Was Dracula a Christian Novel?

Have you ever noticed how the monsters in our entertainment have changed? Walk through any bookstore's young adult section, and you'll find shelves lined with stories of misunderstood vampires seeking love, werewolves as romantic heroes, and demons as complex antiheroes. Compare this to the horror our grandparents knew—where evil was evil, monsters were monstrous, and the line between darkness and light was sharp as a stake through the heart.

This shift tells us something profound about our culture's spiritual temperature, and nowhere is this more evident than in how we've transformed the vampire from Bram Stoker's demonic predator into today's brooding romantic lead.

 

The Spiritual Warfare of Dracula

When Bram Stoker penned Dracula in 1897, he wasn't merely crafting a horror story—he was writing a profoundly Christian novel that grappled with the spiritual anxieties of his age. Victorian England was experiencing a crisis of faith as scientific materialism challenged traditional religious belief. Into this atmosphere of doubt, Stoker unleashed a villain who could not be defeated by science alone.

Consider the weapons effective against Count Dracula: the crucifix, holy water, consecrated Hosts, and wooden stakes (echoing the wood of the Cross). Dr. Van Helsing, the story's spiritual warrior, explicitly states that they face "the Un-Dead" with "the power of combination" between faith and reason. When the rational Dr. Seward struggles to accept the supernatural reality before him, Van Helsing chides him: "You are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you... Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain."

The novel also subtly engaged the Protestant-Catholic tensions of Stoker's Ireland. Stoker, an Irish Protestant, set his novel in motion when an English Protestant (Jonathan Harker) travels to Catholic Eastern Europe, where ancient superstitions prove more reliable than modern skepticism. The salvation of England comes through Van Helsing, implied to be Catholic (he speaks knowledgeably of indulgences and carries a consecrated Host), working alongside English Protestants. Their victory requires Protestant pragmatism to accept Catholic sacramentalism—the physical efficacy of blessed objects. This ecumenical alliance against evil suggested that divided Christianity must unite against the real enemy: not each other, but the forces of darkness that prey upon human souls.

Stoker's vampire embodied what theologians might call concupiscence—the inclination toward sin that remains even in the baptized. Dracula is literally bloodthirsty, transforming his victims through an unholy communion that parodies the Eucharist. His victims drink his blood and receive not eternal life but living death. As St. Augustine wrote in City of God, "The soul dies when God abandons it, and the body dies when the soul abandons it" (XIII.2). The vampire represents this double death—spiritually dead yet physically animated, a walking blasphemy against the resurrection.

 

Desire Corrupted: The Vampire as Lust Incarnate

Most significantly, Dracula represented lust incarnate—not merely sexual desire, but what Thomas Aquinas called the "inordinate desire for pleasure" (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 153, a. 1). The vampire's bite on the neck (an erogenous zone), the exchange of bodily fluids, the nocturnal visits to bedchambers—all pointed toward sexuality divorced from love, procreation, or divine purpose. Lucy Westenra's transformation from innocent maiden to "voluptuous" predator who hunts children demonstrates how sin corrupts and inverts our nature. As she becomes increasingly vampiric, she grows more sensual yet less human, more beautiful yet more terrible.

Scripture warns repeatedly against such corruption of desire. "Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death" (James 1:14-15, NIV). Dracula literalized this progression—his victims' transformation beginning with enticement, proceeding through a kind of conception (the blood exchange), and culminating in death that masquerades as life.

 

The Economics of Immortality: Vampirism as a Capitalist Metaphor

Beyond lust, the vampire's relentless need to feed for its own eternal continuation offers a chilling critique of our modern economic mindset. The temptation to "eternal life" (or endless success, profit, and legacy) at the cost of feeding on others speaks directly to a capitalistic philosophy taken to its extreme.

We are told that true "success"—whether to achieve immortal fame, endless riches, or an unassailable legacy—comes through ruthless competition, by elevating ourselves at the expense of others. This is a very real kind of "vampirism" that we've taken for granted as a "good" in our culture. The vampire's immortality isn't a gift of grace; it's a debt owed by others. It is existence sustained by extractive power.

