The following is an excerpt from my upcoming dissertation on the uses of gay camp in biblical films. This section discusses horror movie conventions used in The Passion of the Christ. It is my contention that Mel Gibson’s use of these strange and even humorous tropes in what is otherwise a horrific and torturous account of the last hours of Christ opens The Passion to a broader reading—even a “camp” or “queer” reading. The illustrations are presented as visual evidence of this thesis.  – Richard Lindsay

By the end of the flogging scene in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Jesus is a bloody pulp, and with the crown of thorns, he resembles the character Pinhead in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series. However, there turns out to be some unintended Biblical theology behind turning Jesus into a monstrous figure. As Galatians 3:13 puts it, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree“(NRSV). Although an incarnational, liberating theology seems farthest from the mind of Mel Gibson, we could see The Passion as Christ becoming a monster in solidarity with all others who are treated as monstrous in the world—the disabled, the sick and dying, the unfairly imprisoned and inhumanely tortured, the poor, and people of sexual or gender difference. In this way, the monstrousness of this horror story, intended to portray the kerygma of the cosmic battle of Good versus Evil, unintentionally becomes queer. What The Passion suggests through its camp kerygma, is what Paul suggests in Galatians: that Jesus was ‘queered’ on the cross.

This would not be too much of a stretch for queer writers, many of whom have described the relationship between monstrosity, queerness, and horror. In his book on monstrosity and homosexuality in film, Michael William Saunders notices what other writers like Stephen Moore have noticed about the dual nature of queerness as it applies to monstrosity:

The idea of the monster derives from two fundamental etymological myths: that monsters are anomalous creatures that serve as signs indicating the consequences of the natural order (Look what happens when you do bad things!); and that monsters are marvelous, monumental manifestations of the power of God (Look what God can do!). The monster is, by its very nature, most fundamentally an image whose purpose is to reveal the power, and more importantly, the terror, of divinity.[1]     

Once again, we see the ability of queerness to simultaneously define in opposition and undermine in perversity. Jesus’ monstrosity in The Passion is both a warning (a remonstration) of the power of evil, and a sign (a monstrance) of God’s terrible power. Saunders goes on to explain the spiritual value of voyeurism as we the audience gaze on this horrible monster that Christ has become:

[The monster] is meant to be seen, but its nature as image is to discourage us, either through fear or through awe, from looking too long where we ought not to look. …If we look at such an image too long or too often, we commit a sacrilege or we endanger ourselves by presuming to look casually at what we are not meant to be able to bear. As an image, a monster functions to give power to an elect—the hierophants who are allowed to wield the image because they have proven their immunity against it….”[2]

This echoes the reactions of professors Russell Hittinger and Elizabeth Lev to Gibson’s film. They write, “We, too, have been witnessing these events, and that it is now we who are called to bear witness to what we have seen.”[3] Their call to witness initiates us into that hierophany of privileged viewers who have experienced the brutal torture of Jesus Christ, and we are called to speak about it to the world. 

Taking one more queer twist, however, beyond the voyeuristic salvation offered in The Passion, is the possibility of identifying with Christ as a queer body. In his essay “Growing Up Horror,” gay writer D. Travers Scott writes about his childhood obsession with horror movies and makeup and how this became an overt expression for more covert sexual desires. As a preteen, he decorated his room with horror movie posters, rubber body parts, and wig stands decorated to look like they had deteriorating flesh and rotting eyeballs. Scott places this fascination beyond identification with outsiders, what he calls “Freddy Kruger-as-Genet.”[4]He explains that horror helped him take real pleasure in his “body’s rebellious nature.” He adds, “At a time when my body was under multiple systems of oppression—too young, too queer, too prone to disease—stories of rebellious bodies…filled me with glee.”[5]

At the same time, this body-ness serves an important function when placing Gibson’s Jesus film in the broader context of the Jesus film genre. The destruction of Jesus’ body in The Passion is perhaps more evidence of Christ having a body than any previous Jesus film had dared to portray. This is the polar opposite of Jeffrey Hunter’s pretty, barely-bruised Jesus with shaved underarms in Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961), a role that earned the ire of cynical critics, who called it “I Was a Teenage Jesus.” The graphic production of The Passion creates a Christ body that is gruesome and carnal, like the “horror” bodies beloved by Scott, the young burgeoning queer. These bodies are, “Adamantly irrational. They populate a world in which common sense no longer reigns supreme, but lust, passion, frenzy, and desire erupt in swollen uprisings.”[6] Scott further describes these horror bodies as subaltern: ‘The members of these rebellions are not a downtrodden underclass but downtrodden values: passion, love, emotion, and feeling, all demanding their say, their place at the table of consciousness and reality, their recognition in the tyranny of an ascetic Puritan, rational, reproductive, sterile, and all-too-safe- world. And how queer is that?”[7]

Taking Scott’s reflections a theological step further, could we dare ask: In the same way, a flayed savior who really bleeds, really suffers, and really dies an agonizing death…how queer is that?! Of course, if you don’t think that The Passion of the Christ belongs squarely in the horror film genre, consider the brief photographic argument here:

Note: Recall the shot of the elderly man with his eyes gouged out in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).

 
Abrams discusses three types of transgressive sexuality, adultery, cross-dressing, and homosexuality. Of course, it’s easy to see how the inclusion of the former with the latter two will be troublesome to some readers. However, Abrams is simply considering these three modes of behavior as ways in which stars and crew defied widely-accepted sexual and gender norms throughout the studio era. Abrams writes, “[…The] bohemians embodied the pleasures of the forbidden and the taboo” (4). At the same time, Abrams focuses his attention on the venues in which this transgressive behavior was often acted out: nightclubs, public Hollywood parties, private Hollywood parties, the Hollywood star’s home, and behind the scenes of Hollywood productions. Abrams contrasts coverage of these Hollywood places and events with similar accounts from locations across the country. Though these modes of transgressive behavior took place in all locations and at a variety of times, Abrams narrows his discussion of one particular mode in each location. Abrams’ book is an important contribution to the study of film history as it reveals Hollywood’s self-awareness and an eagerness on the part of many viewers and fans to participate in transgressive behavior by consuming the stories and images that Hollywood released. Abrams consults a variety of sources for his analysis of these bohemians and their behavior. He considers trade press (Photoplay, Moving Picture World), traditional print journalism, and, interestingly enough, Hollywood novels and films…that is, fictional narratives about the industry that draw from real-world parallels. One of my few concerns with Abrams’ book is his hesitation to “name names,” and by that I mean not the bohemian stars themselves but the names of the historians to which he so frequently refers, who make bold claims about the stars’ identity and sexual behavior. Far too often, I had to look back to the footnotes to see what author he was referring to. However, Abrams’ study is also important because it reveals the origins of so much of our media obsession with stars today and the value we place on sexuality. In many ways, it makes a good companion piece to Pete Wards’ Gods Behaving Badly. Read on for a further summary of the book.

