Portrait of Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell

Faith and Frankenstein

Wednesday March 14 2018

The Rev David McCarthy reflects on lessons for the church from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published 200 years ago this year.

The desert of ice cracks and upon a splintered piece the broken Frankenstein appears. Not the Creature, but Victor, ‘The Modern Prometheus’ of Shelley’s caution. Rescued by a ship on its own voyage of discovery, he tells his story: a fanatic’s obsession with creating life. 
In misery he recounts the misery he has forged and his tale has never left our imagination. Even when we have distorted it, the icon has still remained.

Perhaps it’s because Frankenstein touches a nerve; a nerve which runs 
deep within us. Identity, Love, Power, Responsibility, Good, Evil, Revenge, Forgiveness, Fanaticism and Pride are among the fibres entwined in this story – words from today’s headlines. Mary Shelley weaves a story which pushes us to ask profound, uncomfortable questions.

When reading Frankenstein, we wonder about who we are and what motivates us; and like the Creature we say:
 ‘As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and conditions.... What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?’ (Chapter 15, page 99, Wordsworth Classics 1999 edition.)

It is not only in the Creature’s search for identity that we are invited to ask these questions, it ripples out from the destructive blindness of Victor’s fanaticism. Power allures him: he wants to be a creator of life, of a new race; and scientific knowledge is the only way to achieve this. In this devotion he sacrifices love, the lives of others and his own sanity. The story encourages us not to sidestep the complexity of life: it pushes us to look beyond cold rationalism if we are to begin to understand and embrace the warmth of reality.

The Creature in groping to understand his nature portrays himself as an innocent corrupted by the rejection and wickedness of others. In this he justifies his lust for savage revenge, yet he craves something deeper: companionship and the love of one like himself. He offers Frankenstein a truce: if Victor provides him with a female companion, then he will quell his violence.

Critical questions are contained in this dialogue. Are we born good? Why, at times, do we choose evil? What is justice? What is mercy? What does forgiveness mean? What does it cost? Why do we crave love?

Story ... here we need to pause. It would be easy to engage with all that arises in ‘Frankenstein’ in a dispassionate, theoretical way; yet this is a story, not a treatise. Stories call us to feel as well as to think, to live and not just to speculate. So, not only does the story of Victor present us with questions, it reminds us that we live in a Story and that our answers must be lived out in its telling. The illusion of the simplistic is damned and we, in engaging with the questions that arise from ‘Frankenstein’, are not spared the ache of digging a deep foundation to build a high tower; a tower from which we can see far and live accordingly. To be at the vanguard of this toil and this adventure is the Church’s privilege.

‘Frankenstein’ is a great story, but it is not only its details which cause us to ponder. How we have reinvented the story and how Mary Shelley revised the 1831 edition also provokes us to take an honest look at ourselves.

The Creature in ‘Frankenstein’ is agile, intelligent and articulate. He is far from Boris Karloff’s lumbering mute in the 1931 James Whale film. Yet, when we hear the word ‘Frankenstein’ we often think not of Victor, but the Creature and when we think of the Creature we think of the cinematic version. Why is this? One answer might be in terms of exposure: more will have seen Karloff’s image than will have read the book. However, this begs the question of why in the first place the change was made?

These are critical questions for us as church. So, for instance, when we use or hear words such as God, Jesus, Church what images come to mind? What is authentic? What is a culturally sensitive imagining? What is a distortion? How do we recognise, affirm and develop that which is good and challenge that which is destructive? How do inherited expressions of church avoid being entangled and entrapped in the comfortable cul-de-sac of domesticated tradition? How do fresh expressions of church avoid the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of
an illusion of being church when in reality only being a reflection of fashion?

Again, as in the story itself, identity is at the core. So easily we place our value and our understanding of who we are in the wrong place; easily we are beguiled by an icon, an institution, a process, a trend or a group which comforts us or which we hope to control or use. In our own way, we become fanatical. A ‘madness’ descends when a supposed bedrock of our Identity is challenged or disrupted; we feel vulnerable in ‘our own skins’. Our response differs little if our corroding anchor is a set of practices or a cultural moment.

The bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein is a catalyst for us to go back, not only to Mary Shelley’s original story, but as we try to understand our own identity, to the good news of Jesus; to understand what is authentic and then live our true story today.

Finally, why the revised edition (which many see as more conservative in tone than the 1818 original)? A number of writers have commented on the change in Mary Shelley’s experience and circumstances between 1816, when she began the story, and 1831. In 1816, she was living with the poet Shelley, who had left his wife to be with her; by 1831 three 
of her four children had died and she was widowed. Society was more suspicious of the radical and Frankenstein, which was significant for her reputation, could be seen by some to be aligned with less conservative elements in political and philosophical thought.

This raises important issues for us as Church and as local church communities. We do need to be sensitive to change and the contexts in which we find ourselves: we need fresh expressions of church. But, we also need inherited expressions of church to be no less radical – they must not become domesticated by the expectations of society or traditionalism. Church in all its expressions must honour, live out and share the relationships which we have through Jesus: relationships which allow us to be church. We must never back away from the Kingdom of God and from expressing the character of this radical future in our present moment.

The Rev David McCarthy is the Church of Scotland's Fresh Expressions Development Worker

A longer version of this feature appeared in the March edition of Life and Work. Subscribe here.