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Religion and reanimation: An interview with Kim Paffenroth (Part 1)
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Kim Paffenroth is a professor of religious studies and the author of several books on theology and the Bible.Kim Paffenroth is also the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth, a study of Romero's living dead film series, as well as his own popular batch of zombie novels, including the Dying To Live series and the upcoming Valley of the Dead, in which famous Italian poet Dante, road-tripping across Europe while working on his famous Inferno, stumbles into a full-blown zombie infestation.
In part one of my exclusive two-part interview with Paffenroth, we discuss his very different career paths, and the difficulty - if any - of reconciling the two.
Tell us about your background/education in religious studies.
Is that the “professional” question, or the “spiritual journey” question? Ah, well, they’re related, surely. I was raised as an atheist, and my mother died of cancer when I was fourteen. I guess those are the two main ingredients that go into the mix – the witnessing of suffering, and the lack of a framework of meaning into which to put that suffering. So I was looking for something at that age. That made an odd combination when I read the Bible and other Christian theology for the first time in college, at St. John’s College, Annapolis. So I was introduced to Christian thought at a late age, in an intellectual/academic setting, rather than a churchly one, and with the context of needing it to answer personal questions of loss and grief and meaning.
I always have to remind myself, when other people talk of their experience with religion (good or bad), that they probably came to it from a wildly different background and experience and have formed wholly different opinions and beliefs. My intellectual curiosity and excitement at Christian theology made me want to continue study of it, and I felt called to be a teacher as well, so I went on to graduate school at Harvard Divinity School and the University of Notre Dame.
Your bio states that a “mid-life crisis” turned you into a zombie writer. Can you expand on that a bit? What really triggered the change?
Is that phrase sending a bad message? Well, I think everyone, deep down, is restless, some of us more than others. Some of us need to feel like we’re moving forward, improving, accomplishing things, or we get very nervous or depressed. It’s easy to feel like you’re going somewhere, when you’re in your twenties and working furiously to advance your education and career; then in your thirties you’re probably busy starting a family. And then in your forties, probably both job and family are kind of set – not that they don’t require more work on a daily basis, but they’re not going to change too much more. This is it. Not the end of the line, but the beginning of where life stays the same until you die. Makes one nervous and one starts looking around and wondering, “Wait – this is it? What happened? I want more.” And you do something crazy or irresponsible, or at least, a little unpredictable, trying to get back that rush of being vital and being a person who’s changing and growing.
Okay, so what happened to me was that I looked at my career, and I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to, pretty much. I was successful, tenured, respected by my peers. I looked at the books I wrote – theology books, on the Bible and Augustine and the influence of Christianity on literature – and they were fine, and I’d had fun writing them, but the follow up was always disappointing to me. Each book would take about two years to write, I’d pour everything into it, think about nothing but that idea for all that time, and then it would sell, at most, 500 copies. I couldn’t get over that, or be satisfied with it. It bothered me and made me feel like I was wasting my time.
I’d just done an academic book, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006), about the moral outlook and religious imagery of Romero’s zombie films. (That book did much better than 500 copies, I’m glad to report, and went on to win a 2006 Bram Stoker Award.) So I thought – “Hey, that was fun. But why just examine his zombies? If they mean so much, why not write my own stories, and the zombies will mean and symbolize exactly what I want them to?” It’s become a new and exciting way for me to examine my theological questions and ideas, in a new form that reaches a lot more people, and very different people. My books are now not just read by academics, grad students, and religious people, but by mostly younger people, many of whom are not religious, or even anti-religious, and it makes for some excellent, thoughtful exchanges and dialogue. It’s been the kind of exciting, energizing change that I think many of us crave in middle age.
Sorry, that was kind of a long answer.
How has your new career path been met from your contemporaries and colleagues in religious studies?
There’s been a strong push among some religious studies people, to take popular culture seriously as a vehicle for expressing and examining Christian beliefs. When I did Gospel of the Living Dead, there were similar books out on Tolkien, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Narnia. Or when I had a speaking engagement at the Cornerstone Festival – that’s a whole lot of tattooed, pierced, kind of scary-looking Christian kids! So there’s receptivity to the idea that Christians can, maybe even should, interact and influence pop culture – again, at least among more liberal Christians. We don’t all want to read the Left Behind books, or think that’s the only form of “Christian literature.”
Have you had any internal struggles over writing horror? Has it been hard to reconcile writing horror and your religious beliefs?
Not for me. Again, I came to Christianity primarily as a framework for understanding why there is horror, suffering, disease, and death in the world. So for me, at least, there can’t be much dissonance there, because I don’t see Christianity as just being a happy, triumphant tale. It’s a story with a lot of darkness and pain – a story even that only makes sense because there is darkness and evil in the world.
Check back tomorrow for Part 2, in which we discuss Paffenroth's career highlights, his blog and how it helps him stay on track, and what projects lie ahead.
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