Abrams’ discussion of Hollywood nightlife in the first chapter focuses on the popularity of gender-bending cross dressers, female impersonators and women in men’s clothing. Female impersonation shows were extremely popular and highly publicized until the 1940s or so. Stars from Broadway and Vaudeville made their way to Hollywood and its nightclubs. Abrams writes, “[…Female] impersonators became one of the first groups of proven performers from another entertainment field to receive contracts and star in motion pictures” (18). Stars included Karyl Norman and Julian Eltinge. The coverage of these stars and their performances, Abrams adds, “associated Hollywood nightlife with the fantasy of seeing people who defied the typical clothing style for women” (29). What is an important reminder here is just how shocking it was for women to don pants and suits. Stars like Tallulah Bankhead and Greta Garbo quite literally paved the way for more contemporary fashions. Abrams also argues that it was an influential part of lesbian subculture as well before it became mainstream (37). Abrams’ discussion of fan reaction to female impersonators also applies to women who dressed like men: “If one of their [the fans'] favorite stars was friendly with female impersonators, the reader would continue to identify with the star, thus assuming the star’s position of friend of the female impersonator” (40). One wonders how closely the decline in the popularity of female impersonation shows was linked to the arrival of World War II and the demands of “manliness” and patriotism.

In the second chapter, Abrams discusses ways in which reporters covered stars’ behavior at public Hollywood parties and movie premiers. What were they wearing? Who did they show up with? Who did the leave with? What did they say? How did they behave? Much of their behavior (that of the bohemians) was coded and the press and the studios were more than happy to revel in that coded behavior/language. Stars that form the center of this chapter include Ramon Navarro (accusations of homosexuality) and Clark Gable and Carole Lombard (two of the most notorious adulterers in Hollywood history). Surprisingly, at this time, such behavior did not rob stars of very good salaries or big-budget movies (74).

Abrams’ third chapter analyzes private Hollywood parties and the (often) illicit sexual behavior that took place there. Here, he draws heavily on novels and films about Hollywood. Abrams writes, “This perception of the Hollywood private party as a highly sexual place was widely held. […] The images [of private parties] also provided audiences the excitement of vicariously witnessing other people experience wish fulfillment” (78, 79). Chief among the scandalous parties was the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle incident in which the actor was eventually acquitted of raping and murdering Virginia Rappe. Unlike Arbuckle, who never made it back, Abrams writes, “The sexual outlaws in Hollywood private parties did not start sparks that led to significant threats to either the movie industry or to the conception of Hollywood. Instead, the images promoted the Hollywood private party as an exciting place where audience members might catch glimpses of movie stars making love in their real lives” (85). Abrams continues, “[…If] he were so inclined, a man attending a Hollywood party could leave with another man’s date. He could even leave with another woman’s date” (85). Central to his discussion in this chapter are the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young, and Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova.

In Chapter 4, Abrams analyzes portrayals of and features on stars’ homes, both their features and decorations and the ways in which the stars conducted themselves while at home. The stars entertained guests and lovers of the same and opposite sexes. Here, Abrams is concerned with “chic bachelorhood,” be it of the male or female variety, and “odd bedfellow digs.” The former deals with stars who live the single life, especially those who had little concern for living with the opposite sex, or anyone of any gender for that matter. The latter concerned wealthy same-sex stars who lived together because they either loved one another’s company or were physically attracted to each other. Abrams begins the chapter with an interesting discussion of the home in American popular culture and its ability to convey gender and social norms. Hollywood homes also conveyed the bohemians’ sexuality and relationship status (121). Abrams’ discussion of Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Mercedes De Acosta, and Cary Grant and Randolph Scott‘s homes is especially telling. What is most interesting here, as in the subsequent chapter, are the ways in which female stars and behind-the-scenes crew (writers, directors, artists, etc.) earned and flaunted their wealth and fame in a male-dominated culture, even as they had to negotiate questions about their lifestyles that came from a distinctly male point-of-view.

In the fifth chapter, Abrams discusses life behind the scenes on Hollywood productions and the ways in which the bohemians (stars and crew alike) conducted themselves at the workplace. Much like nightclubs or Hollywood parties, the press and the studios would tout illicit behavior during production in the promotion of these films. Like homes, dressing rooms became places of refuge or location for “covert affairs.” Like other illicit relationships, a bohemian star often became “close” to their designers, stylists, set designers, and makeup artists. These latter technicians were often just as bohemian in their tastes and sexuality as their on-screen counterparts. Abrams adds, “Hollywood publicity materials depicted three main characteristics behind the scenes. It appeared as a place where stars lived luxuriously, where workers formed a family environment, and where a man and woman could find romance [not necessarily with each other, of course]” (165). Abrams discusses artists and crew like Orry Kelly and Dorothy Arzner at length.

Abrams concludes that these bohemians toyed with “crossing the boundaries of culturally acceptable gender and sexual interests and activities […and] associated the taboo and pleasure of experiencing the forbidden with specific places in Hollywood” (193). He also, like me, questions, the inclusion of adulterers in addition to homosexuals and cross-dressers in Hollywood’s promotion of bohemian behavior (193). Nevertheless, Abrams argues that these bohemians not only transgressed past sexual mores but have shaped current norms and practices today. He also briefly traces how portrayals of bohemians that once “praised” or “uplifted” their behavior dramatically shifted to show them as pitiful or deranged characters (196). More so than ever before, our current media provides “audiences with ever-increasing information about the romantic and sexual interests of celebrities and public figures” (197). Abrams does a most insightful job of showing us where it all began.

It doesn’t get more bohemian than this:

Lindvall and Quicke pick up where Lindvall left off in Sanctuary Cinema. Though there was something of a despairing “end” to religious (read denominational) uses of motion pictures at the close of the 1920s, Lindvall and Quicke reveal that, beginning in the 1930s, a vibrant Christian film industry slowly emerged that paralleled, in some ways, the secular Hollywood industry. However, it would always be more of an underground movement that only occasionally inserted itself into the mainstream. Lindvall and Quicke present their work with sharp insight and humor. In the process, they reveal that the American Christian relationship with pop culture at large, and film in particular, has been more complex, even within conservative denominations than might initially appear. The authors, to their credit, are also unfailingly fair to even the most conservative productions that most film and religion scholars might dismiss out of hand. This continued research is important because few, if any, scholars have, as Lindvall and Quicke write, “specifically identified the role that Protestant films have played in constructing culture” (xii).

There are several avenues through which to undertake a discussion of American Protestantism after reading Lindvall and Quicke’s book. I’d like to echo a couple of interesting points that they raise before giving a broad overview of their work. Religious filmmakers and religious audiences’ reaction to their films were influenced by political and cultural influences. Lindvall and Quicke write about the reaction to one of Rev. James K. Friedrich’s films on the good Samaritan, “As war clouds loomed, however, a screening scheduled for the White House was canceled, and finally the project was put on the shelf. The theme was out of step with the times. Who would be taught to love your enemy when he may soon have to learn to kill him” (29). Unfortunately, as it is today, such prophetic (and scandalous) Christian theology is often a victim of the surrounding culture more than it is a transformer of it.

Despite their claims to the contrary, even the most conservative denominations were (and are) influenced by the emergence and rise of cultural power of motion pictures. Moderate to liberal denominations who embraced both film-viewing and filmmaking in their worshiping lives experienced varying degrees of success. On the other hand, denominations like the Southern Baptists, who tentatively embraced motion pictures, could never be as effective at changing the surrounding culture as they hoped to be with such schizophrenic approaches to an important cultural medium. Along with a lack of financial commitment to the emerging artform, few denominations had a clear enough vision for what motion pictures could or should be to allow them to enjoy sustained filmmaking ministries. Read on for an overview of Lindvall and Quicke’s excellent book.

