ABSTRACT
Chapter Two, “Vampires: the undead challenge to religion,” starts with Dracula and then moves into two television vampire dramas from the turn of the twenty-first century: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood. Both shows acknowledge the power of traditional religious symbols, stories, and objects while simultaneously confirming the necessity of creating new forms of belief and meaning. This chapter examines television’s vampires and how they blur the lines between religion and power, good and evil, belief and unbelief, and body and soul.