This parallels the modern narrative that true power requires endless growth, endless consumption, and a refusal to acknowledge the limits of resources or the rights of the vulnerable. Just as the modern vampire often retains superhuman power, immortality, and sensuality—all the "benefits" of the fall—while the drawbacks are minimized, our culture seeks power without price and immortality without God.

 

From Monster to Misunderstood: The Dictatorship of Relativism

How striking, then, that our contemporary culture has rehabilitated the vampire! Beginning perhaps with Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1976) and reaching its apex with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (2005-2008), we've witnessed the vampire's transformation from demonic predator to tragic hero. Today's vampires struggle with their nature, seek redemption, fall in love, and even sparkle in sunlight rather than burn.

This shift reflects what Pope Benedict XVI called the "dictatorship of relativism"—a worldview that "does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires" (Homily, April 18, 2005). When we make the vampire sympathetic, we suggest that evil is merely misunderstood, that predation might be justified by circumstances, and that there exists no absolute moral law. If the vampire represents sin, then romanticizing vampires means romanticizing sin itself.

C.S. Lewis warned about this phenomenon in The Screwtape Letters, where the demon Screwtape advises his nephew: "The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts" (Letter XII). When we transform monsters into misunderstood antiheroes, we're reshaping our moral imagination, making the path to darkness seem not only safe but desirable.

 

The Redemption Arc: Finding the Gospel in the Vampire's Thirst

Yet, our fascination with monsters need not always lead to the dictatorship of relativism. The very desire to see a monster redeemed speaks to a profound, intrinsic human need: the hope for grace. When we are left with a concept of "pure evil" that is entirely unredeemable—souls irrevocably lost—we run the opposite risk in our zeal to maintain the true distinction between objective good and evil. We risk losing the core truth of the Gospel: that God can use even the most evil of us.

In my own attempts to write vampire stories (under a different pen name), I've tried to engage the evolved genre in a way that highlights redemption and grace, even while maintaining the clear difference between good and evil. Turning the vampire into a protagonist doesn't have to be relativism; it can be a means of exploring the depth of Christ's power.

The truth is, we don't have to become literal monsters to become evil. The greatest evil is often committed by those who've imagined they're safe, they're righteous already, who cannot see the evil within themselves. The vampire who longs for repentance, who struggles against his own concupiscence (his literal "blood-lust"), can become a powerful analogy for the human condition after the Fall. He shows us the possibility that God can work even through our sinful nature and use the very intensity of our concupiscence to drive us to repentance and greater holiness.

The hunger these stories feed points toward genuine spiritual needs. We long for transformation, for eternal life, for communion with something greater than ourselves. St. Augustine's famous words ring true: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confessions I.1). Even our distorted vampire myths reveal this restlessness, this search for the eternal.

 

Conclusion: Our True Hunger is for Life

What then should we do with this understanding?

Develop Spiritual Discernment: We must recover our ability to recognize evil as evil. This doesn't mean becoming judgmental toward people, but rather developing what Scripture calls spiritual discernment—the ability to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1). When consuming entertainment, ask: Does this story present sin as ultimately destructive, or as potentially redemptive only if God's grace intervenes?

Examine Our Hearts: We must examine our own hearts for areas where we've romanticized sin. Where have we, like modern vampire fiction, tried to retain the pleasures of vice while minimizing its consequences? The apostle Paul’s struggle resonates: "For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19). Recognition of this struggle is the beginning of repentance.

Seek the True Life-Giver: We must remember that our true hunger is for Christ, not for darkness dressed in attractive form. Jesus declared, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever" (John 6:51). The vampire's promise of immortality through blood is a satanic parody of the Eucharist. We need not seek life from death, but rather life from Life Himself.

The modern vampire's yearning for goodness, flawed as it may be, is a powerful echo of our own yearning for Christ. It is a reminder that no matter how deep the darkness, no soul is ever completely lost to the reach of the Master. When we acknowledge the horror of our own worst parts, we are finally in a position to see the profound, redeeming power of God's best.

 

In Christ,
Judah

 

P.S. I know this might not be the kind of novel you're used to, but this new series (under my other pen name) is an attempt to really bring the Gospel into the Vampire genre more powerfully, to bring the legacy of Bram Stoker into the present day, with the focus on redemption and salvation: NIGHTWALKER (Book 2 releases this month).