In Chapter One, Lindvall and Quicke set the stage for the emergence of a Christian film industry, briefly highlighting the preceding Protestant and Christian reactions to the cinema at its development that paved the way for their current focus. What is chiefly characteristic of the setting is the religious cultural divide with, simply put, some Christians in favor of the films and others opposed to them(2). Attitudes began to shift enough, however, so that a sizeable Protestant population saw value in using films in the life and work of the church. Five genres of film emerged from the heightened Christian commitment to filmmaking: biblical films, missionary films, historical & biographical films, and even dramatci films. To varying degrees, creators of each genre sought to evangelize, uplift, and even entertain their audiences. Along with impacting a host of Christian audiences, some of these films even began to influence both Hollywood productions and foreign audiences. Lindvall and Quicke write, “Research findings on motion pictures in the 1930s demonstrated that Hollywood movies–in contrast to church-made films–handicapped missionary work, especially in the Orient, where viewers could no distinguish between true and false portrayals of American life” (19).

In Chapter Two, Lindvall and Quicke highlight the work of three important Christian filmmakers whose styles and filmmaking philosophies find parallels among Christian filmmakers today. Rev. James Friedrich, Carlos Baptista, and Dr. Irwin Moon made successful, even award-winning Christian films. Friedrich’s main drive was how to “‘make the Holy Scriptures a living experience for others,’” and to that end, he spent “an inheritance of $100,000 by investing it in a nonprofit motion picture company through which he might unify Christendom by means of the visual medium” (26, 28). For his work, Friedrich is perhaps most famous for starting Cathedral Films, which ran from 1948-1964. Somewhat prophetically, Friedrich shifted box office focus from theaters to churches “‘with a ready-made audience of sixty million,” anticipating the distribution and exhibition strategies of 21st century church-based film production companies like Sherwood Pictures and Graceworks Pictures (31). Unlike the Kendricks, however, Friedrich “made it a point to use ‘secular’ talent and crews. He believed that if you wanted a good film, then you would have to use good actors regardless of religious affiliation. He defended this practice to those who argued for using only Christian crews by comparing it to the making of a new church sanctuary [...]” (32). Friedrich finds contemporary parallels among those Christians who are working within the Hollywood system trying to make aesthetically accomplished films.

Unlike Friedrich, Carlos Baptista cared less about aesthetics, privileging the message over the medium, and, in this fashion, he was much like the Kendricks, who are something of his filmmaking progeny. Lindvall and Quicke add, “Baptista strongly believed that everyone who worked on any aspect of his films must be ‘born-again’” (44). However, Baptista’s passion for motion picture evangelism is impressive, and he, unlike many of his contemporaries, anticipated the future existence of home video collections (45). Dr. Irwin Moon stands apart from Friedrich and Baptista in a number of ways. Rather than illustrating Scripture, Lindvall and Quicke write, “[...] Moon dreamed of communicating the creative truths of God by illustrating them through science and nature” (46-47). It’s almost impossible to think of a contemporary example of Dr. Moon, whose “Sermons from Science,” seem so far removed from anything that current Christian filmmakers are producing. Unlike many Christian productions today, Lindvall and Quicke note that, by 1986, “a total of thirty-nine [of his] educational films had won twenty-seven national and international awards, plus the Eastman Kodak Gold Medal Award was presented to Irwin Moon for ‘the advancement of the educational process through the many unique uses of the art of the motion picture’” (54). Dr. Moon also adapted his science films for both congregation and classroom use, exhibiting a kind of intellectual ecumenism that is often lacking today (53).

In Chapters Three and Four, Lindvall and Quicke outline denominational efforts at film production, distribution and exhibition from the ’30s to ’80s. Chapter 3 covers Methodist and Ecumenical films while Chapter 4 focuses on “dissenting” images from Lutherans to Baptists to Episcopalians. Again, the ways in which these denominations did or did not cooperate with secular producers says much about their approach to the surrounding culture. Methodists (65) and Lutherans (96) did, whereas Baptists didn’t. Methodists were wary of evangelical films (64), whereas this proved to be the bulk of Baptist output. One of the most notable ecumenical efforts was the Protestant Film Commission, which “coordinated the labors of nineteen religious denominations and thirteen leading interdenominational agencies. Its twofold purpose was to try to produce some high-quality dramatic and documentary Christian 16mm films for distribution to various churches, schools, and community groups, and to stimulate and encourage the production of films with positive religious themes from the Hollywood film industry” (81).

In Chapters Five and Six, Lindvall and Quicke turn their attention to, to put it one way, more industrial efforts at Christian filmmaking. Here, Christians cooperated with one another to create production studios and distribution networks that more closely paralleled their secular counterparts. These companies and their output are with us yet and perhaps even a few of them are more familiar to a larger portion of Lindvall and Quicke’s potential readers. Companies include Family Films, World Vision, Gospel Films, Focus on the Family, World Wide Pictures, and Gateway Films. The latter two are perhaps the most popular, the former being Billy Graham’s filmmaking ministry and the latter for its production of The Cross and the Switchblade.

Thankfully Lindvall and Quicke devote an entire chapter to Mark IV Pictures and their apocalypse-themed films that have inspired a host of sacred and secular releases. Lindvall and Quicke tread more lightly through these films than some of their peers, most notably Heather Hendershot. While Hendershot is more critical of their theology, Lindvall and Quick prove more behind-the-scenes information on how these films came to be. In the next chapter, Lindvall and Quicke discuss less fearful cinematic evangelism efforts with the likes of Ken Anderson and Ray Carlson attempting to create gospel films in global contexts. Of course, nothing compares to The Jesus Film (featured image above), which has an estimated viewership of over 6 billion and boasts over 225 million conversions to Christ. At the conclusion of this chapter, Lindvall and Quicke also discuss a little-known film, Karunamayudu/Man of Mercy, a Jesus film in an Indian context (you can see a YouTube version of the film below).

In their conclusion, Lindvall and Quicke highlight a brief renaissance in Christian film production with so many young, talented, and promising Christian filmmakers attending traditional film schools like those at NYU, USC, or UCLA, and attempting to create less explicitly religious (though by no means less theological) productions that break the mold of their more didactic predecessors. Unfortunately, many Christian viewers are hesitant to embrace these films, which, perhaps explains the reason why so many talented Christian filmmakers have moved into secular Hollywood to work with more accomplished colleagues. Lindvall and Quicke point to this reality as a source of future research. Here’s hoping they get to work on that book sooner than later.

Check out a couple of videos below. The first is a YouTube version of Karunamayudu and the second is a sample of one of Dr. Moon’s science films.

The list here is not really in any particular order. There are several films that we suspect might have made the list had we had the time to see them. Some of these include A Separation, Take Shelter, Melancholia, Shame and others. Unfortunately, writing and defending dissertations, prepping a book for publication, and planning an around-the-world journey cut into our movie-going this year. You can read more about why we chose each film after this snapshot:

• The Help
• Higher Ground
• The Adjustment Bureau
• Of Gods and Men
• Tree of Life
• Hugo
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams
• Courageous
• Red State
• Drive

The Help: This little movie about African-American domestic workers in the Civil Rights-era South packed a wallop at the box office and started a national conversation about how we view the history of race relations in post-Obama America. It also contains some of the best acting performances of the year, and if the SAG and Golden Globe nominations are any indication, the film is an early favorite for Oscar consideration.
One of the major criticisms of the The Help was that it offered a too-gentle rebuke of the segregation era, allowing audiences to feel easy superiority over the most shockingly racist characters. There is some truth to this critique, but to focus on the film’s shortcomings as an accurate portrayal of the segregationist South is to miss its liberating message of resistance to oppression using elements of feminist/womanist theology.

