Blog post: Doctor Who, Gayness, and the Church (#7)

* Styles img, figure and figcaption

* Doctor Who, Gayness and the Church

---------

Co-authored-by: Joe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>

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-  --spacing-block-sm: 0.75rem;
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-  --spacing-block-lg: 2.5rem;
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-:is(p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr) {
+:is(p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, img, figure) {
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+  --body-margin-block-end: var(--spacing-block-xl);
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+    --grid-total-width: 36rem;
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+      var(--grid-total-width)
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+  body {
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+figcaption {
+  font-size: var(--font-size-sm);
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+---
+title: Doctor Who, Gayness, and the Church
+description: >-
+  Series 14 of Doctor Who has a schizophrenic relationship with Christianity.
+  It’s also gay. I think there might be a connection.
+pubDate:
+  year: 2024
+  month: 07
+  day: 8
+---
+
+I’ve recently finished the most recent series of Doctor Who, series fourteen (or
+‘Season One’ as our new benevolent overlords at Disney+ are styling it.) It’s
+pretty fun, by the way. I can recommend it for light watching[^1].
+
+There’s a few discussion points coming out of that series that would be worth
+dwelling on. But I’ve been particularly thinking about the schizophrenic
+attitude the series has taken to Christianity, along with how gay this series
+is: and what these two themes might fit together, to give us something important
+to say about Jesus Christ, being gay, and the universe.
+
+## The Doctor’s schizophrenic relationship with Christianity
+
+First, let’s look at that schizophrenic attitude to Christianity I mentioned.
+
+The series ticks up an impressive tally of explicit or strongly implicit
+references to Christian beliefs and morals, and **none** of them are positive.
+
+In episode 3, _Boom_, the far-future Anglican church has become an army,
+with the ranks of the clergy becoming equivalent to arms-bearing ranks in the
+soldiery. The Doctor claims that ‘the Church’ has been an army for most of
+its history[^2], and that his companion Ruby Sunday (and therefore us) has
+been living in a ‘blip’. An all-powerful arms company has tricked the Church
+into fighting a non-existent foe in order to keep them buying weapons. The
+Doctor attributes their ability to fall for such a deception to religious faith:
+
+> I mean, most armies would notice that they were fighting smoke and shadows,
+> but not this lot, Ruby, you know why? They have faith. Faith! The magic word
+> that keeps you never having to think for yourself.
+
+In episode 4, _73 Yards_, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, head of UNIT, makes this
+offhand comment, suggesting the oft-repeated claim that all religion is founded
+in credulity[^3]:
+
+> That’s what we do, all of us. We see something inexplicable, and invent the
+> rules to make it work. Mankind saw the sun rise and created God: or we saw the
+> arrival of a Sontaran, one or the other.
+
+In episode 5, _Dot and Bubble_, The Doctor is rejected by the people he is
+trying to save. They rant that he is ‘not one of us’, call his claims about the
+TARDIS ‘magic’ and ‘voodoo’, and in the same breath assert that it is their
+‘God-given duty to maintain the standards of Finetime’ (their space colony).
+
+In episode 6, _Rogue_, a party of murderous aliens turns up at an upper-class
+Georgian dance party and demand to be married. The priest denies them, not on
+the grounds that they are unrepentant murderers with obviously no intention
+of taking their marriage vows seriously, but on the grounds that they are
+‘creatures from hell’, _ie_ ‘you don’t look like us’[^4].
+
+There are other references to Christianity here and there which are, in
+themselves, neutral or ambiguous. This adds to the sense that Christianity is an
+important theme for the series.
+
+But the message is clear. It’s consistently drilled in: Christian beliefs and
+morals are stupid and bigoted.
+
+And yet, when the series culminates in its epic two-part finale, the story is
+plastered wall-to-wall with Christ-like imagery. It transpires that the Doctor
+has unwittingly been acting as an ‘Angel of Death’ by carrying the invisible God
+of Death, Sutekh, on his TARDIS, infecting everyone he goes near with the curse
+of death. Finally, through one of his children, the curse is unleashed, and
+everyone in the universe is given over to death. Even in death, they continue to
