Column
Culture
Film & TV
Weirdness
Zombies
7 min read

Why do films portray Christians as crazy?

Exploring why films often portray the god-fearing as ‘always so god-damn weird’, psychologist Roger Bretherton recalls a first divine experience.

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

A crazed-looking man walks away from a burning backdrop.
Scott Shepard plays the crazed preacher in The Last of Us.
HBO.

We knew we were in trouble when he started quoting the Bible. If there is one rule we should all follow in a zombie apocalypse it is not to trust the isolated community of believers huddled around a Bible-quoting preacher. You know the plotline. The one that never occurs in Star Trek: the crew of the USS Enterprise land on a paradise-like planet only to discover that everything is exactly as it seems. No. The rules of genre television must be upheld. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. 

This was the strong suspicion my eldest child and I immediately leapt to while watching season one, episode eight of HBO’s The Last of Us. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a zombie apocalypse drama, a bit like The Walking Dead, but with more giraffes and fewer zombies. Is it a virus? Is it radiation? No, it is a fungus that has zombified the masses. Starting with a few isolated infections here and there it rapidly mushroomed (I guess) to turn the placid citizens of the world into manic flesh-eaters. All I’m saying is keep applying the anti-fungal toenail cream, it may be the only thing standing between us and the collapse of civilisation as we know it.  

So, when episode eight opened with a previously unknown character quoting the Bible to a fearful flock hiding in a diner, we knew things weren’t going to turn out well. The signs were all there. He was almost definitely a paedophile, possibly a murderer, and very likely a cannibal. As it turned out we’d hit a perfect straight: three for three. He was all of them. I probably should have issued a spoiler warning for that one, but to be honest if you didn’t see it coming The Last of Us probably isn’t for you. You’d probably be happier watching something more sedate. Silent Witness anyone?  

Needless to say, the episode provoked no small amount of theological commentary in our household, mainly querying why it is that anyone exhibiting even a modicum of Christian belief in shows like this, almost always turns out to be completely unhinged. Why do the righteous always have something wrong with them? Why are the god-fearing always so god-damn weird?  

Pray and take the pills 

Just to be clear, I’m not a murderer, nor a paedophile, nor a cannibal (and I have no plans), but somehow the prejudice that Christians must be crazy has come to influence how I view my own spiritual history. I have inadvertently imbibed the simple naturalistic logic that if I am a Christian then there is something wrong with me. Some part of me shakes hands with Freud and retrospectively attributes my conversion to neurosis, a coping strategy, a crutch. The assumption that the only reason I would believe something so unusual, so out of step with the people I spend most of my time with, is that I am weird. Quietly, without realising it that is how I have come to view it - I need God because I am weak. 

Of course, religion can and often is used as a coping strategy. Leading psychologists of religion, like Kenneth Pargament, have made entire careers out of studying this phenomenon. For several decades, he and his collaborators have demonstrated pretty conclusively that people use religion and spirituality as potent sources of coping with the pain of life. From this perspective, religious conversion can be viewed as a transformation of significance. When the things we previously relied on to give us a sense of meaning and stability fail us, when our adjustment to life falls apart and cannot be put back together, we give up trying to conserve what was previously meaningful and instead take a transformative leap toward a new view of what matters to us. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. When the going gets too tough, some people turn to Jesus.  

But there are many ways we can use religion to cope, and over the years Pargament and his collaborators have identified a few of them. Some people defer everything to God, they cope by thinking God will do everything for them, they plead for Him to intervene. Others are self-reliant, they may believe in God, but they don’t expect much from Him; for them prayer is more like therapeutic meditation than anything medically effective. Others cope in a collaborative way. They don’t leave it all to God, nor do they think everything centres on them. They take responsibility for their lives, but view God as a companion, a collaborator, a conversation partner through all the vicissitudes of life.  

It probably comes as no surprise that in studies of religious people dealing with chronic illness, these styles of coping significantly predict prognosis over time. There are many ways it can help us, and some of them are more admirable and effective than others. Those who leave it all to God usually do worse, those who think it’s all down to them do better, and those who pray and take the pills do best. Coping with a painful and bewildering world is undoubtedly one of the benefits of religious belief. It’s one of the things it does for us, but it is not what religion is at core. It may be a function of belief but not its essence.  

That first intimation of divine presence... It was the teaser trailer of a movie I was yet to see. A tiny taster from an infinite menu. 

As a twelve-year old boy, lurking at the back of an old Methodist church, waiting in silence for the possibility of something sacred to be unconcealed, I was not the kind of child anyone at school would ever admire: lonely, bullied, ignored. Relegated to the corner of the playground reserved for the outcasts and untouchables, the overly sensitive gay kid, the boorish tractor enthusiast, and the Dungeons and Dragons players. When I revisit the moment of my first truly transcendent and mystical experience of God, it’s tempting to write it off as an imaginative invention designed to anaesthetise the pain of social exclusion. I needed it to be true, so I made it up.  