The feminist/womanist theological principle practiced throughout the film is “table fellowship,” in which faith and life are seen as an ever-expanding circle of hospitality in which more and more people are drawn in. The revolutionary action of the characters begins with a kitchen conversation between the black maid Aibileen (Viola Davis) and the white reporter Skeeter (Emma Stone).  This simple beginning soon grows to include a close friend, Minny (Octavia Spencer) and later, many of the maids in Aibileen’s neighborhood. As the women sit around their tables sharing food and coffee, trust is created and they begin to share stories, starting with the more general and humorous, and gradually delving deeper into soul-bearing confessions of pain, hardship, and hope. In a line that summarizes the central theme of the movie, one of the characters says, “We’re not doing civil rights, we’re just telling stories.” And of course, the women in this film are doing both.

Perhaps the most important legacy of the film is that it helps us remember that the Civil Rights movement, for all its national heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, was also made up of thousands of ordinary women and men who transformed society through small acts of courage.

Higher Ground: One of several excellent independent spiritual films that did not receive wide release this year (others which Pop Theology missed in the theaters included The Way and Another Earth), Higher Ground is Vera Farminga’s directorial debut. An adaptation of the Carolyn S. Briggs memoir, This Dark World, the movie immerses us in the faith journey of Corinne (played by Farminga) and the culture of 1970’s charismatic Christianity. The film skillfully portrays elements of the Jesus People movement, which combined the radical experiential practices of the hippies with evangelical Christianity. The community Corinne and her husband Ethan (Joshua Leonard) join sees no conflict between living as hippies in upstate New York, eating 70’s health food, talking graphically about having meaningful sex with their spouses, and going to prayer meetings at house churches. Jesus is their drug. Eventually, Corinne and her family have difficulty integrating their faith with the rest of their lives. Feeling spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually oppressed by the church, Corinne begins chafing against the community’s leadership and the patriarchal “spiritual headship” Ethan tries to get her to submit to. Soon, she must decide whether or not she will remain in her marriage and in her church.

A poignant scene happens after one of the members of the community tells Corinne that if she doesn’t get right with God, she’ll be left outside of the Kingdom with the dogs (a reference to Rev. 22:15). Corinne returns home to visit the church of her youth, where an old hound sits on the front porch. When she walks back out of the church and follows the dog to an adjoining field, dogs of all shapes, sizes, and breeds rush around her. What the member of Corinnne’s church didn’t realize in criticizing her is that dogs are symbols of fidelity. Throughout art history, and specifically in religious paintings, the presence of dogs often signified faithfulness and devotion.  Far from being “in the doghouse,” Corinne’s journey is still one of faith, even as she is forced to live it out on the margins of the Christian community to which she belongs. The film captures Corrine’s struggle beautifully in the final shot, in which she stands in the doorway of the church, physically and spiritually divided as to whether or not she should leave. The film demonstrates the great tragedy of institutional religion—people must often choose between their relationship with God, and their relationship to their faith community. It’s a shame that so much of Christian religion has become antithetical to Bishop Ireneus’ teaching that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

The Adjustment Bureau: The late writer Philip K. Dick continues his reign as the perhaps the most influential inventor of science fiction scenarios for Hollywood with this year’s The Adjustment Bureau. The film takes the simple statement, “God has a Plan,” to its logical (or absurd) conclusion. If God has a plan, and humans have some level of choice, it must be possible to go “off plan.” If that’s the case, then God must be constantly making “adjustments” at the micro and macro level. So what if, the film asks, in order to keep the cosmic clockwork moving, God needs not miracles or angels, but something more like a bureaucracy? That’s where the Adjustment Bureau comes in. These are the men with hats and grey suits who keep history going in the right direction. And, like any bureaucracy, the underlings don’t know the whole story. They’re organization men. Their main purpose is to keep The Boss happy and move up the ladder, not to question the morality of their actions. And sometimes mistakes are made. Blame is shifted. The fixers in the corner office have to come in and clean things up. The Adjustment Bureau agents in the film are played quite entertainingly by John Slattery (Roger Sterling from Mad Men), Anthony Mackie, and the incomparable Terrence Stamp. The boys from the Home Office are straight-laced and ruthless, as they try to keep Matt Damon’s character, David Norris, a Congressman, and Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), a dancer, from finding the happiness together that would put them “off-plan” for the important contributions the two of them are supposed to make to the world.

The crux of the film is free will versus predestination, Calvin versus Aquinas, Plato versus Aristotle—a romantic comedy of Western metaphysics. Even the main characters—the spontaneous dancer in love with the calculating politician—represent the interplay of philosophical opposites. I suspect some people may object to the sheer, brutal Calvinism of the Bureau. More “advanced” theological minds may suggest that we don’t think this way anymore, that we have matured in our view of humans as co-creators with God, or even beyond the idea of divine interference at all. But I’m not sure this is completely true. Having spent the last ten years of my life in the midst of theological education and religious leadership, the “will” of God weighs heavily on seminary students, ministers, and committed laypeople. Religious types are unfailingly intuitive, often following the dictates of their conscience against what seems logical or systematic.

It all comes down to theodicy and theological anthropology. If you believe in a God who is present, who intervenes, or has been incarnate in human form, to some extent you believe in the Adjustment Bureau. What I like about the film is it suggests human error and random chance are the inevitable result of a species struggling to maturity. This world is all part of The Plan, not the result of The Fall. The film even suggests human beings can change God’s mind—which is not at all incompatible with Jewish and Christian scriptures. The film suggests God and humanity are on an adventure together in which the spiritual is becoming known in the material world. This is a messy process: at times tragic, at times joyful, at times absurd. A metaphysical romantic comedy indeed.

Of Gods and Men: In the Pop Theology review of this film, Richard Lindsay carried on a conversation with Catholic educator and former novice at a Benedictine monastery, Mike Campos. Mike’s insights into the film are truly enlightening and we highly recommend the article. Of Gods and Men is technically a 2010 release: it received the Grand Prix (the second prize) at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but was not distributed in the United States until February 2011. The film is based on a true story about French Trappist monks in Algeria killed by Islamic militants in 1996. The death of the monks is a cold historical fact, but what makes the film moving on a deep spiritual level is its account of why, given ample opportunity to escape, the monks stayed in their isolated community under the continuing threat of death. The film allows us to get into the rhythm of monastic life as the brothers work, eat, study, and pray together. Not at all a cloistered community, the brothers have become integrated into the life of the small village outside their monastery, and the difference in faiths between the Christian monks and the Muslim villagers has been overcome by their dependence on each other. The monks sell honey in the local market, provide medical care, do acts of charity, and give and receive advice from their Muslim neighbors. The village and the monastery are soon forced to a crisis by the invasion of Islamic militants, who demand a more fundamentalist approach to the faith. Even the Muslims of the village, who do not share the fundamentalists’ zeal, are in danger of torture or beheading. Conditions continue to deteriorate for the monastery, bringing both threats from the Islamic militia and unwanted attention from the Algerian army. The brothers must then wrestle with the possibility of abandoning their monastery and the village or staying and facing almost certain death.

