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As both a longtime youth minister and assistant research professor at the University of Colorado's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Lynn Schofield Clark is able to present a nuanced look at today's young fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter in her new book, From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford Univ. Press, 2003). Having interviewed 100 young people and 169 adults, Clark presents a theory of different ways that young people "incorporate, dismiss, play with, reject, and wonder about what they see in the media."

But along with her analysis comes a charge. Clark contends that evangelicals, by warning teens against the allure of the occult and its depiction in the media, end up achieving the opposite—inciting them to experiment with the supernatural. In a recent telephone interview, Christianity Today associate editor Agnieszka Tennant asked Clark about this claim.

You write in your book that teens find it easier to discuss their media interests rather than their own life experiences. What does young people's participation in popular culture tell us about their spirituality?

It tells us that many different myths are competing for young people's attention right now. A lot of people have focused attention on some of the most popular television shows and films, like American Idol, the Survivor series, and Temptation Island because they've gotten a lot of large teenage audiences, as well as some films that feature young people in starring roles that are really all about celebrity and consumption. Those have been called the myths of the Mook and the Midriff. The Mook is the person who is willing to make a fool of himself in front of lots of people to gain fame, and the Midriff is the Britney Spears type person who becomes a sexual object.

As in Jackass and Legally Blonde?

Exactly. But what's interesting to me are the stories that in the fantasy, supernatural, and even the supernatural horror genres, which portray a different picture of teenagers. I'm thinking here of stories like Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They feature teenagers in central roles who are called by something beyond them to do something bigger than themselves. They do that by joining together with a small group of friends who support their mission.

To me that's a sign that young people are not satisfied with the consumerist myths that they're getting all the time from popular culture. Instead, they're open to spirituality and to other paths that lead them toward deeper meaning in their lives.

When you started the study, you were going to research unchurched teens. But then evangelicalism became a significant part of the picture. Why?

Even when I was trying to construct a study where I was avoiding evangelicalism—because I thought enough studies of evangelicals have already been done—I kept running into it at every turn. Some of the most interesting cases to me were the cases of young people who came from very little religious backgrounds. When I asked them about their beliefs and their experiences with the supernatural, they often used the language common to evangelicals—language such as angels and demons, and how bad behavior is punished. They said we should be on our best behavior because that's something that is honorable to God. I think evangelicalism has defined the way that we think about religion in the U.S.

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47