+suffer, and one of the characters describes themselves as being in ‘hell’. The
+Doctor battles Sutekh face-to-face and defeats him. Sutekh becomes one of the
+only creatures which The Doctor, usually a staunch pacifist, can bring himself
+to kill. Then, the whole world is restored to life. Ruby Sunday even gets to
+meet her birth mother for the first time, and their relationship is wonderfully
+restored.
+
+So on the one hand, any outward sign of Christianity is despised, but the heart
+of the Christian story — the Resurrection — becomes the template for the
+climactic redemption story which ties the whole series together.
+
+That’s what I mean when I say this series has a ‘schizophrenic’ relationship
+to Christianity.
+
+## What’s this got to do with gayness?
+
+In series fourteen, Doctor Who goes gay.
+
+I’m not playing culture wars here. The Doctor literally kisses a man in episode
+six.
+
+But it’s not just that. When we first meet his companion, Ruby Sunday (in the
+Christmas special), she’s busy falling in love with a woman. Ncuti Gatwa plays
+The Doctor camp (brilliantly by the way). The Doctor refers to Ruby as ‘babes’.
+It’s got ‘gay’ written all over it, and this is definitely on purpose. 
+
+<figure>
+  <img
+    alt="An official promotional picture of Ncuti Gatwa looking lustily into the camera"
+    src="/images/blog/2024/06/30/ncuti-gatwa-promo-pic.webp"
+  />
+  <figcaption>
+    Look at this official BBC promo pic and tell me Ncuti Gatwa isn’t playing
+    The Doctor gay.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+From this perspective, it’s not hard to imagine where the hostility to the
+Church might come from.
+
+The Church has failed to teach well and Biblically on sexuality, at least in
+the last couple of centuries. Everyone has suffered as a result of this, but gay
+people often feel the sharpness of this particularly keenly[^5].
+
+The Church has put its weight behind a variety of unhelpful teachings on
+sexuality over the centuries[^6]. But two, contradictory, ones stand out as
+particularly salient today.
+
+One is **prudishness**. Sex is evil. Sex is the origin of all evil: the Devil
+seduced Eve, and Eve seduced Adam, and that’s when it all went downhill. Sex
+is naughty. Sex is bad. Remember when Jesus said, ‘whoever looks at a woman to
+lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ (Matt 5:28)?
+He was saying that **all sexual desire** is sinful. Remember when Paul advised,
+‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman’ (1 Cor 7:1)? He was saying that it’s
+**bad** for a man to touch a woman **under any circumstances**.
+
+This is, of course, false and dreadful teaching. The truth is that sex is a gift
+from God, given so that we can bear his image by loving each other in this most
+intimate and wonderful way. This is the consistent message of both Testaments.
+But the idea that there’s somehow something **inherently wrong** with sex has
+undeniably been a part of the Church’s teaching since at least the Victorian
+period (and possibly a great deal longer than that).
+
+The other is that sex is an **essential aspect of humanity**. If you aren’t
+having sex, you’re missing out on an irreplacable part of your created purpose.
+This has reacted explosively with the ideas of the Sexual Revolution. The
+net result is that we have not so much been **freed to have sex** as we’ve been
+**enslaved to have sex**. Virginity is an embarassment – both for men and for
+women.
+
+The radical Biblical idea that you can have a completely fulfilled life, deeply
+enriched by loving relationships, **without** having sex or getting married,
+is forgotten.
+
+Everyone has been harmed by these teachings. But those who experience
+significant attraction towards the same sex have been harmed double.
+
+Faced by the impossible demands of bad Church teaching on sexuality on top
+of the complexities of living with same-sex desire has left those people with
+nowhere to go. They can _just say ‘no’_, and be made to feel that they’re
+missing out on completing their full humanity. Or they can indulge their
+same-sex attraction, and be judged not only promiscuous but a pervert to boot.
+
+No wonder so many gay people have given up on the Church (and I haven’t even
+talked about discrimination or violence towards gay people).
+
+And no wonder that The Doctor has become strikingly anti-Christian at the same
+time as it has become strikingly gay.
+
+## What next?
+
+Doctor Who’s criticisms of the Church hurt when they hit the mark. They hurt
+more when they’re unfair. But that’s not the point. That point is this: the
+Church has lost control of the conversation. And we’ve lost control of the
+conversation because we threw it away. We threw it away encased in bomb-proof