By the end of the film, viewers can begin to understand, based on the monks’ theology, why they decided to stay, even if few of us might share their courage. As Mike Campos explained in his discussion of the film, “[In monastic life] when one relates with the [religious] community—each other, the villagers, the land, the government, the militia—one simply does not leave and sever. In each brother’s individual struggle over whether to leave or to remain, they reconsider what it means to relate, to love, to embody” their faith. “Their decision to stay exposes a deeper commitment to relationships, individuals and people that transcends the momentary crisis of politics.”

The imperative to continue their ministry of prayer, outreach, and daily work is heightened by the threat, until simply performing the mundane tasks of the monastery takes on great importance as an act of resistance to the violence being imposed on their community. The monks’ actions are wholly contradictory to the Western materialist idea that true freedom can only come through unfettered individuality and a kind of grasping relationship with one’s own survival and personal fulfillment. In their act of self-giving, several of the monks express to each other that they feel a sense of freedom and joy. In this way, the film illuminates the great truth from the Gospels, “Whoever tries to save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life shall preserve it.”

The Tree of Life: Winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, this was one of the most artistically polarizing films of 2011. Distinct camps formed between those who loved the film’s long discursions into cosmic history and non-linear narrative of a family told through cinematography rather than words, and those who found the film incomprehensible and self-indulgent. We here at Pop Theology were of the camp that concluded director Terrence Malick has made a spiritual masterpiece, and the best film of the year. The Tree of Life begins with God’s rejoinder to a complaining Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation…While the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” From there it places the coming-of-age struggles of a Texas family in the 1950’s, particularly the clan’s oldest boy, Jack, against the entire drama of Nature, including the cosmic history of the Big Bang, the creation of life, and evolution. In the family sequences, Brad Pitt nearly vanishes into his role as the disciplinarian father. His buzzed hair, jutting jaw, the cut of his clothes, even the way he carries himself, are an encapsulation of the mid-Twentieth Century men that were so many of our fathers and grandfathers. He loves his kids and his wife, struggles to feed them, feels frustrated and unfulfilled in his work, and doesn’t have a speck of emotional intelligence to save him. As the mother of the family (played by Jessica Chastain) narrates, “We were told there were two ways of life, the way of Grace and the way of Nature.” As embodied by the mother, Grace sees beauty in all things. As embodied by the father, Nature is self-serving and often frustrated. Rather than embracing the unique spirits and natures of his children, he forces them into a mold based on hard work, self-reliance, and repression of feeling that he can’t even fit into himself.

The dialogue is sparse, mostly overheard or spoken in the characters’ minds. Much of the speech seems to be in the form of questions posed to God. In the midst of the family drama, Malick and his photographer Emanuel Lubezki capture the movement of trees, grass, seaweed, and water; patterns of light on concrete, through glass, and through hands and fingers held against the sun; buildings of steel, wood, and stucco; flocks of birds in flight, jellyfish, snakes, even dinosaurs; and a vast ballet of stars and nebulae. This is accompanied by music from the most celestial composers: Mahler, Respighi, Holst, Bach, Berlioz, Smetana, Tavener, and Górecki, among others. It’s a film that gives the viewer time to contemplate the iconography of the Cathedral of the Universe. The Hollywood melodrama has historically been a means of taking difficult social issues and dealing with them through domestic situations. In The Tree of Life, the entire history of the universe and all the deep questions of humanity are filtered through the life of one family. In this sense, Malick may have created something completely new: a cosmic melodrama.

Hugo: Next to Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo is perhaps one of the most visually stunning films of the year. Like few filmmakers have as of late, Scorsese employs 3D technology to serve his story and, by extension, the audience. For the average moviegoer, Hugo will be the most entertaining film history lesson they could have. Other filmmakers have blended film history and fantasy together, but few have done so as movingly as Scorsese. While viewers will no doubt be drawn to and enraptured by the visuals, the film has a captivating story that raises several important “points” about the human experience. Hugo tells the story of Hugo Cabret, an orphan living in the attic of a train station. His deceased father was something of a tinkerer, who had created a mysterious automoton that Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is not trying to re-animate. Hugo hides most often and observes the world around him. His two (potential) enemies are the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the owner of a toy store in the station (Sir Ben Kingsley). His search for the key to the automoton brings him to the attention of the toy store owner. Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), the toy store owner’s granddaughter befriends Hugo and draws him further into her grandfather’s life. We soon learn that her grandfather, Papa Georges, is actually Georges Melies, a “father of cinema,” particularly  special effects, sci-fi, and fantasy.

Scorsese beautifully re-creates some of Georges Melies early silent films, providing us with an imaginative glimpse “behind-the-scenes” of classic, silent films. He also integrates scenes from these actual films into his own.  More than that, the other plot lines in the film, specifically the Station Inspector’s attraction to Lisette (Emily Mortimer) and Monsieur Frick’s (Richard Griffiths) attraction to Madame Emilie (Frances de la Tour), actually play out like silent films that Hugo, and the audience, watch develop over the course of the larger narrative. I could go on and on about the beauty of Scrosese’s film (and perhaps I should), but I think it is especially relevant to this discussion because it provides insight into the artistic medium that we are most fond of here at Pop Theology and one of the most influential in pop culture at large.

Of course, Hugo’s experiences carry with them several important reminders. All of us, even the orphans in hiding, have value and purpose in this life. We “fit” into the grand scheme of things (whatever that may be) in integral ways. Part of this should be to help remind or tell people of their own worth and value. Of course, we need to be reminded too…much like Hugo does with Papa Georges. As always, these reminders play out much more beautifully on the 3D big screen. Perhaps it sounds trite here, but in a world built on devaluing ourselves and the other, this message could not be more profound or prophetic.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Few filmmakers could make a documentary, let alone a feature film, about 32,000 years old cave drawings entertaining. Werner Herzog might be the only one. Though Cave of Forgotten Dreams is an informative look back to a distant time and place, it is simultaneously a timeless, contemplative reflection on the nature of human identity. In 1994, three independent explorers discovered a cave in southern France, the entrance of which had collapsed some 20,000 years ago keeping both it and its hidden treasures preserved all along. The cave houses some of the oldest, if not the oldest, works of art known to humanity. The prehistoric drawings in Chauvet Cave feature images of bison, mammoths, lions, deer, rhinoceroses, and even a bison/woman hybrid. Alongside these images lie the bones of various now-extinct animals and beautiful, glittering calcium deposits. Scientists suspect that early humans did not live in the cave but perhaps used it for painting, ritual, or religious purposes.

In conversation with the documentarian, Jean Clottes, one of the earliest scientists to study the caves, tells Herzog that he feels like homo-sapien (the man who knows) is a far too inadequate description of the human species. Rather, he argues, we might best be described as homo-spiritualis (you define it). He also argues that two things are apparent from his studies of the Chauvet Cave drawings: these prehistoric humans understood fluidity and permeability. That is, distinctions like male and female or person and animal or human and nature or even this world and the spiritual did not matter. Humans could “communicate” with the “other side” and with nature. Hybrid artworks like the partial bison/woman figure at Chauvet point to a blurring of the lines…or a fluidity of life that escapes most of us today. Of course, the spiritual and/or religious assumptions about that time can run in countless directions.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is as beautiful a film as the drawings on which Herzog focuses. It benefits from cinematography that is as moving and haunting as the score that accompanies it. My only regret is that I missed it in 3D, a version of the film that would have no doubt lent both a sense of size and texture to the cave drawings that I missed out on by watching it at home. The medium of Herzog’s art, film, also opens up questions about the permanence of his work and, by extension, our role as observers in relation to the drawings. With a film as moving as Cave of Forgotten Dreams, one hopes that it has as permanent a place in the history of humanity as the drawings that grace its frames.

