Christianity and the Walking Dead

Book: The Zombie Gospel: The Walking Dead and What It Means To Be Human   

Initiatives:  Infinitum Life 

Brave Global 

Amplify Peace 

Women Speaker’s Collective 

Non-profit organization:  In My Backyard 

Mikel Del Rosario: 
Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager here at The Hendricks Center. And we have a little bit of a different show for you today. One thing we talked about at The Hendricks Center is cultural engagement in terms of cultural apologetics and how we can begin to develop a Christian view of film and the arts. And so, because any kind of visual storytelling in the popular culture is so prevalent, we need to take a look at these things and see how it can actually help us understand universal longings, universal struggles and see how these things can actually help us spark important spiritual conversations with people, even people who see Christianity differently, conversations about God, and what it means to be human. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
But the first step in engaging with something like a movie or a TV show, is working to connect with it, even if it's something that you might not be initially drawn to in terms of entertainment that you might choose for yourself. Now on The Table podcast, we've talked about movies like Noah, God's Not Dead, even the entire Star Wars series. And our topic on The Table podcast today is Christianity and The Walking Dead. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Now The Walking Dead is a highly rated TV series on AMC, capping out at 11 seasons. It's been called cable TV's highest rated scripted show. And it is a post-apocalyptic drama that's based on a comic book series actually, that's also called The Walking Dead. And it's all about survivors of a zombie apocalypse, just trying to stay alive, going on supply runs to find food, but also trying to keep safe, keep their community safe from zombies, most often called "walkers" on the show, but also trying to keep their group safe from other human communities, other people, other groups, who aren't always willing to share, who aren't always kind and helpful. In fact, life in the world of The Walking Dead can be summed up in the slogan, 'Fight the dead, fear the living'. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Now two quick disclaimers before we dive into our content and our guest is introduced today. First disclaimer is that The Walking Dead carries a TV-MA rating for mature audiences, and it does include violent scenes. And we've talked about universal themes in an R-rated movie called, Hacksaw Ridge, on the podcast before. So this isn't the first time we're walking into a space like this, but nonetheless, The Walking Dead is a cultural phenomenon with a significant audience, and this is worth thinking about how even something in the horror genre, something that contains violent content, can spark spiritual conversations. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
And then second, I do have to say that this episode of The Table may include minor spoilers for people who haven't seen the entire series, but we're going to do our best to not mention any major spoilers here today.  
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
And my guest coming to us via Zoom today is Danielle Strickland. If you ask Danielle to describe herself, she'll say she's a justice advocate, communicator, and peacemaker, but she's also the author of a book called The Zombie Gospel, and the subtitle is 'The Walking Dead and what it means to be human'. Welcome to the show. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Hey, thanks for having me great to be here. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Yeah so good to see you and to meet you, even just by Zoom. I want to just dive right into our topic today and ask you, how did you first begin to connect The Walking Dead television show to conversations about spiritual things? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, that's so funny. It actually is a funny story, I assumed that The Walking Dead was just like every other sort of cultural, maybe appetite for death and gore and violence. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And so I kind of just wrote it off. I never watched it, but a friend of mine was watching it and challenged me and said, "Have you seen this?" And I was wondering about like, what is making this so popular? You know, like it was the highest rated show… 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
…in its time. And so she really challenged me because I was kind of judging it from a distance, and I hadn't bothered having a look. So I had a look, at night, so I didn't like contaminate anybody and I plugged in my headphones, I just kind of watched it on the computer. And I heard, I just kind of heard the, I guess what I would say, like cry or more particularly, I heard the questions, that were being asked, and it felt like a generation, a culture, that's longing to ask questions about what it means to be human. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And what it means to be human together and what we're even doing on this planet. And all of a sudden, all these kinds of themes came to me and I thought: we really should be discussing this and engaging with a culture that is asking these questions, like beautiful questions. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. A similar thing for me actually. And I started watching the show because I'd never seen it before. So something that struck me just right off the bat is earlier on in the series, you have faith issues that are being brought up, the problem of evil, the existence of God. You know, one of the main characters, Herschel, had a farm early on in the series, and he and another character were talking about: how does God fit into a world where there's just so much, everyone's just, there's so much despair, and there seems like there's nothing left to live for, and can we have hope. Is there a faith moment or a scene that stood out to you in the series that was personally impactful for you? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, I think there's so many, I mean, there's a funny one where Herschel says, "When I read that God was going to raise the dead, I didn't see this coming", which I think is hilarious in terms of like zombie speak. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Right. