You Don't Fix Faith, Faith Fixes You: Religion in Firefly and the Expanse

This paper examines the role of religion in two science fiction settings: Firefly and the Expanse. These settings both offer rich resources for considering how contemporary religion may evolve in a future world. Each imagines a world in which humanity has begun to colonize other worlds, but still remains rooted in social and cultural traditions familiar to us today. Religion remains a vital part of many people's lives in both of these settings, and yet, each imagines how religion may change in the face of a changing understanding of the universe.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, imagined that, when humanity had reached the stars, it would no longer have need of religion. Despite occasional gestures toward its continuing existence, particularly in the original series, he believed that in the future, religion no longer be seen as relevant or rational. By contrast, both Firefly and The Expanse posit religion as an ongoing element of human life even in the far future.

In the world of Firefly, humanity has long since abandoned "earth that was" for a new solar system. Christianity and Buddhism nevertheless remain prominent religious traditions, embodied respectively by the characters of Shepherd Book and Inara. Each reflects a form of faith that has changed and transformed in the face of new cultural circumstances, while remaining recognizable. Book is a Christian pastor (a "shepherd") while Inara is a "companion," a sex worker for whom Buddhism is central to her spirituality. In the world of Firefly, such disparate understandings of faith and morality are able to exist side by side with one another while retaining their own integrity.

In The Expanse, various religious traditions are represented, most prominently Mormonism and Methodism. Of those, Methodism is the most fully developed through the character of Pastor Anna. Through her, the novels examine themes of love and forgiveness, as well as the challenges of speaking about faith in a world in which the fundamental pillars of experience have been called into question. Like Firefly, The Expanse imagines a future world in which religious characters are capable of respecting and recognizing the validity of other faiths, even as their own faith expressions remain recognizable to contemporary viewers and readers.

I will argue that the optimistic picture that these settings offer regarding the future of religion on the one hand provides a useful rejoinder to the Gene Roddenberry position that religion will ultimately be rendered obsolete, and on the other hand are too optimistic with respect to the future of religious pluralism and tolerance. What neither setting explores in sufficient depth is the contemporary experience of religious conflict and violence. To be sure, there is conflict and violence to go around in both settings, but not at the hands of religion.

This may reflect the fundamentally marginal role that religion plays in both societies. There is no religious violence because religion isn't important enough to commit violence over. If so, then this is hardly an improvement on the Roddenberry hypothesis, and may even validate it.

It may, on the other hand, reflect the view of the authors that religion may remain, but religious conflict will be something that humanity moves beyond. If so, little about the rest of these settings would lead one to believe that humanity society will evolve in such a way.

In the final analysis, what these settings offer is an opportunity to think along with their creators about the role that religion plays in the maintenance and evolution of society. Far from seeing religion as an unnecessary cultural appendage, both Joss Whedon and James S. A. Corey view religion as an indelible, and often positive, force in human culture, and seek to recognize it as another way of being human that will remain far into our future.