"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"-Psalm 22:1

"She saved the world. A lot" - Buffy's gravestone

I mean to explore the territory of religion in Buffy with particular relation to Buffy (and others) as a representation of Christ in a world without a Big Guy in the sky. Buffy dies to save the world. So does Spike. Xander saves the world through love. Everywhere in the Buffyverse, we see images of Christian sacrifice - but, as Gregory Erickson argues ("Sometimes you need a story"), nowhere do we get a sniff of God the Father. This absence is mirrored in the absence of convincing father figures - even Giles abdicates this role after a while. Buffy and her contemporaries have no one "above" them to appeal to or to take orders from. The buck stops with them; primarily with Buffy.

I would argue, in this capacity, Buffy and co are postmodern Christs - Christlike both in their sacrifice and their full embodiment of goodness. The Buffyverse contains nothing transcendant (even heaven is a place in which Buffy is completed in herself. She is not in the company of God). All value must be created through social bonds, and democratically. By the final episode of Buffy, this democratisation is almost total. Girls all over the world are becoming Slayers, and waking up to their potential for saving the world (a lot).

I plan to cover this subject with particular reference to seasons 5,6 and 7 of BtvS, as well as the scholarship that touches on the relevant areas of religion (and possibly fathers/authority).