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I also think it's funny and also nothing we can't imagine what it is that God has in mind. So I think also it's like we have all these preconceptions of what God's going to do and what it's going to look like and how God's going to move. And of course the introduction to The Walking Dead, I mean the whole show is about how everything's out of your control. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And so I think for me the general, I guess the, the big moment for me personally, was just when the priest, when they found, they stumbled upon a church and found a priest who was huddled inside and had barricaded himself out of fear. And that the people that were suffering had left their marks on the side of the church. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I think that priest's kind of journey of coming to grips with the fact that he's human after all, and then trying to figure out how he can forgive himself and be part of this community, I think that story is quite a profound one for people who are come from religious backgrounds like me. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm, yeah, well let's go there because that was another really interesting, not only like era in the show, but when they introduced Father Gabriel at Saint Sarah's Episcopal Church, I was amazed at how many people who were not from a church background. And of course, certainly this is not a Christian show, but it began to get people interested in reading the Bible. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
In some of the earliest seasons, there's a guy named Adam Carlson who wrote on a website called FanSided. And I would just briefly read to you what he said. He said, "I've avoided, organized religion for most of my life. However, after seeing some of the references to biblical passages in season five, episode two, I had to see what those were all about. It's quite interesting to me, how many of these Bible quotes can be related to events that are happening on The Walking Dead. It's also impressive that a television show about zombies and a zombie apocalypse could get someone to read the Bible after not picking it up for at least 20 years," he writes. And of course, on that, what I thought it was amazing is people were like screenshotting the episodes to see the readings for the day that were on the wall of Saint Sarah's and checking it out. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
And some of them were like 'The tombs opened up and the bodies of saints came out and Ezekiel's dry bones'. But then of course, one of the most obvious ones in that particular scene was 'He who drinks or eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life'. Which now of course, there's a kind of a double meaning there in this kind of gory, cannibalistic setting, but also it's pointing us toward newness of life, which is another verse that was on that particular show. Talk about how even a show like this can fuel conversations about leaving your old way of life and walking in that newness of life. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah. I feel like that might actually be THE conversation of The Walking Dead. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Because the very first episode is this guy awakening to a world that he does not recognize, that's kind of just gone and you feel a sense, I feel like the emergence of a new surge of Walking Dead interest is the release of it, obviously onto Netflix for free. So that helps. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
But also I think this idea that we're deconstructing, like we literally, we're watching the world and our values system and the things we used to really hold together… 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
…deconstruct. And the dominant question is like, who are we, if we're not? And his particular character, he's the sheriff. And you see the whole first season, he wears a sheriff outfit, like he's still a sheriff. And when you ask somebody, who are you? You always respond with what you do, the function and the position that you have in society. And then slowly, he starts to lose that identity and find who he is: who is he? As a leader, as a human, as a husband, as a father? And I think every character has this theme. How do I leave behind, and you have another famous character who comes from a criminal background. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
So you have this sheriff and this criminal who end up being best of friends. And you have this new humanity being formed, this new reality, this new normal. So I feel in all of our lives, this is true. This happens eventually. This is just actually part of growing up and maturing. But I think exponentially in this season, this is happening to a lot of people. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I think it's even fascinating that even the priests own deconstruction. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
He thought that being a priest would make him different. He thought that leading a church would make him different and here he, is just a human, like everybody else trying to figure out how to live in this resurrection life. And what it might look like to model a humanity that is different from this zombie-like consumption of everyone culture. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
So I think that there's just so many elements of the show and that's really, in many ways, I wasn't trying to answer the questions. I was just trying to highlight them. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And say, we do serve a God who wants, and maybe a little bit more like Paul in Athens, where he lets curiosity lead him. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Instead of certainty, right? The only thing he's certain about is Jesus. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Because he has experienced Jesus for himself. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
