Mother Abigail’s God...

My favourite apocalyptic movie of all time is a 4 part mini-series based on Stephen King’s novel, The Stand. What I find very interesting about it is the overarching storyline is a classic story of good against evil and there are religious undertones, but the “saved” members of society are not necessarily religious.

The movie focuses on life in the United States after a super flu (known as “Captain Trips”) kills all but a small fraction of the population. The survivors of the flu are drawn, through dreams, to either Mother Abigail (the prophet and true believer in God) or to Randall Flagg (the demon). Flagg, and the collection of “evil” people, set up shop in Las Vegas (an interesting, but expected, location considering the nickname of “sin city”). Mother Abigail brings her people to Boulder, Colorado and creates the Boulder Free Zone. A small number of the “good” people will eventually be sent to go to Las Vegas to “stand” against the evil, and this act will eliminate the “evil” from the US, and leave a society of only the good.

My favourite part of the story, however, is that the band of good people are not selected as good because they believe in God – in fact, I think initially most of them don’t. At one point, one of the characters who is asked to go to Las Vegas to “stand” even states that they will have to trust “Mother Abigail’s God” because it had brought them this far and they had survived. The people selected are all a little imperfect – there is a man who is cognitively delayed, a deaf mute, an unwed mother – but all the people are good people who want to do good things, faith aside.

In the class on apocalypse themes in pop culture, we talked about the secular becoming sacred, and the sacred becoming secular. I think this mini-series from the very outset strives to be both – there is a clear distinction of good and evil, and God’s presence is felt throughout the film, but it is not exclusive. God’s presence, through Mother Abigail, becomes the beacon for the good people to follow, and he does not ask for their unconditional acceptance of Him – instead, He accepts them into this new society, and the world restarts again as a cooperative community.