Reflections

by Pastor Doug Kings

The British actor Patrick Stewart already had a long and honored stage career (two Olivier awards and a Tony nomination) when he was offered an American television role. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry asked Stewart to play the role of the new starship Enterprise commander, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, in a revival of the earlier TV series to be called Star Trek: The Next GenerationIn a recent interview with NPR, Steward admitted he accepted the offer assuming the show wouldn’t last long.

I had learned that the contract that I was being offered was for six years, but I was told we would be lucky to make it through the first season. I remember one actor saying to me, “Sign up for this. Do six months of work. Make some money for the first time in your life. Get well known, get a suntan and go home.” And I thought, “Yeah. That doesn’t sound too bad. I could live with that.” And, of course, our first series lasted seven seasons. And then we made four feature films.

Today, Stewart (now Sir Patrick Stewart) is world renowned, though many may only know him as “Picard.” The international success of Next Generation (1987-1994) surprised nearly everyone involved with the show. As he tells NPR interviewer, Ashley Martin, the atheist Stewart came to understand the show’s deep connection with its audience as a spiritual one. Here is their remarkable exchange:

Martin: I talk to a lot of people about spirituality and about the value of spiritual communities, which I think are when people who have similar values gather together and have or seek transcendent experiences. And I think Star Trek, in all of its incarnations, represents that to a lot of fans. It is a spiritual world. They treat it with religious reverence. Have you encountered that? Do you get it?

Stewart: Yes. I see it very, very clearly and very strongly. It was about truth and fairness and honesty and respect for others, no matter who they were or what strange alien creature they looked like. That was immaterial. They were alive. And if they needed help, Jean Luc Picard and his crew, his team, were there to give it. In a sense, we were ministers. And I have heard now so many times from individuals who have been honest enough and brave enough to tell me aspects of their life, of their health, of their mental health. And how it was all saved and improved by watching every week.

The phenomenon of the “spiritual but not religious” has gotten a lot of attention and I have written about it many times. Prompted by this interest, Pew Research just released its first study of “spirituality” to try to better understand what people mean by the term. It was while reading NPR’s story about the Pew study that I came across their earlier Patrick Stewart piece and I think they are directly related.

According to Pew, 7 in 10 US adults consider themselves “spiritual.” Nearly half the population say they are both spiritual and religious, while 22% identify as spiritual but not religious. 21% say they are neither spiritual or religious and a curious 10% claim to be religious but not spiritual.

Of course, in surveys like this there is no assumption that everyone has the same understanding of what “spiritual” means. The survey definition that got the highest level of agreement (74%) was “being connected to something bigger than myself.” Vague perhaps, but not without significance. That notion of connection showed up in many individual responses as well. It is what theologians would likely call “transcendence”, the belief in and experience of belonging to and being a part of a larger whole. In other words, I’m not alone, I’m not just in this for myself, and what I do in life contributes to the meaning and purpose of the world.

While science fiction developed in parallel to the rise of science, it did so also at a time of rising conflict and division in the world. Science fiction usually takes scientific advancements for granted. It’s the challenge of the advancement of human relationships that typically provides these stories with their tension and meaning.

Star Trek in its various iterations, and like many similar stories, portrayed a world of meaning and purpose, even amid misunderstanding and conflict. Audience members saw people (and aliens) rise above their self-centeredness and prejudice and became hopeful that such could be true in their worlds, as well.

Importantly, Patrick Stewart recognizes that Star Trek’s audience became a community. “Trekkies” found support in knowing others shared their experience which included for many of them, as Stewart says, a type of salvation. There was a “gospel” that Stewart and other cast members were “ministering” to their viewers.

NPR’s Ashley Martin above defined spiritual communities as places where “people who have similar values gather together and have or seek transcendent experiences.” Or in the words of the Pew survey, they are places where people experience or seek connection with something larger than their individual selves. And with that experience, many experience a healing, an awakening, a renewing, or simply, salvation.

I’ve written before that I believe the church needs to get out of the salvation business. I should refine that and say the church needs to redefine salvation. It needs to stop thinking of salvation as something one “gets” by jumping through the right liturgical and doctrinal hoops. In fact, the church needs to be all about salvation.

It needs to be about creating communities of transcendence and connection without being hung up on language and ritual. The church needs to be a community where people are welcomed, appreciated, understood, and introduced to a Reality beyond words but not beyond experience. Guided to discover a timeless Truth and a Love known throughout the ages yet also present Here and Now, for and within each and everyone of us.

Blessings in your life and ministry.