+concrete and left it to sink to the bottom of the deepest available ocean
+trench.
+
+If we in the Church are feeling hurt, we should start by feeling hurt by
+our own sin.
+
+The work of regaining trust on the question of sexuality will be the work of
+decades: and that’s if we start working full-pelt right now. But there is hope.
+
+I was encouraged last December by the visit to my local church, Bruntsfield
+Evangelical, of _Living Out_[^7], a charity dedicated to helping churches across
+the UK talk about sexuality. Ed and Andy, both same-sex attracted men, led us
+through talks and discussions, and played recordings of perspectives from their
+same-sex attracted female colleagues who couldn’t make it on the day.
+
+They were primarily there to talk to us about how to support people like them:
+same-sex attracted Christians who might be in our church who believe they are
+called to singleness, helping them to thrive, living their true selves openly,
+surrounded by love and empowered to share their love with others, just as we
+want for everyone in our church. In fact, I heard some of the best news I’d ever
+heard about my own sexuality, even though I am in the minority of people who
+have never experienced significant same-sex attraction.
+
+Whether or not you agree with their stance that the right place for sex is
+within a marriage between a man and a woman, charities like _Living Out_ are
+driving the Church in the right direction: serious, Biblical sexual doctrine
+which helps us to realise in practice how we are all made in the image of the
+God of love.
+
+And how needed! How desperately needed! And Doctor Who gives us a little glimpse
+of that, too.
+
+Because not only is the series apparently anti-Christian, it also expresses a
+need for Christian salvation. The Resurrection story is one which everyone needs
+to hear, to have their death transformed to life, to have their full humanity
+affirmed and celebrated and tended and to delight in it and to see it flourish.
+To know the God of love and life, behind all and over all, with a plan and a
+means to defeat the grip of death on the world.
+
+So let’s keep having those frank conversations about sexuality in the Church.
+It matters for all of us.
+
+[^1]: Unless you’re bothered by
+  [plotholes big enough to fly a TARDIS through](https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-who-opinion-empire-death-2-102716.htm).
+  Oh, and you can probably skip episodes 1 and 3.
+
+[^2]: For the record, this is flatly false. Though exceptions are widespread, the
+  overwhelming mainstream opinion is that priests should not bear arms. This is
+  not new, but has been the consistent orthodoxy, taken straight from Jesus’
+  teachings by the Church Fathers and maintained constantly since then. Can the
+  Church be legitimately criticised for its use of violence? Absolutely, let’s
+  have that discussion. Has the Church almost always been a **literal army**? No.
+  The Church has **never** been an army.
+
+[^3]: See _God is Not Great_ by Christopher Hitchens, Chapter 11 for an epitome
+  example of this put forward by a prominent atheist apologist.
+
+[^4]: In the spirit of charity, I have to accept that this admits of multiple
+  interpretations. It is possible that by calling them ‘creatures from hell’,
+  the priest is referring precisely to their unrepentant murderousness. However,
+  the priest has already tried to avoid the creature’s gaze by the pitiably
+  schoolboyish ploy of **looking elsewhere**, priming the viewers to think
+  that the priest is a silly coward: certainly not the kind to make a noble,
+  principled defence of justice with his head in the jaws of death. Plus, if
+  we interpret ‘creatures from hell’ as meaning ‘you don’t look like us so you
+  must be evil’, that would fit with the consistent framing of the series: that
+  religious morality is equivalent to bigotry.
+
+[^5]: Though it must be remembered that many gay people have remained and
+  thrived within the Church in spite of the challenges, serving in diverse ways,
+  not least the priesthood.
+
+[^6]: I found the Ezra Institute to give a good
+  [introduction to the history of Church teachings on sexuality](https://www.ezrainstitute.com/resource-library/articles/sex-and-the-history-of-christianity).
+
+[^7]: For a great and humane introduction to what these guys are like, have a
+  listen to this [Living Out podcast episode](https://www.livingout.org/resources/podcasts/68/misstep-7-godliness-is-heterosexuality-the-plausibility-problem-7).
+  I get that if you haven’t grappled with issues like these before, it can be
+  really challenging, and you might find it hard to trust people who take a
+  different view to yourself. I know: I’ve been there myself! The best way to
+  start is to listen to a human voice.