c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) As a kid, Kim Paffenroth would walk into a building, ponder the possibility of a zombie attack and think: What would I do?

“There is planning that you can do for a zombie invasion, whereas you can’t really plan for vampires,” he said. “If there are really vampires, they’re going to get you because they’re fairly powerful things and they can just get you. But zombies, they’re slow. They’re stupid. They don’t have any supernatural powers, really.”

Decades later, the associate professor of religious studies at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., is arguably examining the same question from a different angle. Now, besides thinking about how to zombie-proof a building, he looks at how people can zombie-proof their souls.

That reflection, along with a dissection of the genre’s theology, culminated in his recently released book, “Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth.” In it, he studies five zombie films, addressing their horrifying apocalyptic visions as well as their scathing indictments of contemporary society.

Christians have much to learn from zombie movies on both counts, according to Paffenroth.

Zombie movies help society get away from a cheerful version of the end times. While the vision of the apocalypse proffered by the popular “In case of rapture, this car will be unoccupied” bumper sticker sounds pleasant enough, Paffenroth doesn’t find that such an idea squares with Scripture.

“I’m not an expert on Revelation or Ezekiel, but it looks like a lot of people are suffering there, and not just the sinners,” he said. So in that sense, zombie films serve as a corrective _ though, he cautioned, they’re ultimately too cynical for any believer as they fail to acknowledge God’s grace.

Paffenroth also thinks the films provide guidance in matters of daily theological practice.

“When we think about sin _ and I do it myself, you know, when we’re talking about it in class _ you know you usually go for some big example, like murder,” he said. “If that’s what sin is, then it’s not really that relevant in my life because I’m not going to do any of those really big ones. But I may fall into these really bad, sinful, self-destructive habits.”

Consider materialism, one of the social ills repeatedly targeted in zombie movies.

In Romero’s 1978 “Dawn of the Dead,” humans besieged by zombies seek safety inside a mall. There, Paffenroth writes, “life is grindingly boring and pointless, the ultimate parody or degeneration of a domesticity that is useless without a purpose to fulfill or a goal to pursue.”

Even if someone accuses him of reading too much into the movie, Paffenroth said that after watching the film, “it’s hard to go to the mall then and not feel a little queasy.”

“I’m grateful for that,” he said. “I think so much in modern American culture equates being a Christian with just being a good citizen and being a good consumer. … I want to say, `No, there’s something really unchristian _ or inhumane, even _ about our consumerist society.”

But the mall isn’t the only spot Paffenroth spots zombies these days. He sees them on the couch, basking in the television’s glow; he detects them within the men and women who fail to nurture their relationships and the pundits who shout at one another for hours on end.

“I see it in all political discussions, both ends of the spectrum,” he said. “If your political opinions are purely knee-jerk and you don’t listen to any other data and you don’t have any friends who don’t belong to the political party that you do _ that is not technically zombified, I guess, but it’s completely irrational.”

Paffenroth writes: “This equation of zombies and humans is a theological vision of universal sinfulness, both among the living and the undead, and it gives `Dawn of the Dead’ its deep and disturbing horror, and also its relevance and humanity. It forces us to admit and confront our sinful and hypocritical existence of materialism, consumerism, racism, sexism, and predatory, exploitative violence.”

But if zombie movies can remind Christians of their sins, Paffenroth said they can also show them how to correct their behavior.

“I would like us to move in a new direction,” he said, “and if zombie movies can help, well then, go get ’em.”

(Kristen Campbell writes for The Mobile Register in Mobile, Ala.)

KRE/PH END CAMPBELL

Editors: To obtain a photo of “Gospel of the Living Dead” and a file photo of Paffenroth, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.