So this is the same for me. The only thing I'm certain about is Jesus because I've experienced Jesus for myself. And I know that he's the human I want to be. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And so I feel like everything else is, I'm curious about, like tell me more about that longing inside of you for a new life. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Tell me more about that feeling of panic, of losing what you used to control and we even have that scene where they're burning money, like money's literally become meaningless. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Right. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Positions become meaningless. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Like structure and law become meaningless. So then who are you? What's your value? What brings value? What gives you value? Those are all the questions I think that are deeper than all of those other questions that we tend to max out on. And I feel like it's time. People want to go deeper. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a really great insight. When the world is, "before the world fell" as they put it on The Walking Dead, what were you? And what brought value, status, and all those things? In the new post-apocalyptic world, all that stuff doesn't matter anymore. And so people are figuring out like, who am I? What is my identity? Like you were saying. It is interesting that the characters in the show, there's a lot of gray areas. You know, Rick, the sheriff that you mentioned, I don't think we said his name yet on the show. Rick Grimes is the sheriff, and then his buddy Darrell, whose one of the kinds of criminal people that you mentioned. I remember when they had this conversation talking about like, "We are the Walking Dead" and then Daryll says, "Nah, we ain't them". 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
And it's like, how do you choose to live in a world where all of everything that you knew from before is no longer valid, it's no longer there? Talk about a couple other characters. Let's talk about Negan. Negan is a very, very bad guy, kind of a warlord, the character you love to hate early on, midway through the series. There is a part later on where I love where he says, "No one ever thinks they're the bad guy". And I thought that was so profound. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
There's almost this redemption arc that he has. And then we also see Rick Grimes, the sheriff guy, we see him evolving as well and his morality. Talk about what we can learn from the story arcs of these characters. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, I think one of the things, and I actually really love that about the show. That there is like this dogged honesty, like rugged refusal to just put people in this place that we want them to be, right? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Because we love categories of black or white or good or bad. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
I was actually reading, in Acts 28, Paul's final missionary journey where he accidentally ends on Malta, and he survives and he's building a fire, he gets bitten by snake. And so, they think he must be a murderer, the people, because he survived the shipwreck and got bitten by a snake. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And then they think he must be a God because he survives a snake bite. And I thought, isn't that the truth? Like we're either murderers or we're gods. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
That's like the categories of . . . what God is even doing in Paul's life, as in all of our lives, is showing that we're humans. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Who are connected to God and that there's a power that is at work within us. That's not about us. It's about God. Later on Paul explains that, like this is not about us. So I feel like where we get stuck, oftentimes in church culture and Christian culture, is trying to pretend like we're better than we are because we feel like this is this religious impulse. Like we want to be, what I call the Hercules myth. Like we want to be perfect, our motives want to be perfect. The Walking Dead is like this desire to just be honest. To just be honest and that that's where we begin. And there's actually one scene I remember where this, it was actually back with the early introduction of the priest. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I remember them saying, how many people have you killed? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Right? Like, or how many zombies have you killed? And then how many others? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And the idea of the group is that if you couldn't answer, if you didn't answer honestly to those questions, if you hadn't sort of dealt with the condition of your own humanity, then you weren't welcome in the group because you weren't safe. And it reminded me so much of like a 12-step program. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
It just reminded me so much of like, are you there yet? At the poverty of spirit that Jesus says is the entry into the kingdom of God? Like, are you willing to get to the place where you're like, I'm not the person that I want to be? I can't be this person that I want to be. And I've, I've dealt with that. So now that I'm honest, where do we go from here? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And it's like, you keep thinking that they're asking the question, the person being asked the questions like, ah, what should I say? But it's the honesty that makes you safe. It's the honesty that makes you safe. And I think actually to, tell you the truth, I am hungry, but I think the whole world, whole generation is hungry for just some honesty. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And we're just tired of people covering and pretending. So we even see in Negan, like a lot of his life is pretense, right? It's a leadership that is, he's leading out of fear and control and dominance. Which is like that old idea of leadership, it's motivating, people feel drawn to him, but also trapped by him. And he's not really about being honest about his own vulnerability. And so the more he gets honest and open and vulnerable, the more his character arc changes. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I think that might be one of the other messages, dominant messages of The Walking Dead is like the more honest we can be and open about our humanity, the more free we are then to actually love one another and actually connect intimately with each other. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm, yeah. Now you had mentioned something earlier about zombies being mindless consumers and I know in the book you take it a little bit more in a literary analysis, away from just what's so overt in the show. Talk a little bit about what we can learn from just the zombie genre in general, as far as being mindless consumers. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, it goes back to like the earliest zombie genre, right? In terms of movie stuff where movies are, what is it Night of the Living Dead? And I can't remember, but it's been a long time ago since I wrote this book. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
