Nevil Shute’s On the Beach: Religious Reflections

In the previous essay, I summarized the Nevil Shute novel On the Beach and the famous movie made from it, and how it was an example of fiction that used the scientific method. Now I would like to follow up on some religious reflections.

At no point in the movie or novel is the question directly addressed, “Why did God allow nuclear war to eradicate the human race?” The closest that the novel and movie came to this was:

• In the novel: The Commander (Dwight) went to church even though he was not a believer, perhaps as part of his fantasy that nuclear annihilation was not really going to happen.
• In the movie: There was a big revival meeting in the Australian city. Its evangelist led the people in prayer to help them accept the inevitable suffering and death.

In On the Beach, the Australians continued the comfort of their daily lives right up until their deaths by radiation poisoning. This appeared to be the case also throughout the Northern Hemisphere, in which entire cities appeared to be empty but intact. But I believe that this would not happen in America, and the reason for it is religion.

Americans not only have a long tradition of doing whatever the hell they want, and taking whatever the hell they want (from Native Americans, or through predatory business practices), but of justifying it by a perverted form of Christianity. Over and over we see American religious groups claiming that God has chosen them to lead the nation and the world. Millions of evangelical Christians today believe that God has chosen Donald Trump to be the supreme ruler of America and, perhaps, of the world. These fundamentalist groups have also stockpiled lots of weapons. They are ready to act even in the event of a national disaster far smaller than nuclear annihilation.

If On the Beach had taken place in modern America, I believe that armed militias (using Biblical justification) would arise and take over their local regions. Then these balkanized regions would begin to fight one another for domination. Their leaders would consider themselves holy, and if they get killed, their followers would consider them martyrs.

I think everyone who reads this blog knows that this is almost certainly true. Our only hope is that more moderate people, including liberal Christians and people without doctrinal faith, can keep this from happening.