Courageous: One of these films is not like the others. We recognize that it will be laughable to many readers that we included this film on our list. There’s so much wrong with Sherwood Pictures‘ filmmaking philosophy, but there’s so much, at least technically, right with this film, especially when compared to their previous releases. At heart, there’s nothing wrong with Sherwood Pictures or the Kendrick brothers’ messages of being better spouses or, here, parents. So much of it just gets lost in the execution and prostelytizing.

In Courageous, the Kendrick brothers focus on a group of law enforcement officers and the trials on the streets and their troubles at home. To varying degrees, they have dysfunctional families spanning absentee fathers to keds feeling like they cannot connect with their parents at home. When tragedy strikes one of the families, the father, Adam (Alex Kendrick), enters into a six-week study period where he turns to Scripture to find inspiration to be a better husband and father. In fact, the scene in which Adam consults with his pastor is one of the best scenes in all of contemporary Christian cinema as the pastor leaves space for Adam to grieve. As a result, he crafts a resolution that states as much. Adam presents it to his friends David (Ben Davies), Shane (Kevin Downes), Nathan (Ken Bevel), and Javier (Robert Amaya), all of whom agree to sign it and hold each other accountable to its standards. When Nathan shows it to his wife Kayla (Eleanor Brown), she tells him that they need to make it official…that something like this requires a ceremony. So the four men dress up and participate in a ceremony in which they each recite the vows in The Resolution before God, their families, and each other.

The on-screen theology of Courageous is a bit more complex than Sherwood’s previous films as the filmmakers present it in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The characters here are far more sympathetic than the leads in Flywheel, Facing the Giants, or Fireproof. While their Christian faith is important to their lives, they do not seem to expect God to do everything for them. They take initiative in their lives. Javier may pray to God for help in finding a job, but that does not stop him from pounding the pavement in search of one. Adam cries out to God in anguish over the death of his daughter, but he also searches scripture for inspiration to be a better husband and father in order to help Victoria and Dylan heal. These are characters who put their faith in action rather than passively waiting for God to solve everything. Unfortunately, the requisite moment of salvation scene that has become a fixture of sorts in Sherwood Pictures’ films is far less subtle, bringing the flow of the film to a screeching halt.

Richard pointed out that Courageous shows, with more clarity, the evangelical Christian claim that Hollywood does not reflect the values of a large segment of the American population. The kind of characters and actors in this film would never be in Hollywood films. They look like normal people. People pray all the time in real life. They go to church. They struggle over personal morality. Hollywood rarely depicts any of this. When they do, it’s always the stereotype of the hypocritical religious leader or mindless followers. To some extent, Hollywood claims to reflect America, and in some ways claims to “invent” America. To the extent that they ignore white, or even more diverse, Red Staters that go to church, it fails to reflect real life in America. What Sherwood is doing in making this kind of independent film is the same thing small-time gay, or ethnic, or women filmmakers have been trying to do in countering the dominant narrative that Hollywood creates. The difference is that Sherwood probably sees themselves as the “real” America, rather than one perspective among many, which is what they really are. They are really a kind of ethnic cinema.

Red State: Speaking of red states, only one other film on the list is as disturbing as Kevin Smith‘s (that religious provocateur) Red State. It deserves a spot on this list because it reveals the violent potential inherent in religious fundamentalism and just how quickly it can all go awry. At the same time, it reveals his prophetic nature as a filmmaker and makes his immanent “departure” from the filmmaking world all the more unfortunate.  There’s a tradition of reading some of Jesus’ more intense sayings as prophetic hyperbole. That is, when Jesus in Mark 9:47, “If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell,” he doesn’t really mean that we should all run around plucking out eyeballs or cutting off body parts. No one…even the most conservative Christians…believes that. Jesus is being hyperbolic here in an effort to encourage his followers to take their lives, and the inevitable sin in them, seriously. Just because we don’t take this passage literally, doesn’t mean we don’t take it seriously. I would argue that this notion of prophetic hyperbole is an appropriate lens through which to view Kevin Smith’s latest film, a disturbing thriller about an extremely violent, fundamentalist Christian sect.

There are really only three things that mark this as a Kevin Smith film: rapid dialogue, a wealth of cursing, and some dark humor. Other than that, he’s in some pretty new (aside from the commentary on religion) territory. He’s doing a gritty thriller, action movie unlike anything he’s ever done before…and he kicks the proverbial door down with it. Unlike so many action movies that make the audience feel like they’re sitting in the middle of a blender, Smith and director of photography David Klein somehow manage to keep everything in extreme focus even as the action is moving at break-neck speed. There might have been a few actors who could have fit these roles, but I doubt that the film would have been as effective without the cast Smith assembled here, particularly Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, and John Goodman. Parks won’t get, but certainly deserves, an Oscar nod, especially for the lengthy sermon scene in which we first meet him. The hymns and scriptures roll off of his tongue like poison-laced honey.

And of course there’s the whole religion thing. As we mentioned above, Smith is engaging in prophetic hyperbole here. He doesn’t believe all conservative, radically evangelical Christians are gun-toting nut-jobs. Even as Abin and his Five Points community closely mirror Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, KS, Smith gives Keenan a line in which he tells his superior that, unlike the Five Points congregation, the Phelps community hasn’t amassed firearms. However, like Phelps, Abin and his followers reveal the ability of some Christians to embrace the letter of the Word without understanding its Spirit. Abin can quote scripture until kingdom come (an event he’s eagerly awaiting), but he leaves no room for the love or grace of God to move among either his congregants or especially unbelievers.

In a rather subtle way, Smith refuses to damn “the opposition,” even as they are eager to damn him. Towards the beginning of the film, Travis et al’s high school teacher lectures on the Constitution. Of course her major discussion point is the freedom of religion and as the scene fades out, the class touches on the Second Amendment. While she claims that Abin and his crew have every constitutional right to express their beliefs, she certainly thinks the world would be a better place without them (“The Nazis have even alienated themselves from Abin and Five Points”). Unlike this teacher, Keenan (and Smith?) view the opposing sides in much more complex ways. In a time when we have political candidates running on, essentially, theocratic platforms, Red State reveals yet again the danger of fundamental religious absolutism, especially when it has access to multiple forms of power.

Drive: There’s nothing specifically religious about Nicolas Winding Refn‘s film about a mysterious get-away driver, but it does raise some potentially large spiritual and theological issues. Like Red State, Drive can be brutally violent, but its characters’ experiences of that violence are much more ambiguous. In this world, shit happens, people get caught in the wrong places at the wrong time, and seemingly quiet, docile characters snap in brutal fashion without any warning. The great thing about Drive is that it refuses to tell us almost as much as it tells us. The film “focuses” on Driver (we don’t even get a real name for Ryan Gosling‘s character), a young man who drives stunt cars in movies by day and get-away cars by night. He’s quiet and punctual (either side of the agreed upon time for you to do your job and you’re on your own). He develops a gentle friendship with his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) who lives alone with her young son, Benicio (Kaden Leos). Their husband/father Standard (Oscar Isaac) is in prison…of course, for what we’re not exactly sure. When Standard is released from prison, he signs on for one last job for a mobster to get free of his debts. Driver agrees to help him out. Things go drastically wrong, and Driver finds himself more deeply involved with gangsters Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and Nino (Ron Perlman) than he had initially planned. Despite the risks, he plays it out to the bitter end to save Irene and Benicio from harm.