But basically the idea that the zombies are terrifying because they are consuming everything in their path, including other humans, right? So that's, what's terrifying about them, is this mindless consumption. Which when the first genre of zombies came out was a social commentary about this consumer-based culture. And it was such a niche market, the zombie genre, that just like a few folks that were into that started to think it through. And maybe even just like it, because it was the next level of gore in movie making history. But I think what The Walking Dead does, is popularized this idea that like we are being consumed by ourselves. This is the consuming mentality that we are now consuming. So I talk a little bit even about how our clothes are made or how the capitalistic industries work, consuming the earth, consuming humans, trafficking victims all around the world, who are trafficked so that my shirt is $5. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I can buy 25 of them, even though I only need one. And on and on this goes and it's just, we are literally consuming ourselves, that's what's happening. And it's an apocalypse of zombie, and of course an apocalypse in scripture is not the end of the world. It's the revealing, it's the unveiling of what's actually happening. So even the word apocalyptic, I know in the show it means sort of the end of the world. But if you think about this in terms of how we see, what's really true. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
About the world, there is a lot of unveiling that's happening in this concept of humans as consuming machines. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm, wow, yeah. There're many ways we could go with that, you're sparking all kinds of questions in my mind. So here's a question that probably you didn't think about, there's no way you could have known when you wrote this book. But now that we are in this COVID-19 pandemic, do you think that in the real world there are some of those questions that real people have been forced to struggle with and answer for themselves in terms of value, that they had versus in the old world, quote on quote, 2019, and earlier? Has this really hit close to home? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, I think so. I really think so because I think for a lot of reasons, I think, like I mentioned before, the deconstruction of things that we were hanging onto, even in terms of systems and structures, jobs, income, positions that we held. I think a lot of people are rethinking a lot of those things. And I also think there's been a lot of exposure about things we thought we were sure about, that we are not so much sure about. And that's even in terms of our Christian culture: leaders who have been using power and abuse and sort of worldly practices and concepts of position and authority as an abuse of power that now is exposed. And we don't want to be, I don't want to be that kind of leader. I don't want to lead that kind of a church. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
In Canada here, where I'm located, we've been uncovering thousands of bodies of little indigenous children who were buried at residential schools all across Canada, with no graves or marks or identifying. And we're just discovering them right now. The whole culture of Canada is rethinking what the Church is. And now considering the Church may be a harmful influence in the world. So as we deconstruct that, like what do we do? And I feel like in so many ways, we're in this deconstruction situation about what we thought we knew for sure, about the systems and structures, about the way the world was going to work. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
So there is this awakening, like who are we, if we're none of those things? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And the other thing I think is really key is that, I think in The Walking Dead, the arc of the story goes from surviving. Just like, how are we going to survive? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
To this question of: what does it mean to be human together? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And I think, in a pandemic that we've been through, and the circumstances of apocalyptic circumstances of our time, I think we can quickly go into this: we will survive at all costs. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
We go into the survival mode, but I think what I would love and what I think what The Spirit is asking us, is: what kind of humans do we want to be? Not just surviving, defensive, how will we keep this going? But what kind of a community do we want to be? What kind of humans do we want to be? And there are a couple of beautiful scenes, epic scenes in The Walking Dead, where people sacrifice themselves for other people. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
And give their lives away so that life can go on and the greater good can be . . . just very cruciform, sort of opportunities, because they don't want to be a community that is just surviving. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
They want to be human, and to be human means to be loving and to be connected and to be serving and to be giving. So I think that that struggle of like, will you just survive? 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Or does it matter the quality of your life and the quality of what kind of life you make for others in this season that we're in? And I think it does. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. You're reminding me of another part of your book where you mentioned Mishone, who is another beloved character. Starting out as kind of this lone ranger, mostly by herself and then connecting up with Rick's group of survivors. Explain some of the life lessons on community that you discuss in the book from that character. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, that's one of the characters, there are several others who try to go it alone. And actually, basically what happen is they can't. Can you survive by yourself? The answer in The Walking Dead is: for a while. And you may survive physically, but you can't survive in terms of being human. And I think it's such a beautiful lesson. There's a beautiful arc there around how we were designed for one another, and how we need one another in genuine community as life. And without, it's survival, but it's not life. And I think that difference is so central to the New Testament, so central to the life of Jesus, where he invites people into this collective exercise, right? Into this life of belonging. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
