(ANALYSIS) When I was a kid, I never expected to see Christians in my cartoons. I took for granted that my favorite shows and comic books were all written by atheists, and all the characters in them were atheists, too. Certainly, I didn’t expect them to talk about God in an affirming way.

That’s why the “Nightcrawler” episode of “X-Men,” the animated 1990s series, was such a mind-blowing experience for me. In the episode, Wolverine, Rogue and Gambit show up at a monastery looking for a rumored demon. Turns out it’s a mutant called Nightcrawler who looks like a blue demon and has been hunted and feared because of his appearance his entire life. He took shelter in a monastery and found God and therefore peace with his circumstances.

The characters then spend much of the rest of the episode with Wolverine arguing with Nightcrawler over whether a good God who allows tragedies (like those Nightcrawler experienced) could exist. By the end of the episode, Wolverine is praying in a church with a Bible Nightcrawler gave him.

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“Don’t tell me about God,” Wolverine, showing his claws, growls at one point. “What kind of God would let man do this to me?” 

“Our ability to understand God’s purpose is limited,” Nightcrawler replies. “But we take comfort in the fact that His love is limitless.”

Nightcrawler has always been an interesting gauge for where mainstream culture is regarding Christianity. Created by Len Wein and David Cockgrum in 1975, Nightcrawler has always been an explicitly Catholic character in the X-Men comics, and his faith is almost always integral to his portrayal (with some exceptions, like in the “X-Men: Evolution” show).

A lot of that is due to the irony of having a devilish-looking character be so religious, similar to why Daredevil is canonically Catholic. Because he is a largely positive Christian character in a mainstream secular brand, you can often see what secular people, or religious people who work in mainstream entertainment, think of faith by how Nightcrawler is portrayed.

Fast forward to today, in the eras of nostalgia reboots, the ‘90s X-Men cartoon is getting its own sequel series, “X-Men ’97” (called that because the original show ended in 1996), and Nightcrawler is expanded from a character in a one-off episode to series regular.

Nightcrawler is introduced in the new series in the fifth episode titled “Remember It” as a council member on the new mutant Island of Genoshia. He’s there to minister to the different communities of faith from all the various mutants who choose to immigrate there from their human-dominant countries of origin. As Nightcrawler gives Rogue and Gambit a tour of the community, he talks less about God than the original ‘90s show and cracks more jokes, even giving romantic advice to Gambit, who’s feeling jealous of Rogue and Magneto’s growing chemistry.

Nightcrawler: “It doesn’t take a priest to see you and Rogue’s souls touch with every gaze. … Just marry the girl and be done.”

Gambit: “Scoundrels like me, we don’t get no white picket reward. We are too busy for love. Too busy sinning.”

Nightcrawler: “There is no love without sin. Love is best measured in what we forgive.”

When tragedy strikes at Genoshia, Nightcrawler further embraces his role of priest, presiding over the funeral of one of the X-Men who dies and giving counsel to those who are hurting. During the funeral, Nightcrawler described the person as, “haunted by the life of crime into which he was born, a sinner beyond saving. … How could he, so tuned to potential, not see that his sins made him a hero?” 

As the X-Men transition to fighting and defeating the villains responsible for the attack on Genoshia — and the death of their friend — Nightcrawler leaps into the role of a swashbuckling hero who fights the bad guys alongside his fellow X-Men. And when all hope seems lost, he seeks comfort in his faith, holding a rosary and praying the “Our Father.”

Here we can see the positive things mainstream culture sees and values in religious people: their ability to be wise and insightful in matters of relationships and mental health, to comfort those who are hurting and help them find their way out of it and the resources their faith has to keep them grounded and peaceful when everything around them is falling apart and to pass on that peace to others. Given that Christians have better mental health than average and better familial and relational stability, it makes sense that secular types would see Christians as particularly wise in areas of counseling and comfort.

We also see how our culture has moved from one with a better understanding of Christian theology to a more vague notion of it. In the original show, Nightcrawler spoke about sin the way a Christian would. 

