Fallout and Exvangelical Parental Trauma
Hello Tolkien Poppers!
Today, I bring you a more religious take on a beloved series as opposed to a Tolkienian one. I was inspired by a conversation I had with the folks at Systematic Geekology, where we explore theological themes in the Fallout TV series. You can check it out here:
Although I will be exploring the Fallout TV series without mentioning Tolkien, making connections between the points here and Morgoth’s relation to Ilúvatar and Arda as well as to The Scouring of the Shire will not be difficult. You shall have to do the rest ;) I hope that you enjoy this post. This one is a little different, so please let me know what you think! I would love to hear your own experience with Fallout and any “exvangelical” stories you have.
Also, this post contains spoilers for the show!
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Now onto the rest of the article!
As we trudge deeper into an election year in the United States, I’m thankful for the entertainment distractions along the way to November. We’ve been given The Acolyte, Echo, and Netflix’s adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. And we haven’t even gotten through the summer yet! The Lord of the Rings film trilogy is being re-released this month - the extended editions no less! Another film, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut will also experience a re-release for its 25th anniversary. We also have Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus, Venom 3, and a handful of other fantastic movies coming out. I call these series and movies “distractions” and they can be that, but popular art reflects the issues and questions that many of us wrestle with in their particular context. Watching and engaging with movies and TV have the potential to renew our vision of reality and better equip us to be better people.
One show in particular that had surprising themes of hope and love in a post-apocalyptic world was the Fallout television series. We’re introduced to the main character Lucy who is a Vault Dweller. She was born and raised in Vault 33 post fallout event, where everything outside the Vaults is a Wasteland. Here, she lives a life of an idealized version of the American person: hard working, cares for her community, and uses her ambition to better herself and others. Lucy’s life lends itself to the artificial background of a Midwestern farm, technologically projected onto the ceiling and walls of the center of Vault where citizens of Vault 33 hold community meetings, meals, and elections. Vault 33 shares a neighbor: Vault 32. Lucy is approved to be married off to someone from Vault 32 to help repopulate and continue the life built for her to the next generation.
This is all curated by her father Hank, who is the overseer of the Vault. Played by sci-fi legend Kyle MacLachlan, he comes across as a selfless leader and caring father. Throughout the show, we see Hank being the arbiter of virtue that Lucy embodies. Hank encourages his daughter to be the best she can be for herself and others. During the day of Lucy’s wedding ceremony, Vault 33 opens its doors to the dwellers of Vault 32. Lucy is married and she and her new partner head to their living quarters to seal the deal. After what seems to be a great lay between the new couple, Lucy hears gunshots and screams coming from outside her home. She immediately grabs her Pip-Boy and engages the radiation detector and discovers that her partner is pouring with radiation. He’s a surface dweller. Quickly, Lucy figures out that they have infiltrated the Vault somehow to pillage.
After brutally dispatching of her “first,” she grabs a tranquilizer dart gun and goes on to being a hero. Although her, Hank, and some other Vault Dwellers fight diligently, some are killed and the survivors are taken prisoner. As Lucy and other members of Vault 33 lay captive, the leader of the surface dwellers makes herself known, who we find out later is an infamous leader in the Wasteland named Moldaver. It is clear that Hank knows this leader. She makes Hank choose between his daughter’s life or some of the members of Vault 33. He quickly chooses Lucy by locking her in a closet, out of harm’s reach. A surface dweller shoots Hank with the tranquilizer gun, Moldaver goes to the glass window of the closet and tells Lucy that she looks just like her mother, and the surface dwellers leave, kidnapping Hank.
These events launch Lucy “out of the cave” so to speak, where she goes to embody what she’s learned from her father by attempting to save him. Others in the Vault try to convince her to stay in the Vault where it’s safe. Lucy refuses and leaves the Vault on her own accord. She has entered the Wasteland. Along the way, rather than kill everything that looks threatening (which is just about how everyone on the surface postures themselves), she practices The Golden Rule. This is the rule that all of us are familiar with: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Where this rule does cause her some hardship, it ultimately makes her some allies, saves her life, and even leads her to the destination of her father, who she learned this posture from.
As Lucy makes her way through Moldaver’s fortress with the assistance of her companion The Ghoul and the Brotherhood of Steel, where an army of her followers are stationed, she encounters Maldaver and her father, who is caged. Strangely, there is also a rabid female ghoul chained to a table nearby. Moldaver reveals that Hank is actually a member of Vault-Tec, who were part of curating the fallout and developed the Vaults to make money and allow investors to experiment on large portions of the population. Additionally, his actions led to the death of his mother and her transformation into a ghoul, the very one chained to the table. This is confirmed through a series of flashbacks from The Ghoul’s life and the lack of denial from her father. Lucy is absolutely shocked and devastated that the man who raised her in the values of love, common wellbeing, and doing what’s right had lied to her entire life by pulling the strings at the cost of millions of peoples’ lives while he lived comfortable and safe. Hank escapes, occupies one of the Brotherhood’s power armor and gives Lucy the choice to join him. She holds a gun at Hank and pulls the trigger, killing her ghoul mother. Hank flies away to New Vegas and Lucy and the Ghoul decide to journey together to save The Ghoul’s family and for Lucy to face her dad. Love, not revenge, is what drives these companions at the end of Season 1.
