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

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* Doctor Who, Gayness and the Church

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Co-authored-by: Joe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>
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Joe Carstairs
2024-07-08 23:15:27 +01:00
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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.