Good Christian Captain Malcolm Reynolds

I've only seen two episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and I've never seen "Angel," so my entire experience with creative genius Joss Whedon is the mere 14 episodes of the "Firefly" TV series and the three installments of this summer's "Serenity" comic book, which bridges the few months between the end of the TV show and the beginning of the movie "Serenity," which opens two weeks from Friday at a theater near you and you're nuts if you miss it.

So the following may not at all be what Whedon had in mind, but it is my interpretation of what I see in "Firefly," which IMHO is right up there among the best television ever produced.


In the opening scenes of the pilot episode, also called "Serenity," Sergeant Mal Reynolds is seen leading his rapidly dwindling force in what we later learn is the Battle of Serenity Valley, one of the most crushing defeats for the Independents who dared stand up to the central Alliance that governs the system of planets and moons where we humans migrated after we used up Earth.

In what I argue is one of the most essential moments setting up Reynolds' character, perhaps the most essential moment, just before attempting a decisive action he pulls out a cross he is wearing around his neck and kisses it. Minutes later, all of the high-falutin' concepts of freedom and independence for which he is fighting are lost.

For the rest of the series, which is set six years later as the sergeant now captains an aging cargo ship around the outer planets, Reynolds appears to be an atheist. "Mind if I pray?" the preacher asks before a meal. "Only if you do it out loud," Reynolds snips back rudely. "You're welcome on my boat, preacher," he adds - "God ain't."

But I don't think Malcolm Reynolds is an atheist. I think he's a believer who is angry at a God who is real to him. No, not angry: enraged. How could this God whom he trusted and worshiped allow the evil Alliance to crush the Independents, who fought on the side of the angels? Six years have passed, and Reynolds has not forgiven God, and he cannot forgive God, for that defeat.

The atheists I know tend to look at believers with detached bemusement. Reynolds is not detached; he has a barely controlled fury when the subject of God comes up. And yet his sense of honor is untouched. He flies in a gray area of space but sees the essential things in black and white, even surrendering hard-earned cash or certain rewards when keeping them would do harm to innocent people. His faith in God may be shattered, but he has not surrendered the values he learned from God.

He is loyal to those under his care without question. When asked why he risked everything to rescue a character, the response is "You're on my crew." When pressed on the matter, he asks, "Why are we still discussing this?" He protects his crew the way he expected God to protect his squad in Serenity Valley - and he is all the more fierce in his loyalty because of how God let him down.

Mal Reynolds as played by Nathan Fillion is one of the most complex heroic characters ever to hit the small screen, and I expect he will be right at home on the larger-than-life silver screen. It's a downright miracle that Whedon had the opportunity to create a 15th adventure for Reynolds and his crew - even if Joss and Mal don't believe in miracles anymore.