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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: 2024-07-08
----
-
-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.