Faith and Fandom
To Boldly Go Into All the World, Preaching the Good News...Where No One Has Gone Before

Sometimes They Do Get It Right

I’m as guilty as the next person (perhaps even more so) of raising a red flag on Star Trek’s anti-Christian messages. When it comes to Trek and religion, it seems like evolution, the Big Bang theory, atheism, secular humanism and New Age ideologies are all accepted as factual, while Christianity is discredited at every turn…which is particularly true of the newer series.

Since opinions run deep on the subject, and since, at the end of the day,
Trek is just a TV show, I thought it might be an insightful exercise to highlight some of the things Trek has gotten right. That is, right according to a Christian perspective.

The original
Trek featured a number of shows that propagated Christian ideals and themes (most notably “Bread and Circuses”), and even the modern series have occasionally espoused selected aspects of Christianity or religion in general. In fact, Trek promotes Christian principles on a variety of widely-held moral codes and social standards.

For example,
Trek is anti-drug (“Symbiosis”), anti-euthanasia (“Half a Life”) and anti-suicide (“Ethics”); all TNG. As surprising as it seems, Trek fails to uphold mainline Christian values on only two major issues: its pro-science/anti-God position (nowhere more obvious than in TNGs “Who Watches the Watchers”) and its advancement of the homosexual agenda (thinly veiled advocacy in TNGs “The Outcast” gives way to in-your-face lesbianism in DS9s “Rejoined”).

Fortunately, the furtive furthering of a cause can cut both ways, and such is the case with two
TNG episodes that quietly defend the pro-life stance. Both shows use engineer Geordi LaForge’s blindness to spark a debate over the sanctity of life versus natural selection.

“The Enemy” finds Geordi stranded on torrential storm world Galorndon Core, and follows his slip-sliding efforts to climb out of a muddy pit. Finally reaching the surface, Geordi seeks refuge from the deluge inside a dark, dank cave. There, he discovers a Romulan, the sole survivor from a scout ship that recently crash-landed on the gloomy globe. A discussion ensues between the two enemy officers and Geordi learns that he wouldn’t even be alive if he’d been born on Romulus, because all imperfect Romulan babies are aborted.

The Romulan considers Starfleet a weak organization for allowing people like Geordi to serve in it, yet it’s this presumed liability that becomes a lifesaving asset when Geordi’s optical VISOR detects Wesley’s neutrino beacon. The Romulan’s jaded perspective toward disabilities changes when he and Geordi, working together
Enemy Mine (1985) style, reach the beam up site and are rescued.

In “The Masterpiece Society,” the
Enterprise encounters a colony of genetically engineered humanoids on the planet Moab IV. The inhabitants are perfect in every detail: born with the knowledge of their future destiny, they are programmed with the innate skills necessary to excel in their preordained field of expertise. Geordi is something of an anomaly and novelty to the Moabites (sound Biblical?).

Their leading scientific mind, Hannah Bates, tells Geordi that he never would’ve been created with a defect on her world. Geordi defends his handicap, claiming that, for all its detriments, his blindness has been a tremendous benefit on numerous occasions. That conviction is validated when Geordi, with the assistance of his VISOR, is able to foil Hannah’s plans to destroy the planet’s biosphere.

The episodes referenced here represent just a sampling of the many
Trek shows that subscribe, in some way, to Christian beliefs. An itemized list of Christian elements in each Trek series would further bolster this apologia, but, for the sake of brevity, these few examples should sufficiently demonstrate a consistent pattern of Trek’s periodic promulgation of Christian precepts. That is to say, despite how overwhelming the evidence seems to the contrary, sometimes they do get it right!

November 1997