The Red Cross of Jesus
On Recovering the Lifeblood of the Church
by Russell D. Moore
American Christianity is far less bloody than it used to be. Songs like “Power in the Blood” or “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” or “Are You Washed in the Blood?” are still sung in some places, but fewer and fewer, and there aren’t many newer songs or praise choruses so focused on blood. The Cross, yes; redemption, yes; but blood, rarely.
And this is not only a Protestant phenomenon. Roman Catholics—centered as they are on the Eucharist—often seem to go out of their way to speak of the “real presence” of Jesus in the elements, without going so far as to mention that this presence is believed to be that of his body and blood, as well as soul and divinity. Even Catholic communion hymns, I’m told, prefer terms like “the Cup” to “the Blood.”
We often justify our embarrassment about the bloodiness of Christianity by appealing to our missiological impulses. We are, after all, seeking to persuade a post-Christian culture of the attractiveness of the way of Christ. What could be more repulsive, even sickening, to a clean, antiseptic society than talk of splattered blood? (Some of the Christian responses to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ were of just this sort.) Ironically, contemporary Christianity grows more and more bloodless while the communities around us become bloodier than ever.
First Cut
Look, for example, at the newest trend in mass-marketed romance novels: vampires. The industry has identified a profitable female fantasy: having one’s blood savagely drained by a man who cannot die. Erika Tsang, a senior editor for Avon Books, explained to Time magazine: “It’s that fantasy about taming the bad boy, and you can’t get any worse than a vampire.” She goes on to elaborate: “They do suck blood, but it’s a very erotic process.”
Indeed so. The novels, with titles such as Dark Secret and Desire After Dark, repeat all the clichés and forced dialogue of “regular” romance novels, with the added hint of something dark, animalistic, and blood-drenched. It’s the sense of danger that someone somewhere—maybe your mysterious lover—really wants in your veins and not just your petticoats. In the novel Dark Secret, the protagonist swoons as her vampire lover laps up blood from her cut wrist, thus replenishing his life. “The intimacy of it sent heat curling through her body.”
The appeal of the vampire-romance trend isn’t limited to suburban housewives with a taste for the paranormal. Vampire novels are also marketed to homosexual men, most notably through a series penned by Michael Schiefelbein, a lapsed Catholic who spent ten years studying for the priesthood. Not surprisingly, the former seminarian’s novels include repeated references to the Eucharist, comparing the feeding of churchmen on the body and blood of Jesus to the feeding of vampires on one another, for life and being.
In these novels, it is as though florid descriptions of kissing, touching, and even sexual intercourse cannot convey the intimacy the readers seek. The same search for intimacy is found in the vampire subculture of American youth. Journalist Christine Wicker in her book Not in Kansas Anymore describes the profoundly sexual aspect of young Americans who identify as vampires, some even feeding on human blood.
At a “Vampire and Victims Ball,” Wicker observes a “vampire priestess” sucking from the wounded wrist of her consort. The taste of his blood, the priestess tells the journalist, connects her with the very life of her lover. As she puts it, “What’s more intimate than that?”
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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