Even though there’s little action here, a key interest here for the filmmakers seems to be violence. While there’s not a lot of that either, compared to other crime, noir, or “car chase” films, the violence present in the film is, thankfully, unflinchingly realistic. Some of the violence comes from expected places like gangsters lashing out at people who might stand in their way. Some of it comes from characters being in the wrong place at the wrong time, e.g. Christina Hendricks‘ Blanche. Far more interesting are the sudden eruptions of violence from Driver, not because they are exceptionally graphic but because of what they reveal about and add to his personality. For the majority of the film, Driver keeps everything (his surroundings and personality) in check. But when they both get out of control, he reveals a volcanic level of violence that he’s been reining in for both his (perhaps) and Irene and Benicio’s benefit. If we can put it this way, the violence here is “good” because it is realistic, disturbing, and consequential. We see flowing blood, exploding skulls, and the like…most of which are conspicuously absent in most PG-13 or R-rated films.

With its avoidance of cartoonish violence and the accompanying implications of heroism and humanity being bound up in violent actions, Drive also sheds light on the “dark side” of a frequent theological interpretation of many films and genres. There’s a tendency among many Christian critics and viewers of “hero” films to view the lead character, say Batman or Superman, as a Christ figure. The problem is, the great majority of these characters are almost always violent and consistently so. This is something that Jesus never was, and, unless you subscribe to Mark Driscoll’s theology, something that the Christ is not. There could be the temptation her to view Driver as something of a Christ figure: he’s an outsider, mysterious, his arrival is inexplicable, he defends the vulnerable, he (potentially) sacrifices himself. But his treatment of his enemies, and most importantly the way in which those actions are portrayed in the film, both finds the comparison wanting and should shed light on the problematic comparisons that are so often made in other films.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share some of your favorites from 2011 below.

Perhaps you missed it in the midst of your New Years’ Eve revelry, but during a national broadcast of the Times Square ball drop, the singer Cee-Lo Green blasphemed one of America’s major religions. Singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” in front of thousands of drunken partiers with cameras trained on him from CNN and NBC, Green substituted words in the verse that reads:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to fight or die for,
And no religion, too.

Green’s interpretation of the final line: “And all religion’s true.”

This immediately set off a flock of angry twitterers, mobbing the former Goody Mob singer’s account with curses and invective. Typical responses from Twitter included:

@Austin McCarty: @CeeLoGreen All region is true = no religion is true.

@Occupylvcampout: @CeeLoGreen you don’t change the words to one of the best songs to what you believe go to hell fat boy I wish you a heart attack…

@Vegardkvaale: @CeeLoGreen who are you to change the words of a true artist. So fucking disrespectful and ignorant.

@SKYENICOLAS: @CeeLoGreen Look man, you’re nothing close to John’s intellect. You editing the song makes it a Pro Religion song and not a SECULAR song!

These critics seem unaware of just how religious their responses are. Other commentators used terms like “iconic” to describe the song, and “desecration” to describe what Green did to the song. They were essentially accusing Green of heresy against a system of spiritual beliefs that might be called “Lennonism.”

Lennonism sets itself against a perception of institutionalized, dogmatic religion, not the broader, less judgmental expressions of spirituality that have become part of the modern Western landscape. Surely Unitarian-Universalists would disagree with @AustinMcCarty’s assertion that all religions being true means no religion is true.

But whether using Thomas Luckmann’s suggestion of religion as a life-integrating discipline or Paul Tillich’s “matter of ultimate concern,” the responses to Green’s performance reveal the deeply religious meaning Lennon’s “Imagine” has for his fans. “Imagine” is the central creed of Lennonism. More than a pop song, it is a hymn to secular utopian spirituality.

Like the many evangelical Christians who misunderstand the American Founders’ deism as being compatible with their own theocratic agenda, some of Green’s critics seem to have equated Lennon’s song with contemporary “new atheism.” New atheists like Richard Dawkins or the late Christopher Hitchens believe in an aggressive rationalist or scientific materialism that would be pretty incompatible with the hippy utopianism of “Imagine.”

Lennon’s belief seemed to be more of an “anti-ism-ism” in which the lines of ideology would be erased in favor of a simpler and less-contentious mode of enlightened being. In the 1960’s, a time of heightened conflict between ideologies of Marxism and capitalism, nationalism and individualism, Eastern and Western religion, Lennon played the media trickster, subverting expectations of politicized celebrity opinion by promoting “bag-ism,” “hair peace,” and “bed-ism.” The solution-based striving of political and religious ideologies were replaced with slogans like, “Together we can get it together;” “War is over…if you want it;” and “All you need is love.” The idea was that the power you needed to change the world was inside you.

Furthermore, Lennon in the late 1960’s styled himself as a guru of this so-simple-its-obvious religion. The height of his spiritual influence was the Montreal Bed-in of 1969, in which Lennon and Yoko Ono took to their hotel bed for a week, and invited in counterculture celebrities, including Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, and Dick Gregory. Visually emulating the Beatles’ former teacher, the Maharishi, Lennon and Ono led the assembled disciples in the recording of “Give Peace a Chance.” It was the founding moment of Lennonism, the sacred moment of the 60’s that gives life to much of the nostalgic passion the Baby Boomers have for their rock-n-roll messiah.

Non-religious figures John Lennon and Yoko Ono

What’s disturbing is how dogmatic the latter-day followers of Lennonism have become. Like many believers, after their founder’s death, they become unyielding in their faith in an attempt to show “true discipleship.” How perverted is it to lay claim to Lennon’s philosophy by telling someone to “go to hell fat boy I hope you have a heart attack.”

Cee-lo’s expression that “All religion’s true” is surely as innocuous (and ultimately impractical) as Lennon’s wish for no religion. Many of us share the ideals of peace and harmony Lennon and Cee-Lo were attempting to express, but believe that it’s only by capturing the spirit of the human religious impulse and using it for good that real peace will come about. This is a faith of addition instead of subtraction. Not “no religion” or “any religion you want” but belief in the transformative power of the most enlightened elements of religion. This is ultimately closer to Martin Luther King’s statement, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice and brotherhood,” than a negative statement of eliminating peoples’ systems of meaning-making in pursuit of some nihilistic desert of anti-conflict.

Whatever you are, though, Lennonist, Cee-Lo Universalist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist, by all means, let’s Give Peace a Chance. You can start by keeping it civil on your Twitter account.

The strength of Ward’s book, in my opinion, is that he takes seriously an often reviled aspect of pop culture, celebrity. In what seems like a vacuous world, Ward uncovers several important elements that shed light on changes in and expressions of religion in the twenty-first century. Ward doesn’t look at celebrity culture (stars, fans, adoration, etc.) as religion explicitly but rather refers to it as a para-religion (more on this below). I think Ward makes great points about the differences between celebrity culture and religion which shed light on both. However, I almost feel as if he protests too much. Celebrity culture, while never fulfilling every requirement of one specific definition of religion, does parallel with so many aspects of various definitions of religion that it in many ways it seems appropriate to call it a new religion of its own and dismiss with the “para-” or “kind of like” modifiers.