“While all people are flawed and struggle with the capacity for sin, none likes to be reminded about our shared human weakness. My appearance doesn’t make it easy.” 

In “X-Men ’97,” Nightcrawler talks about sin as something that we need. “There is no love without sin” is something a Christian would not say because God’s love is without sin. What he might say is, “No human love is without sin” and then it would be a wise saying indeed — and something a Chrisitan would utter. Likewise, a Christian would be unlikely to say someone's sins “make” someone a hero.

But we further see here what mainstream culture dislikes about religious people. Magneto — a canonical Jewish character — speaks of the pain of how people of faith’s exclusive claims to the truth have been a source of oppression for him and his people. 

“As a boy, my people’s homes were burned to ash because we dared to call God by another name,” he says. 

Later in the series, he talks about the arrogance of people of faith: “People don’t want to be better. They’re already the best of everything. The best tribe, best faith. They even fight about who’s the best victim.” 

It makes sense that, unlike Nightcrawler of the original ’90s show, this one never challenges the ideological beliefs of his friends. He comes to Genoshia to minister to all faiths, not just his own. He does not challenge the X-Men to be believers themselves. And he certainly doesn’t challenge their morality based on religious beliefs. This Nightcrawler would never call them out for sleeping together before marriage, for example. And he certainly would never be able to challenge the X-Men’s Morph, who’s been retconned to be nonbinary in “X-Men ’97,” about Morph’s they/them pronouns.

This reflects changing cultural attitudes towards Christians that author and culture critic Aaron Renn notes in his book “Life in the Negative World”. According to Renn, during the ‘90s, when the original X-Men animated show aired, there was a lot more openness to Christianity and its worldview being an equal player in the marketplace of ideas (what Renn calls the “neutral world”).  

People might disagree with Christians on the reality of God, abortion, sexuality or anything else, but those ideas were still mainstream enough that they couldn’t be excluded from the societal conversation entirely. Now, with mainstream institutions being overwhelmingly secular, there is much more willingness to demand that religious people assimilate to mainstream secular values or be completely excluded. 

And yet, this demand for “assimilation” subtly works against the values that “X-Men ’97” professes. In the series, Professor X lectures a group of aliens on how their empire demanding assimilation of the cultures that they absorb is a form of oppression, even as he demands assimilation to his views of equality and diversity. 

But the heroes of this superhero series all make very strong truth claims for which they demand complete conformity: The values of tolerance, diversity, acceptance of all peoples and identities, compassion and empathy are always good — and the value of family, particularly found family, is emphasized. Many of these are preached and lectured about with the subtlety of an early 2000s youth pastor. This is not to say that its values are wrong. We cheer for the X-Men because we largely agree with their values. But it means there is hypocrisy at the heart of it: I can make exclusive truth claims that I demand submission to, but you can’t.

This has made the character of Nightcrawler a more controversial one for Christians compared to the one from the ‘90s. Back then, Nightcrawler was a symbol that Christians could have a voice in the mainstream conversation, and even be allowed to push back on it. Now, as Christians become more skeptical that they have a place in conversation, a character like Nightcrawler becomes suspect by more people. 

The question of what kind of a Christian one should be in this changing landscape has created deep divisions among believers (which you can see if you spend any time on “Christian X”). Christians who embrace (or at least don’t strenuously object to) mainstream secular values see people like Nightcrawler as a model for who they can be as a Christian in that society. But believers who see a lot that deeply needs to be pushed back on in our society see Nightcrawler as an example of a Christian who has accepted the social cage that secular society has demanded of him and has chosen loyalty to that society over God. These Christians, in turn, are accused of putting secondary issues ahead of actually loving people the way God demands.

Overall, “X-Men ’97,” through Nightcrawler, does a great job of showing what modern culture values in its religious brothers and sisters and what it would look like to be a religious person it would admire. It’s up to believers to decide whether they see such a character as a model for themselves or something else entirely.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.