Ein schöner, kompakter Artikel vom in Pop-Dingen unermüdlichen David Lavery über die Einflüsse und Ansichten von Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer" et al): “A Religion in Narrative”: Joss Whedon and Television Creativity

In The Stuff Our Dreams Are Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered Reality, the always irreverant Thomas Disch, contemplating the follies of Scientology, wonders out loud why it is that the only science fiction writer ever to found a religion had to be such an awful one. Why, oh why, could it not have been, say, Philip K. Dick whose theologizing found disciples and not the reprehensible L. Ron Hubbard? The “religion in narrative” now gestating—the magazine The Door, we should take note, recently named Buffy the Vampire Slayer its “theologian of the year” and the series has attracted a great deal of attention from CESNUR, as the presence of such scholars as Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvigne at this conference [Blood Text And Fears" Norwich, England, Oct. 2002] testifies—should produce no such qualms. It’s difficult to imagine it in better hands than those of the “very hard-line, angry atheist” Joss Whedon.