By John W. Morehead
I still remember the day in the 1970s when as a kid my dad approached my brother and I and gave us the choice between our regular habit of watching something more family oriented, or The Creature from the Black Lagoon. We chose the latter, probably because it was something new and mysterious as our first horror film. My reaction was one of fear and fascination, and it birthed in me a lifelong love of horror and other expressions of the fantastic in science fiction and fantasy. As a scholar and practitioner working in the fields of cultural and religious studies for many years, I wondered for a long time whether such seemingly diverse interests could be reconciled. I eventually discovered that my interests in interreligious conflict and the monstrous in popular culture shared something in common, rooted in an area of academic study called monster theory.
Monster theory, as explored in seminal texts like Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory: Reading Culture describe monsters as tools with which to understand aspects of culture. As Cohen frames it, monsters are “a metaphor for the cultural body” where the “beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends [serve as] expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior.” Understood in this way, it should come as no surprise that monsters are not only found in horror films and other forms of entertainment, but also in other aspects of culture such as the world’s religions. Indeed, as Timothy Beal has argued in Religion and Its Monsters, religion and monsters are deeply intertwined, and the Christian tradition is no exception.
I was constantly reminded of this during the five-year process of co-editing the new book The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters. In this volume, over two dozen scholars contribute chapters that look at the monsters that are found in the biblical text and bring monster theory into conversation with biblical studies. Along the way they tease out what they meant to the original audiences who encountered them, and what they might mean for us today, not only in understanding the Bible, but also as they continue to be expressed in contemporary popular culture.
I have found that monsters are not only helpful in biblical and popular culture studies, but also in my work in interreligious conflict. If monsters are metaphors for cultural unease, we should expect that they can help us understand aspects of how we view religious others with whom we have strong disagreements and even view with fear and loathing. The insights from monster theory in this regard aren’t pretty, but they’re important.
An example of what monsters can teach us about conflict with other religions comes by way of the part they play in dehumanization. David Livingston Smith has written extensively on this, and his work in Making Monsters: The Uncanny Process of Dehumanization is especially helpful. (You can watch my podcast conversation about this on my YouTube page.) Smith defines dehumanization as a process that takes place “when we conceive of [other human beings] as subhuman creatures. These creatures might be nonhuman animals such as lice, rats, snakes, or wolves, [or] they might be fictional or supernatural beings such as demons or monsters.” He also says that “dehumanization is a kind of attitude.” Although it is common to think of dehumanization as a way of viewing others as nonhuman, he argues it is a way of conceiving of others “as being both human and subhuman – that is, wholly human and wholly subhuman – at the same time.”
It is this aspect of Smith’s discussion that I find helpful in application to interreligious conflict. In his research on common views of dehumanization he came to see them as missing something. His incorporation of the insights from writings on the uncanny and monster theory helped to improve an understanding of dehumanization that reflects the reality of the phenomenon. When we dehumanize others, we see them as something monstrous–subhuman creatures that subvert the natural order of how things “should be.” In the case of religious others, they are viewed as monstrously subverting a sound theology and worldview.
With the insights of monster theory in relation to dehumanization in mind, we can see how this has played out historically and in the present, regarding Christians and other religions. Historically, one of the great sins of the church is its antisemitism. Smith mentions this as an example in his book where medieval Jews were depicted by Christians as cannibalizing children and using their blood in the Passover Meal. You can learn more about the monstrous ways Christians have depicted Jews in books like The Devil and the Jews by Joshua Trachtenberg, and Saracens, Demons & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art by Debra Higgs.
Unfortunately, viewing those in other religions as monsters is not only a relic of the Christian past. It also takes place in the present. In some of my research I have documented the perceptions of some evangelical leaders who draw upon the dehumanizing metaphors of disease, warfare, and the demonic in referring to other religions. Symbolic and literal demonization can be found as well when Christians label other religions as “satanic” or “demonic.” In several instances Christians have referred to Islam’s founding Prophet Muhammed as “demon-possessed,” and the conceptions of nature-based spiritualities like Paganism and Wicca, as well as the atheistic Satanic Temple, are often viewed with fear as they mistakenly connect the dots from these traditions to Christianity’s ultimate monster and spiritual foe, the Devil.
Some might argue that these contemporary examples are simply legitimate theological ways of understanding and relating to other religious traditions. I disagree. In my view, given my research in the theology and psychology of religion, fears of the beliefs and practitioners of other religions moves from doctrinal critique to forms of spiritual warfare that incorporate dehumanization. Muslims, Pagans, Wiccans, Satanists and others are viewed as contemporary boogeymen, monstrous figures that we have a duty to oppose, not only theologically, but perhaps even in terms of trying to limit in the areas of religious and speech freedoms. After all, why should we allow monsters to corrupt our culture with their ideas and enjoy the same freedoms as us, the fully human with the right religion?
My interest in this post is not to try to make Christians into horror and monster fans. Instead, I hope readers can see that monsters are not only the stuff of scary entertainment. They can also serve as important tools to help us understand our deepest cultural and religious fears, and how we use these monstrous concepts to view those in other religions. Perhaps if we look at ourselves in the mirror, we can see that it is we who are often monstrous as we wrongly demonize others rather than loving our neighbors as ourselves.
John W. Morehead is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, and the Director of its Evangelical Chapter (Multifaith Matters). You may contact him at johnwmorehead@msn.com .