Yet there is more to it than that. That first intimation of divine presence was the beginning of a lifelong quest to experience more. It was the teaser trailer of a movie I was yet to see. A tiny taster from an infinite menu. And in the years that followed I pursued it. To begin with, that strange sense of presence was elusive. I couldn’t generate it under my own steam but ran across it every few months, in a small group, a church service, a prayer meeting, a piece of music. Over time the frequency increased, as I learned patterns of prayer and spiritual practice. Eventually, decades later, it stabilised into an almost daily occurrence. I discovered the western mystical tradition, a historical lineage that made sense of what I was sensing, and to which I could belong. I made myself at home with Augustine of Hippo, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton. My new extended family was large and varied. They became my friends and spiritual guides. I had a history. 

When I think of the creatives I know, the artists, writers, actors, and musicians I have spent time with, I notice that for many of them their art is a response to the tragedy of life. But I rarely judge their work on the loneliness and pain that drives their compulsion to create. All too often it is the aching that lingers just under the surface of their work that makes it poignant and affecting. It is not just the beauty of what they create that moves me to tears, it’s the heartbreak out of which it is composed.  

My spiritual journey seems somewhat similar, a creative enterprise launched and sustained by a new insight into the nature of the world. Faith is more like a new way of seeing, than a new set of propositions to believe. If I’d been happy and fitted seamlessly into the fabric of social life, I doubt I’d have been open to the experience or able to recognise it when it occurred. But just as we might hesitate to reduce an artist’s work to little more than psychological self-help, I find myself increasingly reluctant to view my spiritual history as just an expression of my own neurosis. There is another way to tell the story, one that emphasises not so much the problems that drove me to God, but the presence that drew me to Him. There is more to the story than my own neediness and, in the final analysis, when the zombie apocalypse comes, at least I have retained sufficient sanity to avoid the guy with the Bible. 

Explainer
Culture
Freedom of Belief
Migration
7 min read

From Nigeria’s killing fields to Europe’s shores, the data behind the domino effect

While Nigeria thrives, some left-behind are desperate to escape.

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development. 

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria
Fatal attacks map.
ORFA.

Just as every coin has two sides, every soul contains the equal capacity for good and evil. Just like affairs of the soul, migration has the ability to strengthen or weaken societies.  

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has one of the world’s largest and most professionally distinguished diasporas. Over 17 million Nigerians live in other countries. The most famous members of the Nigerian diaspora, figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Anthony Joshua, John Boyega, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Wally Adeyemo, have achieved stardom thanks to talents that impact or entertain millions of people globally.  

However, these famous figures merely represent the glorious one percent of the Nigerian diaspora. Their success can easily distract observers from the grim reality of why so many Nigerians desperately seek to leave a country known for producing world changers.  

Seeking data on violence 

In October 2019, researchers at the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa started a project exploring the nature and impacts of of religious violence in Nigeria. The project spanned four years and generated many significant findings. Terror groups in Nigeria killed 31,000 civilians in 7,000 attacks in just four years, the Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) accounting for 39 per cent of these killings (a figure dwarfing the killings perpetrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates),  So called “land-based community attacks,” a concept referring to instances when actors like FEM invade small Christian farming settlements to kill, rape, and abduct Christians and burn their homes, accounted for 82 per cent of civilian killings in the study, Christian death tolls far exceeding Muslim death tolls (2.7 Christians killed for every 1 Muslim killed) in the reporting period, and 6.5 times as many Christian murders compared to Muslim murders relative to average state populations.  

The methodology of the study set out to find data on all the people, regardless of their religion, negatively affected by terrorist violence. However, with every new batch of data collected, disturbing patterns emerged. Since the 2009 birth of the infamous Boko Haram insurgency, global media coverage of the terrorist violence has consistently argued Muslims rather than Christians disproportionately bear the brunt of this Islamist extremist violence. The findings of the study suggest otherwise.  

ORFA data map of fatal attacks across Nigeria.

A data map shows circles of varying size across a map of Nigeria
Source: ORFA.

Shouldn’t the government do something? 

Historically, Nigerian governments have been reticent, even reluctant, to condemn violence in the north associated with the Fulani ethnic group. Former presidents like Muhammadu Buhari, a member of the Fulani, have even gone as far as to dismiss the issue of Fulani ethnic violence as just “cattle rustling.” However, in Nigeria, mere “cattle rustling” to some is a seriously grave situation for others.  

Findings by the Observatory researchers suggest Nigerian security operatives, most of whom belong to the Fulani and Hausa ethnic groups, have a suspiciously selective way of engaging with terrorist violence in northern Nigeria, often leaving Christians distinctively vulnerable. Roman Catholics in Nigeria have even accused Nigeria's military of being a jihadist force. Churches in northern Nigeria live in a constant state of terror and acutely distressing fear.  

In Nigeria, the federal government alone, led by the president, has the final say on matters concerning security and the army. Incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has notably appointed far more Christians to senior government offices than his predecessor, Buhari. The Nigerian government is famously opaque. Despite its nominally democratic visage, family dynasties and networks continue to dominate political life and business affairs.  

