The Gospel of the Winchesters (And Their Fans): Neoreligious Fan Practices and Narrative in Supernatural

Abstract

The television show, Supernatural (The WB/CW 2005-present), has evolved its own subversive take on Christianity in which all of the events of the series’ first five seasons created a new religious gospel. Within the show’s narrative, fans of the book series, Supernatural, are representations—and exaggerations—of actual fans of the television series, Supernatural. The integration of real-world fan activity (even if based predominantly online) into the religious narrative of Supernatural activates discourses of neoreligiosity in fan practices similar to those studied by Matthew Hills and Ann Taves’ study of “specialness” in relation to religious experience. I use neoreligiosity regarding the fandom to invoke the flexibility of religious experience beyond the ascriptive web of connotations that “religion” implies. The difference for the show and my argument is discursive: religion is recognizable, known, and ideological, but neoreligiosity is flexible, adaptive, nebulous and numinous. Within the show, Supernatural, fans are performing religious acts, whether they know it or not, because the show imposes this designation through its narrative by linking Supernatural television fans with devotees to the Winchester Gospel, gospel that is religious if apocryphal. My paper analyzes the dialogue between fan works and the show’s narrative and use of hybrid objects that invoke questions of religious intention, (neo-)religious ritual, and attention to and scrutiny of fan practices and agency within the object with which they engage.

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