In this three-part series, Dr. Kathy Lin explores Star Wars as Buddhist-Christian synthesis. We will release one post per week in this series beginning in late October.
Post #2: How are the Jedi Christian?
How are the Jedi Christian? I’ll caveat that this is not my scholarly area, so I’ll invite Christian theologians to weigh in here. One thing I notice is the theme of a clear binary regarding good and evil, a legacy of a Manichaean divide between light and dark. For instance, the pitting of a “Jedi” order against the “Sith” as a kind of bifurcation between good and evil strikes me as foreign to Buddhist discourse, but features quite centrally in Christian discourse. The repeated return, indeed, the indestructibility of the Sith – the repeated instantiation of a Sith Lord from Darth Sidious, to Vader, to Snoke, to Kylo Ren – strikes me as a Christian doctrinal point as well, in the insistence of sin as woven into the fabric of our lives as the sorts of bodily creatures we are, marred by a cosmic fall. But woven into our lives is also the perennial instantiation of a leader of the light: a Yoda, an Obi-wan, a Luke, a Rey. There is a symbolism of transcendence and immanence in combination happening here – Platonic good in the Jedi; Platonic evil in the Sith, embodied by specific carriers or inheritors of each respective path. We can observe this transcendence-in-immanence in the Rise of Skywalker, when the Sith Lord Palpatine actually wants Rey to kill him, and orchestrates a ritual sequence for the continuity of the Sith. As he tells Rey: “Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me. You will be Empress. We will be one.” But Rey, having chosen the Jedi path, succeeds in summoning all of her Jedi ancestors. In her final moments of confrontation with Palpatine, she hears the voices of her Jedi forbears. The voice of Qui-Gon tells her: “Every Jedi who ever lived, lives in you.”
Jedi vs. Sith - Credit to Wookieepedia and to Lucasfilm, The Phantom Menace
I also take it as a Christian doctrine embodied in the Jedi, that personal salvific redemption is possible through love and forgiveness. We can see this in the Luke-Vader-Palpatine confrontation in The Return of the Jedi. In that scene, our protagonist Luke lays down his arms in a non-violent confrontation of Darth Vader and Palpatine: “I will not fight you, Father” Luke declares. He is willing to martyr himself in commitment to his non-violent stance, and in doing so subjects himself to Palpatine’s incredible force. In the throes of his martyrdom – in a scene reminiscent of a certain scene on the Cross, witnessed by another Luke -- Luke calls out: “Father, please ... help me.” It takes until this very late hour, the last possible minute, for Vader to relent and turn toward Luke and the light. Luke carries a theological redemptive hope for his father; and that hope comes to fruition in Vader’s deathbed conversion. This salvific scene of martyrdom replays itself in the Rise of Skywalker, when Rey refuses Palpatine’s path of anger and hatred, telling him: “All you want is for me to hate, but I won’t. Not even you.” This non-violent commitment draws the fury of Palpatine, who proceeds to draw the life-force from Rey. In a culminating scene, Rey and Ben Solo are seen martyr-like, on their knees, for the moment helpless against a Palpatine drawing the life-force from them.
There are several moments in the Star Wars universe that are recognizably Christian and not Buddhist – and hence why I say that the Jedi should be conceived of as a Buddhist-Christian synthesis, not as one or the other. As one example, Anakin’s mother is cast as a Virgin Mary figure – Anakin’s conception is mysterious, and he has no father.[1] This idea of “immaculate conception” does not cohere with Buddhist cosmological concepts. (The Star Wars universe can’t quite get behind the idea of ‘immaculate conception’ either – and ends up explaining Anakin’s birth in very materialist terms indeed – as a function of midi-chlorian micro-organisms that are the material basis for the Force).[2] I take it also that the “Force Ghosts” seen in Return of the Jedi – pictured as blue floating things – operate on a Christian picture of ‘soul’ as separable from matter. Buddhist cosmological doctrine, with its insistence on a kind of mind-matter or mind-body supervenience, would not be inclined to picture ‘soul’ as a blue, floating, substance-entity. (This same insistence would also entail a refusal of a midi-chlorian-based, strictly material explanation of the Force). Buddhist thought is concerned with the nature of consciousness or sentience, which is importantly different from a conception of soul as separable from matter. Finally, as an observation of interest, we might note that some of the greatest battle scenes between the Jedi and Sith – Qui-Gon vs. Darth Maul vs. in The Phantom Menace, Yoda vs. Darth Sidious in Revenge of the Sith – are scored with choral music. It is beyond my expertise to track down which century of possibly Gregorian chant this music derives from – but perhaps some theologians can help to say.
[1] The Phantom Menace (1999)
[2] The Phantom Menace (1999)
Acknowledgements:
Thanks go to Laura Lo for her collaboration in watching all nine movies in one fell swoop.
Contributed by Kathy Lin. Lin holds a PhD in theological and religious studies from Georgetown University, and is currently a VAP at Oberlin College. To find out more about her work, visit www.nankathylin.com.