My friend John Morehead was recently interviewed on a vampire culture website for a scholarly Christian perspective on Bill Schnoebelen and Vampire religion. If that tweeks your interest you’ll catch the interview at Vampire.com.
Reflections on Christianity, Art, Nature, and Culture
The concept of Vampire Christians is a bit hard to sink my teeth (er fangs) into.
Nonetheless, in the old series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and later vampire series there is some theologising which occurs about the meaning of life, God, moral questions etc.
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Bill Schnoebelen?????
Oh I HAVE to go read this now.
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@Jared Oh, you’ve heard of him have you? He’s a bit of an unknown for me here in Australia.
@Andrew, I don’t think John’s advocating vampire Christianity, just respectful engagement that’s free of some of the counter-cult hysteria. Though vampire Christianity has been explored before, as you’ll see from some of my engagements with Pale Rider back in ’05 – http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2005/09/christ-of-the-vampires.html
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@Matt Yeah, I’m familiar with Mr. Schnoebelen. He is a former Alexandrian High Priest (one of the few claims he has made that is actually accurate) and wrote a disgusting book called “Wicca: Satan’s Little White Lie.” The book (and I believe all his books) are published by Jack Chick, the same guy who puts out those disgusting Chick Tracts (if you’re not familiar with those, do a Google search and prepare to be amused and/or horrified).
Actually, I don’t think Schnoebelen is well known even here in the states. He certainly doesn’t have the same recognition as Mike Warnke or some of the other Satanic Panic frauds….
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Jarred, those Chick comic tracts have been around since when I was a kid in the 1960’s. They play on people’s fears and are particularly simplistic fundamentalism – very black and white and judgemental. Don’t like them at all.
Mike Warnke – haven’t heard much about him since the 1980’s when there was a big scandal about him falsely claiming he was a Vietnam veteran.
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Thanks for all the comments related to my interview. I received an invitation for the interview at Vampires.com as a result of my prior critical comments on Schnoebelen on the site. This generated their interest. By being self-critical I was able to build credibility which led to an opportunity to speak as a Christian academic on a vampire site.
In my work in religion and popular culture focusing on things related to horror, science fiction, and fantasy, including vampires in fiction and real life identities, I believe much of this reflects concerns that dovetail with Christians. Why keep such things and people at arms length or demonize? These all too common responses prevent us from learning more ourselves, and from engaging others in a post-Christendom culture.
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