Understanding the religious geography and reaction 

Religion in Nigeria is divided along geographical lines. The northern half is dominated by conservative Islam. Catholicism and Anglicanism reign supreme in the southeast. The southwest functions as a geographical melting pot of Islam (albeit a more secular variety compared to the north) and Christianity (especially Pentecostalism).  The north contains a surprisingly large number of Pentecostals. Many Pentecostal pastors and choirs in the north have been kidnapped by the mercilessly violent Islamist extremists.  

The overwhelming majority of Christians in Nigeria live in the southern half of the country. However, in a Nigeria which has suffered from one oppressive government after another for decades (most of these led by conservative Islamic military and civilian presidents), most Christians struggle to survive and lack the energy to speak up for their northern kin. Despite their weariness, the Southern Nigerian Church (the collective population of Christians living in the south) has a sacred responsibility to awaken and demand greater protections from the federal government and the military for Christians living in the north.   

Local causes, global effect 

Over the last two decades, commentators have routinely pointed to climate change as the primary factor facilitating violent encounters between Muslims and Christians. Fulani cattle herders, guided by the desire for better grazing lands for their livestock, have often encroached on land owned by Christian farmers in the north and middle regions. The findings by researchers at the Observatory suggest significantly more is going on to facilitate these violent clashes than just climate change. Ascribing the challenge of religious violence in Nigeria to just climate change provides a get-out-of-jail free card to the men of violence linked to the orchestrated killings of Christians. 

Ethno-religious violence has quietly become commonplace in northern Nigerian life. The single solution capable of curbing this violence is unprecedented, cross-party, interethnic, and interreligious security reform. Strength of security affects every person in Nigeria. From the richest to the poorest, no one is immune from a sudden kidnapping, suicide bomb, or violent act of banditry negatively changing their life forever.  

Nigeria's neighbours in Europe cannot afford to continue slumbering and must wake up. Readers in Europe feeling insulated from the violence the data records are just as susceptible to the shockwaves that a collapse of the Nigerian state as other West African neighbours. Such an event would imperil the security of citizens in countries like Italy, Spain, and Greece just as much as it would people living in Mali, Chad, and Cameroon.  

Nigeria has never been nearer to a civil war or state collapse since the Biafra War of the late 1960s. Ethno-religious violence disproportionately targeting northern Christians is one of the greatest and most overlooked factors contributing to Nigeria's dysfunctionality. In an unprecedentedly connected world, such a collapse would, in turn, trigger further collapses.  The European Union (EU) does not grasp the severity of how such a collapse would affect its own security and stability. At a time when every day brings news of small boats carrying migrants to European shores, Nigeria's collapse would trigger one of the greatest avalanches of mass migration in modern African history.  

A modern Middle Passage 

Nigeria has a population of over 235 million, the largest in Africa and sixth largest globally. If just 10 per cent of the population attempted to flee in the event of another civil war or a destabilising political event, that is 23 million Nigerians desperately fleeing into any country they reason might welcome them. Many of these millions would gamble by voyaging on the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean in small boats with the goal of beginning new lives in European countries. Some would inevitably perish in what might evolve into this century's Middle Passage. Nigeria’s collapse would destroy the EU by overwhelming its borders and social services. The average population of an EU country is just under 17 million, or the size of Nigeria's diaspora. The unprecedented connectedness of our world means catastrophic destabilisation in one country can have significant consequences for the stability of other countries globally. The EU has a geopolitical responsibility to invest in improving Nigeria's security situation. Abductions, killings, and displacements in Nigeria might trigger instability in Europe and beyond. 

However, the collapse of Nigeria would not only destabilise the EU. ISIS affiliates like ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have a strategic interest in Nigeria's collapse, because it would open the door for them to expand their control throughout West Africa.  

A team of researchers guided by the goal of better understanding terrorist violence in Nigeria simply followed the breadcrumbs of organically emergent data to show why the broader world should take seriously violence against Christians in the Giant of Africa. Living in an unprecedentedly connected world comes with new privileges and new responsibilities. To simply indulge in these new privileges without standing strong and shouldering these new responsibilities would be foolish, selfish, and nearsighted.  

English poet John Donne once famously wrote,

No man is an island,  
Entire of itself,  of the continent,  
A part of the main.  
If a clod be washed away by the sea,  
Europe is the less. 
Every man is a piece.

The “old self” understanding of global connectedness, ruled by selfishness and ignorance, must give way to the “new self” model of prosperity and security via proactive collaboration. For every one Okonjo-Iweala, Boyega, or Antetokounmpo, millions of Nigerians suffering from the effects of a rapidly destabilising state dream of emigrating abroad. Global Christianity and global security stakeholders each have an interest in a stable Nigeria. A stable Nigeria functions as a wellspring of human capital for the benefit of the entire world.  

Donne, in the same poem, wrote,  

Each man's death diminishes me, 
For I am involved in mankind. 
Therefore, send not to know 
For whom the bell tolls, 
It tolls for thee. 

The world is involved in Nigeria and Nigeria is involved in the world. The death of Nigeria would pave the way for the death of the EU. The bell tolls for the EU community to awaken from decades of neglectfully overlooking its interests in a stable and secure Nigeria.  

 

Further resources 

  • ORFA report summary.
  • ORFA full report.
  • 'No Road Home', a data study on those living in displaced persons camps. Download the study (PDF).