Lucy’s was taught virtuous values and a positive posture towards the overall wellbeing of our neighbors by her father while he, arguably once genuinely idealistic about the future of Vault-Tec and the world, actually held conflicting beliefs about the world and its destruction for his gain along with those who believe in the same cause and are among the ranks of Vault-Tec. As I reflected on this aspect of the story, I felt a feeling of resonance with the disenchantment of Lucy’s upbringing in the Vault. While I watched the two episode premiere of The Acolyte, I learned that one of the main characters named Osha was a former Jedi padawan and left the order. The story is not finished, but I was reminded of how many in religion - particularly American Christian spaces are leaving their churches. I made an immediate connection to Lucy and Hank, and I realized that what I felt was a similar disenchantment with the churches that I grew up in and have actively participated in because of their complicity towards the harm of others in the United States and rest of the world or their full-on support of institutional and systemic oppression of others.
Those who have left these churches or attend with their heads down and mouths shut are typically referred to as “exvangelicals,” meaning that people who are experiencing a disconnect with their former or current religious spaces are largely found in an American Evangelical context. This is not the whole story because Mainline Protestants also play a role in this exodus. For more info on Mainline participation in Christian Nationalism and other harmful expressions of Christianity, listen to an interview with Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood about their new book entitled Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism here:
. I make this point because it is easy to look at conservative religious spaces that house right wing political beliefs and shout “Christian Nationalism!” However, liberal churches have also contributed and continue to contribute to Christian Nationalism through left and center left politics, which has also caused many to leave these communities.
Like a majority of Christians and former Christians in the U.S. I was brought up in a conservative Christian church setting, so this will be the perspective I will be approaching this religious and cultural connection to Lucy and her relationship with Hank in Fallout. Many conservative Evangelicals began their exit from their churches because of the blatant embrace of Donald Trump. Yes, yes, I can hear some saying “Biden is just as bad!” or “What about Bush and the Middle East?” I’m not making a case for either Biden or any other political leader who has led the charge on horrendous actions with the use of the American taxpayer’s dollar. I only want to describe a phenomenon within American Evangelicalism and conservative Protestantism and the perspectives of those who have left those spaces or are reluctantly staying put.
Christian Nationalism was baked into my religious upbringing, but I had great people who invested time and effort to teach me how to be a good person through a spirit of love inspired by the Christian Gospel. There are many that have experienced harm and I don’t want to go further without recognizing that, but many of us - especially in privileged positions - had a great experience, even if many of us have moved away from those beliefs or congregations. For example, I was taught to feed the hungry, give shelter to those without homes, use our resources to help immigrants and those who were not born in the U.S., and treat everyone with respect. And guess what? My church and community did that! We had an active AA group that met regularly at our church and held lock-ins during holidays to ensure our alcoholic families and neighbors had a safe place to focus on their health. Our church fed those who couldn’t afford to feed themselves or their families, no matter who they were. Even though Christian Nationalism was present, at least the equating of being a good citizen with our being Christian resembled something that benefited others! (you know, minus the racism, homophobia, and misogyny)
To mine and countless others’ surprise, the full-blown embrace and upholding of a political leader like Donald Trump baffled us entirely. Seeing a man who blatantly bullied anyone who wasn’t a Republican man and bragged about his active (and potential) sexcapades, assault included, and the quick dismissal of these behaviors by our conservative leaders and community who instilled moral uprightness in us caused many of us to scratch our heads. What else was going on? Over the years, the underbelly of American conservative Christian spaces slowly began to be pulled into the light of day. What happened behind the scenes was now out in the open, making the entry point for investigation easier for journalists, historians, and others. The most famous example that blazed the trail for this sort of inquiry was historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s bestseller Jesus and John Wayne, where she traces the line from early conservative political and popular culture in the U.S. and their being bedfellows with conservative Christianity to the phenomenon of Christians surrendering their allegiance to Trump as a divinely appointed dictator.
A contemporary example of someone who has documented their disenchantment with Evangelicalism in particular, deconstruction, and commentary on the current state of conservative Christian affairs in the U.S. is Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals, which produces content from a Christian exvangelical perspective that calls out hypocritical and evil American Christian action. This video of Tim reacting to a former pastor’s video discussing why he left his church is a great place to survey the common ground that many former conservative Christians have regarding the causes of their leaving: Why this Pastor Left His Church | The New Evangelicals
Evangelicals and other Protestants who have embraced fascism and the indifference to sexual assault, the killing of innocent people in the U.S. and abroad, and actively contributing to a net loss of wellbeing in people’s lives are like Hank and the members of Vault-Tec. At first, there is this aim to progress society through good manners, high morals, and the development of technology and enterprise. Then, the lack of self-awareness towards cultural dominance leads to the full-blown closing of a fist of power, used to crush others that do not belong to the “right” places - and even those that do!
Like Lucy, I observe people I once looked up to as people of character (and some of these people still do good things and are good people!) and can only cringe in disgust as they actively blend their faith with the values of imperial power, making much of what I was taught hollow with no substantial evidence to back these teachings up. Love and The Golden Rule prevail, not because Christian churches in America or Vault-Tec make them so but because these are the very values that lead to the flourishing of every human and non-human citizen of this planet. How will we proceed on our journey through the religious wasteland?
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