{"id":9215,"date":"2012-09-03T18:34:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T22:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=9215"},"modified":"2012-09-03T18:34:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T22:34:20","slug":"a-whovian-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/09\/a-whovian-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"A Whovian Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I saw this on Facebook, and thought I\u2019d share it here, even though I don\u2019t really like it \u2013 for reasons I\u2019ll comment on below.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/09\/a-whovian-prayer.html\/whovian-prayer\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9216\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9216\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2012\/09\/Whovian-Prayer.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"371\" height=\"480\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why am I not delighted? It isn\u2019t because I object in principle to science fiction doing potentially irreverent things with religious material \u2013 after all, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/04\/why-is-there-only-one-set-of-footprints.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">I previously shared these<\/a>. It is the actual execution that I was disappointed with. For instance, if you are going to have fezzes and bow ties be forever, even though they are particularly (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/06\/doctor-who-silver-nemesis.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">but not exclusively<\/a>) associated with the Eleventh Doctor, then surely the prayer should end with \u201cGeronimo\u201d and not \u201cAllons-y.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But such complaints aside, it was clearly necessary to share it here, since it intersects two interests of mine, Christianity and Doctor Who, and thus relates directly to a major theme of this blog. And it ties in directly with some major themes at the intersection of Doctor Who and Christianity \u2013 from the facile treatments by Christians of the Doctor as a Christ-figure, to the show\u2019s posing of questions such as \u201cWhom do Time Lords pray to?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What do you think of this \u2013 and how could we make something better along the same lines?<\/p>\n<p>Of related interest, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/culture\/2012\/08\/sergeant-pepper-pots\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">\u201cSargeant Pepper Pots\u201d in\u00a0<em>The New Statesman<\/em><\/a> on the cultural significance of the Daleks, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/comment-analysis\/2012\/08\/31\/the-politics-of-doctor-who\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Matt Ashton\u2019s online article on the politics of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I saw this on Facebook, and thought I\u2019d share it here, even though I don\u2019t really like it \u2013 for reasons I\u2019ll comment on below. Why am I not delighted? It isn\u2019t because I object in principle to science fiction doing potentially irreverent things with religious material \u2013 after all, I previously shared these. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,133],"tags":[1337,1829,1846,2764,2765,2838,3405,6708,8547,9411,10169,12632],"class_list":["post-9215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-doctor-who-science-fiction","tag-bow-ties","tag-christ-figure","tag-christianity-religion","tag-doctor","tag-doctor-who","tag-dr-who","tag-fez","tag-lords-prayer","tag-our-father","tag-prayer","tag-religion","tag-time-lords"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Whovian Prayer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I saw this on Facebook, and thought I&#039;d share it here, even though I don&#039;t really like it - for reasons I&#039;ll comment on below. Why am I not delighted? It\" \/>\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\/religionprof\/2012\/09\/a-whovian-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Whovian Prayer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this on Facebook, and thought I&#039;d share it here, even though I don&#039;t really like it - for reasons I&#039;ll comment on below. Why am I not delighted? It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/09\/a-whovian-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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