You exist, and this is even like the greatest commandments, the thing Jesus said that will actually ensure life, is that you would love one another, right? But this idea that we're connected to one another, this mutuality, this boob-tube type of a relationship where we exist together. So I think that's also a beautiful thing, especially again, in this pandemic where fear of the other, and we see this in The Walking Dead, so much, fear of the other. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Mishone is just totally traumatized. She's been by herself. She's like kind of out of her mind when we meet her and she does not trust anybody, for good reason, based on her own experiences. And in my life, I've journeyed with a lot of survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. And so I recognize so many things in her, as I minister to other people who are coming from those backgrounds of genuine trauma, and finding it so hard to trust and to journey with people. But once they do, once they find a safe community of belonging, the way they thrive and come alive and find themselves again, it's such a beautiful story of what community can do. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. Well tell us about the title of the book. Can you explain to us what The Zombie Gospel is and why you titled the book that? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, well it was catchy, The Zombie Gospel. It felt like a bit of an inspiration. The Zombie Gospel is for me, the good news that in the midst of "The Zombie Apocalypse," there is this way to be human. How to be human, I think, is at the heart of the series of The Walking Dead. And the questions they ask I think is worthy of asking. So The Zombie Gospel for me, is that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. And he became human to show us, that humans can not only survive all of the sin and death and fear and apocalyptic realities that we struggle with, but actually can be humans that bring goodness and life to one another and to the world. And that's The Zombie Gospel for me: that Jesus is the remedy for what ails us. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing now? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Yeah, so I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. So I do all kinds of things, but Infinitum, spiritual formation and discipleship systems. Infinitivelife.com, if anybody wants to check that out. And women speaker collective, I train women communicators to communicate effectively. And I just launched a nonprofit called IMBI in my backyard, which is tiny houses in people's backyards. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Wow. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
That's really fun, affordable housing and also a new way of being human together. So that's kind of a fun project that I'm in the middle of right now. Amplify peace. Just a few things like that. I speak and I teach at a local church here in Toronto called The Meeting House. Yeah and I just basically partner with God and the adventure that is life. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's awesome. How can people connect with you on your socials? 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Easiest way, just daniellestrickland.com. That's the website that has all the links to all the places and Danielle Strickland. You can find me on all the things. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Awesome. Well, you can connect with her there. If you're listening to this or watching with us, you can also connect with me at Apologeticsguy on Twitter, Apologeticsguy on Instagram and Facebook as well. Love to continue the conversation with you. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us today and helping us see how we can actually take some life lessons away and spiritual lessons too, from this zombie apocalypse show, The Walking Dead, that's been such a hit, and it's a great way to spark conversations with people, even those who see Christianity differently. So, thanks. 
 
Danielle Strickland: 
Your welcome. What a joy. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
And we thank you so much for listening and watching today's episode on Christianity and The Walking Dead. I think what's come out of our conversation with Danielle today, is that even a TV series about life in a zombie apocalypse can shed light on themes that guide us into a deeper understanding of what it means to be human and some of the deep questions of life. And it could even challenge us as Christians to live out the gospel and allow us to have better spiritual conversations with people from a variety of different backgrounds. I've personally had talks even with my own brother, who's a fan of the comic book series and the show, about ethics and morality and the world of The Walking Dead and how much people can change and how much redemption is even possible in light of what you've done in the past. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
So again like Danielle was saying, instead of just us dismissing certain forms of popular entertainment as totally irrelevant, we need to pay attention to what's being said and what it reveals about us as human beings. So it's our hope here at The Hendricks Center that we learn to engage culture, including all kinds of film and the arts and visual storytelling. First, with a desire to listen and to understand the questions that people struggle with, and then be able to engage with both courage and compassion to help people consider how the gospel steps into that space. We hope that you'll join us next week on The Table. I'm Mikel Del Rosario until next time. Keep the faith.