Like most works of art and culture, Buffy the Vampire Slayer both encourages criticism and theorizing and also proves slippery and resistant to them.  In the recent wave of criticism attempting to associate Buffy with fields of philosophy and critical theory, there has emerged a subset of Buffy criticism that has tried to contain, categorize, or totalize the show as a work of religious art, or a work that demonstrates a determinate religion or religious-ethical content.  In this paper, I will demonstrate how these approaches overstate the connections and the coherence of the show’s relationship to any kind of traditional or determinate theology.

My paper will work through four general categories, showing how connections between Buffy and theology or spirituality have been drawn, and then demonstrating ways in which the show resists or subverts these connections.  These four categories are action (ethical decisions, sacrifices), mythology (vampires, demons, the Slayer), Good and Evil, and rites and rituals.  Working within each of these categories, while not denying religious elements, I will show how ideas of a confessional religion or a determinate God are consistently subverted, how good and evil are never stable categories, how even “ethical” actions and selfless sacrifice are continually questioned. Critics working in fields of religion and theology often see religion within the limited confines of Mircea Eliade’s influential definition of being a sacred cosmic order against the chaos.  Buffy constantly challenges the limits of this definition in multiple ways.  If, as some critics suggests, symbols of crosses and resurrection resonate traditional religion, what does it do to traditional faith when these symbols are dismissed, found powerless, or are connected to evil?  If Buffy’s sacrifice in season 5 is seen as Christ-like, what does it mean that in season 7 she admits that in the same situation she would now allow Dawn to die?  While Buffy may use, refer to, and suggest religious systems, ideas, rituals, and symbols, it rarely endorses them, explicitly or implicitly.  There is never any statement of absolute meaning or divinity (good or bad) that is not ultimately made open to questioning and subversion. 

In my paper, I will take a meta-critical approach by examining claims made by theorists of Buffy (including myself) in published essays, and then by returning to the text of the show, demonstrate the resistance it has to such theologizing. My paper will cover the entire span of the series, illustrating how the show resists categorization and static meaning throughout, and especially how the later years introduce subversive elements onto the conceptual universe of the early years. I will begin with a discussion of the well-know reverse Garden-of Eden mythology from the show’s beginnings and I will conclude by looking at the resonance of Buffy and Willow’s final act together where by giving each potential slayer the power of the chosen one, they defy the rule that a “bunch of men who died thousands of years ago” made up, an action which can be read as a dismissal of traditional religion, and a releasing of chaos upon a cosmic order.