An enterprising approach to theologyBy Tom Henderson, McMinnville N-R/News-Register 10/9/2015
Poor mortals often wonder what the Heavenly Father wants from them. Could it be that all He really wants is a lift?
J.P. Bierly may be going where no Baptist music minister has gone before with his class, “Theology of ‘Star Trek.’ ”
Capt. James Kirk once took the starship Enterprise all the way to the planet Sha Ka Ree, beyond the great barrier at the center of the galaxy, because God wanted to thumb a ride. Of course, that led Kirk to ask that classic question theologians have grappled with since “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” hit multiplexes in 1989: “What does God need with a starship?”
The answer, explains J.P. Bierly of McMinnville’s First Baptist Church, is that God doesn’t need a starship. However, a starship comes in awfully handy for humans in their continuing mission to ask questions, seek the divine and boldy go where no one has gone before.
Bierly teaches a class called “The Theology of ‘Star Trek’” from September to May. Sessions run 7 to 8:30 p.m. the first and third Wednesdays of the month at the church, 125 S.E. Cowls St.
He has the class watch an episode from one of the six sets of “Star Trek” television episodes and discuss the theological aspects.
“It’s really fertile ground for theological discussion,” Bierly said. “Series creator Gene Roddenberry was a confirmed humanist and really didn’t want a lot of religion in ‘Star Trek,’ but there is a lot of spirituality in there nonetheless.”
Remember “This Side of Paradise,” the one where the crew visits Omicron Ceti III, and everyone except Capt. Kirk blisses out because of spores that create a sense of inner peace? Bierly said that story provides a perfect opportunity to discuss the nature of happiness.
“When in our our lives have we felt that we were happy, that we were in paradise?” he said. “What happened to make us lose those feelings? Those are the sorts of things we discuss.”
While Bierly fell in love with “Star Trek” through the original adventures of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock, he finds more fertile theological ground in the later series. “Deep Space Nine,” for example, had an ongoing storyline about Capt. Benjamin Sisko facing prophecies of his pivotal role in an alien religion.
The concept of predestination was almost Calvinist, Bierly said. “It speaks to having a calling and what we are meant to do in life,” he said.
Bierly began exploring strange new worlds as a young boy with the help of a cardboard box and an old typewriter. They substituted for the helm and navigation consoles on the bridge of the Enterprise when he and his brothers had their own interstellar adventures. The captain sat in a beanbag chair.
“It was fun being the captain,” he said. “You got to tell people what to do. However, it was more fun to man the conn.”
He first encountered “Star Trek” when it aired in reruns Saturday nights on Portland’s Channel 12.
“That was actually what I shared with my dad,” he said. “Instead of baseball, we had ‘Star Trek.’”
By the time he was in high school, Bierly discovered “Deep Space Nine.” And the show hooked him immediately.
“In high school, my was best friend was African-American, and so was Capt. Ben Sisko on ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,’” he said. “It was really cool to have my friend reflected in the show.”
However, Bierly said there were deeper reasons to like the show.
“’Deep Space Nine’ was also the first ‘Star Trek’ series that solidly introduced the concept of serial storylines,” he said. “The universe didn’t reboot at the end of the episode. It showed that the things we do, the choices we make, have consequences well into the future.”
His love of the show made its way into the church in 2009.
The music and small groups minister at the church, Bierly attended a planning retreat with the rest of the church staff. Everyone wrote ideas on Post-It notes during a brainstorming session.
Almost on a lark, the resident Trekkie suggested examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of “Star Trek.” After all, several sets of “Star Trek” programs used a similar conflict between the alien Bajorans and Cardassians as a metaphor for the Middle East.
Bierly said he never really expected anyone to take his idea seriously. “It was like a No. 23 idea, right behind shaving a sheep for charity,” he recalled.
But the classes have since become a fixture at the church, with each discussion taking on a life of its own.
Bierly said one of the first classes this year will examine the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode in which the crew finds a planet protected by a superior alien intelligence whom the planet’s inhabitants regard as God.
The planet’s residents randomly select small geographic areas on an equally random schedule where any violation of the law — no matter how small — is punished by execution. Naturally, one of the crew members — that Wesley Crusher kid everyone finds annoying — steps on the grass and is marked for death.
The local deity supports this harsh and unyielding penal system, raising all sorts of moral and religious questions.
It promises to be a fun night, Bierly said. “I have no idea where the conversation is going to go. I think it’s going to be about crime and punishment.”
Bierly enjoys “Doctor Who,” “Star Wars” and other popular science fiction epics, but said he keeps coming back to “Star Trek.”
“It’s the concept of peace and justice for the betterment of all,” he said. “The ideals of the Federation are worth striving for.
“Not that I think the United States is the United Federation of Planets. We are more like the Ferengi. It’s a profit-driven society. It’s about controlling people through money.”
Bierely admitted that’s a fairly liberal attitude in a denomination often associated with conservative, fundamentalist Christianity. Nonetheless, he said, there is more to Baptists than thundering Southern preachers spouting fire and brimstone. Many concepts considered “liberal” started with the Baptist church.
“Do you like the concept of separation of church and state? You can thank the Baptists for that,” he said, referring to Roger Williams, who founded the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island — the first Baptist church in America.
Williams, in many ways, was a man ahead of his time. At the very least, Bierly said, he wasn’t a prisoner of his time, which reminds him of a “Star Trek” theme.
Bierly said he is particularly fond of episodes that deal with the nature of time.
The episode “Blink of an Eye” traps the crew of “Star Trek Voyager” above a planet where time is accelerated. While only a few days pass for the crew, the planet below goes through thousands of years of evolution. As the aliens evolve, they come to worship the starship.
“I like the episodes where the characters are unstuck in time,” Bierly said. “I think that relates to being unstuck in our lives.”
Time distortions are a popular theme in “Star Trek” stories. So are members of the various crews being mistaken for deities.
Capt. Kirk was the first, mistaken for a god known as Kirok in “The Paradise Syndrome.” Capt. Picard is later mistaken for a god in the “Next Generation” episode “Who Watches the Watchers?” And in the 2013 movie “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the Enterprise crew once again find themselves worshipped as gods.
No one ever appreciates the adulation, of course.
When Picard is mistaken for a god, an anthropologist suggests he play along, but the captain is outraged.
“Your report describes how rational these people are,” Picard angrily responses. “Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural.
“Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No!”
On the surface, “Star Trek” would seem antithetical to religion.
Even an animated Saturday morning series showed the crew defending a thinly veiled Lucifer from religious zealots. And in another episode, the crew encounters the Greek god Apollo who demands to be worshiped.
“Mankind has no need for gods,” Kirk says. “We’ve outgrown you. You ask for something we can no longer give.”
Yet Bierly sees another, more spiritual, side to “Star Trek.” When Picard is mistaken for a god, he tries to remedy the situation by showing his would-be followers his starship and explaining that he and the crew are just more scientifically advanced mortals.
That doesn’t really settle the matter, Bierly said. “They still believe,” he said. “There is still that spiritual connection.”
That, he added, is the part of the show that allows Christians to connect with it on a religious level.
“‘Star Trek’ is a vehicle to address the big questions,” he said.
Additional information may be obtained by e-mailing Bierly at jpbierly@gmail.com
