straight from Catholicism (right down to denying communion to a suspected infidel), and the sanguinista\u2019s prayer to Lilith is a rewriting of the Hail Mary. <\/p>\n

Charlaine Harris does a good job of integrating Southern Protestant Christianity into her books. Like Kelly Taylor pointed out in her comment on my last post<\/a>, religion in the South \u201csoaks into even the weathered boards of the buildings.\u201d It\u2019s there, even when it\u2019s not explicit. Sookie (who is the books\u2019 sole narrator) doesn\u2019t go around quoting scripture, but she prays occasionally (usually when she\u2019s in trouble), goes to church occasionally, and occasionally worries about the impact the deaths she\u2019s caused will have on the fate of her soul. She isn\u2019t an exemplary Southern Christian, but she is typical.<\/p>\n

The writers of \u201cTrue Blood\u201d lack Harris\u2019 understanding and finesse, as they demonstrated in the first season when they played Softly and Tenderly<\/i><\/a> at a funeral \u2013 Softly and Tenderly<\/i> is an altar call song, not a funeral song. They don\u2019t get Paganism either \u2013 last year a Wiccan character pronounced Samhain as \u201csam-a-hane.\u201d True believers \u2013 in anything \u2013 are either naive or extremists, while religion is simply irrelevant to everyone else.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still enjoying \u201cTrue Blood\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s the only dramatic series I watch regularly (or much at all). But their attempt at creating a storyline around vampire religion leaves a lot to be desired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Deadlocked<\/i>, the most recent novel, is on my Kindle<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire \u2013 from \u201cTrue Blood\u201d\u2019s Vampire Bible While most of my reading is in the realms of religion, science and history, I still do some reading for pleasure. And when I do, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTrue Blood and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire \u2013 from \u201cTrue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"True Blood and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire \u2013 from \u201cTrue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-07-02T21:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-Pd4Xvdjclu4\/T_JasDdNomI\/AAAAAAAABOI\/P0oaxUAvwSo\/s400\/True-Blood-Season-5-Trailer.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html\",\"name\":\"True Blood and Religion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-07-02T21:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-07-02T21:43:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\"},\"description\":\"And their flesh shall nourish yours, their blood shall flow within you, for as the beetle nourishes the lark so shall human nourish vampire \u2013 from \u201cTrue\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2012\/07\/true-blood-and-religion.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"True Blood and Religion\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"description\":\"Musings of a Druid, Pagan, and Unitarian Universalist.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Beckett\"},\"description\":\"I grew up in Tennessee with the woods right outside my back door. 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