The Stand: religion

(I believe that this may mark the end of posts on The Stand.  We'll see.)

As I mentioned, The Stand, in a way, is a modern religious parable, pitting the Good People against the Bad People.  Mother Abigail does not keep her close tie to God secret; we also learn that Tom Cullen, when he is hypnotized, is 'God's Tom.'  Most in the Boulder group do not actively believe in God--in fact, their skepticism is made clear--but Mother Abigail considers such outlooks naive.  In Las Vegas, Flagg is naturally the opposite and is often considered to be the Devil by those in Boulder (his 'Hand of God,' which actually kills him and destroys civilization, is some less-than-subtle irony).  That these positions of good and evil are put forward so explicitly and seemingly without any conflict between them is something unusual in King's works to date.  I wonder, though, if he is saying that to create a true religion, one that can bond a society together, it is necessary to start all over.

Until this point, religion did not appear in a positive way in King's books.  In Carrie, her mother was overly zealous in her religious beliefs.  In 'Salem's Lot, there is Father Callahan, but he must leave the church because he is bitten by Barlow, the head vampire (he will come back much later in the Dark Tower series).  Religion was not powerful enough to stop Barlow or even stem his evil.  These novels are not encouraging endorsements.  'Children of the Corn' is perhaps the most damning though, as the children of the village consider themselves to be doing the work of God, but in a complete perverse way.

Whether the Boulder people believe in God or not, they were all brought together by a force beyond them: they dreamed of Mother Abigail and sought her out.  Perhaps, then, King is claiming that ideas of religion actually stem from encounters with the supernatural, such as the psychic force that Mother Abigail exudes.  She is also able to 'see' Flagg (and he can 'see' some of her actions), although she does not know everything that he is doing.  At one point, she refers to her gift as the 'Shine.'  The esteem felt for her in Boulder suggests that she will become a sort of patron saint for the town as it builds and therefore could be the basis for a new--and perhaps more compassionate--version of the Christian faith.