The Twilight Series from a Christian Perspective, Part 1

Girl meets boy. Boy becomes obsessed with girl. Girl returns the favor. Boy turns out to be a vampire. Girl doesn’t mind as long as she can be with boy every moment of her life. This is a stereotypical, adolescent relationship (with the exception of the Dracula factor)! In Stephanie Meyer’s fast-paced Twilight series, obsessive love is the name of the game. The main character, Isabella “Bella” Swan, has never dated before she encounters the perfect-in-every-way Edward Cullen. What ensues is a highly charged romance that is sure to suck in every female heart longing for a little excitement and (apparently) clean fantasy. This review primarily considers the novels since they tell the story in far greater detail than the movie.

I first got interested in this series when one of my wife’s coworkers sent the books home for our teen girls to read. My wife is not naïve and asked me to read the books to evaluate them. When I told people that I was reading the series, I was amazed at the response. More than a few Christian women and teen girls had been following the series since the first volume, and many had read them multiple times. A friend told me that at her strict fundamental church, the series was all the rage among the girls in the youth group. Over the past few months, I have come to the conclusion that Twilight is only slightly less a craze among Christians than it is among unbelievers.

I once asked my wife why women are so drawn to Nicholas Sparks’s books The Notebook and A Walk to Remember. She replied that Sparks “seems to understand the heart of a woman.” That is, Sparks captures what John Eldredge (author of Wild at Heart and Captivating) says is the underlying desire of every woman—to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a heroic adventure, and to possess a beauty to unveil. In the Twilight series, Meyer has skillfully captured not only the heart of a woman but also the mind of a teen girl with all its insecurities, hopes, fears, and angst. To say that Twilight is interesting is far too mild—it’s simply enthralling. While it is hard to imagine many males being enchanted by the series (after all, we would have to compete with the incomparable Edward), girls and even adult women seem to be as obsessed with the books as Bella is with Edward. Meyer is, without question, a master at voicing the thoughts of adolescent girls in a way many can identify with (more about that later).

Many reviewers have praised the books for their lack of objectionable content. I can recall only one mild expletive in the second book (none were in the first), and as is widely known, there is no sexual content between any of the characters. Because he is a vampire and cannot risk accidentally nicking Bella with his razor-sharp teeth, Edward is loathe even to kiss Bella. But he does kiss her carefully on several occasions—with increasing passion and abandonment in each book. If the only criteria for a Christian acceptance of pop culture were the absence of profanity, sexual content, or violence, then Twilight would pass the test—at least unarguably on the first two points. The acceptability of the violence factor is debatable since Meyer doesn’t indulge readers with any extended graphic portrayals of blood violence.

The fact that Edward and Bella do not engage in sexual activity seems to be enough to warrant a stamp of approval from many Christians who defend the series. When Edward and Bella marry in the last book, Breaking Dawn, they are both virgins. This fact is only because of the danger, not because of any understanding that premarital sex is immoral. Some even praise Edward for his considerable restraint in not doing the one thing that is most bodily urgent to him—drinking Bella’s blood. The scent of her body and blood is a perfect match for Edward’s blood lust, and he must vigilantly guard against the monstrous nature that dwells within him. Edward’s defining moment comes at the end of the first book when a bad vampire attacks and bites Bella. To keep the poison from spreading into Bella’s body, Edward must suck Bella’s blood at the site of the wound. He does so only long enough to excise the poison. This event marks a great victory of self-control for Edward, and for some it symbolizes his commitment to chastity.

While the presence or absence of obvious objectionable content (profanity, sex, and violence) is certainly one factor in judging a work of culture, by itself it results in a rather naïve view of the effect works of culture have on the human heart. Both culture and the heart are much more complex than a simple formula of swear words and sex scenes. What a piece of literature (or a film) communicates indirectly is often more profound than the direct message captured in scenes and dialogue. What a work of culture promotes as normal and desirable—or abnormal and undesirable—is the crux of the matter. This, of course, is more subtle and open to some amount of interpretation, but there is no doubt that we read culture in approximately this way. It is popular for today’s anti-theists to point out the presence of objectionable elements in Scripture—rape, genocide, incest, and slavery—as if the mere presence of these elements makes the Bible an immoral cultural work. Christians, however, intuitively know that all these elements are condemned in Scripture and that their presence in the Bible is for the very purpose of showing them to be evil and undesirable. Therefore, what a work of culture promotes or marginalizes is often the greater message.

This kind of evaluation demands a closer look at the merits of the Twilight series. That the story (at least the first book) centers on obsession is undisputed (obsession continues in the other books, but action and suspense become an equal focus). Bella is somewhat of an outsider at her new school. Even when she makes friends, they tend to be annoying; they are typical high school students, and she seems to be more mature. Once Edward enters Bella’s life, her peers only seem to get in the way, and there is an unmistakable air of superiority about her. Bella’s entire life becomes consumed with Edward, but even more so with her own happiness; she is willing to displease Edward to ensure that they can be together for eternity. She is willing to do anything to be with Edward and cannot bear the thought of being away from him for even a moment. Edward reciprocates and with his supernatural powers is able to arrange his life to be with Bella every waking moment. He is even able to sneak unnoticed into Bella’s room at night and watch her while she sleeps. Once Bella discovers this fact, rather than being repulsed and feeling violated, she begs him to come every night. The two often lie in bed fully clothed while Bella sleeps.

I can only imagine that the lack of sexual contact in this setting is what leads so many Christian women to defend the beauty of such an arrangement. But I have to wonder what mother would want such a scene to be played out in her own daughter’s life and bedroom at age seventeen (or at any age, for that matter). The problem, of course, is that Meyer portrays this obsession as normal, natural, and beautiful. The scenes describing Edward and Bella’s fixation on each another are masterfully written to depict the kind of relationship many a young girl desires to have—a ridiculously handsome guy worships the ground she walks on and devotes his every waking moment to romancing her. And while this fantasy (and that is what it is) appeals to some legitimate desires hardwired into every female, the result is a twisted picture of love, romance, and worship. The problem is not that Edward and Bella are made for each other; the problem is that they idolize one another. The sense of idolatry is hard to miss. Edward is Bella’s whole world; there is nothing else. There is no balance, no sense of reality to this love; yet it is portrayed as ideal. This singular focus on Edward, sure to captivate the already vulnerable hearts of adolescent girls, can easily lead to a view of love that is singularly unbiblical.

Mark Farnham is Assistant Professor of Theology and New Testament at Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary (Lansdale, PA). He and his wife, Adrienne, grew up in Connecticut and were married after graduating from Maranatha Baptist Bible College (Watertown, WI). They have two teen daughters and a 10-year-old son. Mark served as director of youth ministries at Positive Action for Christ (Rocky Mount, NC) right out of seminary and pastored for seven years in New London, Connecticut. He holds an M.Div. from Calvary and a Th.M. in New Testament from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA). He is presently a doctoral student at Westminster Theological Seminary (Glenside, PA) in the field of Apologetics.