Of the three texts dealing explicitly with religion, Battlestar Galactica is unique in that its two religions, Christianity and polytheistic deity worship, are perfectly familiar to human audiences. Station Eleven and Two Boats both illustrate the perversion of religion in the wake of widespread disaster; doomsday cults crop up all over the two texts. SE concerns itself primarily with the Prophet, who tells his followers that they remained on Earth for a reason, that they were the light, the pure. TB sees Matt interacting with members of the Guilty Remnant (silent chainsmokers who dress all in white; Mandel stole this detail for a peripheral cult in her story); if they were left behind for a reason, they care less for what it was than for the fact that they remain, when perhaps they shouldn't. In both cases pure Christianity has all but died; if the church cannot provide adequate explanation for tragedy on a global scale, people lose their faith. Matt is unique in that he clings to his fiercely; like Job, like the Cylons in one interpretation, his faith is all he has left to live for. His church, of course, personifies this, yet the story ends on a curiously hopeful note as he refuses to give the faith up when the GR take the house of it. There, too, the episode contains echoes of SE, and its final note of rebuilding. Where SE is optimistic, though, in Clark's vision of boats connecting humanity to itself, humanity REGAINING ITSELF, TB takes on a darker tone when we remember what Matt has done to keep his church: blackmail his sister, gamble his emergency funds, leave his comatose wife alone while he swans off playing hero, murder a man in cold blood. The people left behind are by no means perfect, and that can bode ill in a shattered world. Nor does adherence to a religious creed absolve one of sin, make one incapable of committing it. We see this with the Cylons, too, who manipulate and murder without a care despite their professed belief in God and his principles. Mandel's prophets and followers are some of the most violent people in the post-apocalyptic world. Violence and Matt Jamison go hand in hand in the episode; either he is being beaten or is doing the beating. What does it say about us, when even our codes that preach peace have such bloodied followings? We would do well to remember such tales in our own lives, in dealing with both Christian extremist groups and especially foreign Muslim ones. The code by no means makes the codifiers.