What is sorely lacking from Ward’s work is any sort of research or look into celebrities’ fan bases…where and how they interact (Facebook, message boards, conventions, etc.)…and how this might lend some formality or organizational structure to a culture that, he argues, lacks it. He also fails to consider the ways in which religion frequently fails to live up to its higher standards and becomes just as corrupt, shallow, and money- and image-obsessed as celebrity culture. While he is convinced that meaning-making takes place vis-a-vis celebrity culture, he argues that it is nowhere near as serious as traditional religious meaning making or the work of religious studies scholars. I would argue that this is what is so attractive to so many fans of celebrity culture…it’s ability to be simultaneously serious and silly. Nevertheless, Ward’s observations of the role of celebrities in pop culture and fans’ adoration of them speaks volumes about what it means to be human and, moreover, spiritual and religious in today’s world. Read on for an overview of his book and arguments.

Ward’s discussion of what celebrities do is as compelling as his debate of whether or not celebrity culture is a religion or not. Celebrities do not exist in a vacuum…they are made by both the media and the public. Celebrities stoke a conversation that spreads beyond the latest fashion, who they’re sleeping with, or what box office bomb they starred in. Ward writes, “[...At] root we are being drawn into a conversation about what we do and do not value” (2). He continues, “Celebrities matter not because of who they are but because of what they represent. [...] In fact, they mediate a range of possible ways of being human” (3).

The first and most obvious way in which celebrity functions as religion is through the worship of celebrities. Lest we think this is not the worship of some “immortal deity,” consider the continued pilgrimages to Graceland, the endless tributes to Michael Jackson (for gods’ sake one of them is called “The Immortal World Tour”), or the memorial to Princess Diana. In life, as in death, celebrities serve a divine function as Ward writes, “So celebrities are ‘deities’ only to the extent that they are carrying the projected identifications of fans” (14). While Ward claims that this identification lacks formal (read congregational) structure, he fails to examine ways in which groups congregate and participate in shared meaning-making in a digitally-mediated world. Some of this seems to flow from his limiting understanding of social relationships. Ward seems to me like he would be in the “Facebook connections aren’t real connections” camp. He argues that fans’ identifications and relationships with celebrities aren’t really real because the fan and the star have never met. Of course, we have to ask if an evangelical Christian’s “personal relationship with Jesus” is any more real. What social media and changing forms of communication are forcing us to do is to re-define what constitutes real relationship and is already changing the relationships between fans and celebrities.

This cover of Hello! magazine perfectly embodies Ward's understanding of how fans' make meaning with celebrities.

In the second chapter, Ward talks about the processes by which celebrities are represented to their fans and the world. We know celebrities because of constant media exposure, but we also know that we know celebrities and that they are in fact fabricated. But we still attach meaning to them in the process by the ways in which we view and “interact” with them. Like theological and religious beliefs, these meanings change across times and locations. All of these, while initiated by the media eventually spin out of the media’s control and morph into what fans need or want. As a result, we could see celebrity meaning-making as far more akin to religious meaning making that it might initially appear.

The third section is the crux of Ward’s book in which he stakes his claim that celebrity culture is not religion but a para-religion. In this chapter, he highlights traditional definitions of religion from essentialist, functionalist or phenomenological perspectives from the likes of Durkheim, Geertz, and Eliade (for example) and describes how celebrity culture both parallels and diverges from them. Of the entire book, this is the chapter that would be great reading for introduction to religion courses in both the classroom and the congregation. One of the more interesting scholarly engagements Ward undertakes is with John Caputo who is “examining the possibility of ‘theology’ that is carried in popular culture in a way that is somehow disconnected from formal religious tradition” (77). Here, I hear echoes of Peter Rollins’ latest book, Insurrection.

My frustrations with Ward’s unwillingness to take that small final step and just call celebrity culture a religion aside, there are elements of his para-religion definition that I find interesting and helpful. He writes, “In fact, the treatment of celebrity culture as a religious tradition, or indeed as a replacement for religious tradition, does not simply do a disservice to religion–it may well also run the risk not only of misrepresenting the lived experience of celebrity worship but of failing to see the religious significance of celebrity” (80). Here, he does leave space for fans to speak for themselves and to deny the religious nature of their celebrity worship…although I would imagine many of them would be of the “spiritual but not religious” set. Later, Ward quotes Marcel Cobussen who argues that “para” is a “dangerous prefix,” which defies “rules of identity, stability, and centricity” (80). One wonders if we are not engaged always in “para-theology” in our struggles to talk about the Divine.

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain ensures a type of immortality for one of the most famous celebrities of all time.

If celebrities are in a sense demigods, Ward takes chapter four to explain what kind of gods they are…which again is far more reflective of us than they are of divinity. Celebrities embody what Ward sees as a transition from the traditional transcendental other focus of religion to the contemporary tendency to locate the divine in the sacred self (be that individual or collective). Of course, divine celebrities are graven images, self-centered, fallible, ordinary, diverse (polytheistic), sexy, saints, imperfect, powerless, and the like. Ultimately, Ward writes, “The theological in celebrity culture represents our conflicted and complex self clothed in the metaphors of the divine and reflected back to us. [...] Celebrity worship combines the sacred and the profane” (107). While most of these are negative connotations, they do (or should) force us to re-consider the ways we traditionally talk about God or the Divine.

Finally, Ward devotes chapter five to recurring theological themes that surface in celebrity culture. These are familiar: judgement, sin, fall, redemption, heaven, fidelity, apotheosis, incarnation, etc. The most interesting feature, however, might be the act of judging which, implicitly, reveals what we expect from our celebrities (and ourselves) and what we value in contemporary society. Believe it or not, fans’ obsession with celebrities most often, Ward argues, signifies a desire for family and stability. Ward concludes that celebrity culture and religious studies stand apart from studies of film and religion or popular music and religion because it is trashier and therefore generates moral judgement, which is itself a religious or theological act.

Mad Men: Dream Come True TV is really a mixed bag of essays. I found some to be a bit convoluted and direction-less while others were most informative. The last two sections of the book, which cover race, gender, and politics, will be of interest, I would imagine, to most visitors to this site. Fans of the series will no doubt flock to the first two essays that offer the most behind-the-scenes perspectives on the show. If anything, the essays collected here remind us why good television matters and why we should care about and watch it so closely. Whether at an ad agency in 1960s New York or on an intergalactic battleship, the drama of good television is, more often than not, more about us than it is the objects on the screen. As Edgerton points out in his introduction to the book, “[The characters in Mad Men] are merely an earlier, confused and conflicted version of us, trying to make the best of a future that is unfolding before them at breakneck speed” (xxvii). The brilliance of Mad Men, according to many of these contributors, is that it simultaneously portrays and critiques a seemingly distant time while showing us that we have much farther to go to get to where we already think we are. A brief summary of the book follows.

In a Foreword, Introduction, and fifteen essays, the contributors to this collection cover the series from a wide array of perspectives, all bunched into five larger themes. In the first, “Industry and Authorship,” Edgerton discusses the production history of Mad Men…how the series came to be. Brian Rose interviews executive producer Scott Hornbacher on both the birth of the series and the day-to-day, or episode-to-episode, work on it. Finally, Ron Simon puts, or reflects on, Don Draper in conversation with Bob Dylan and George Lois.

The second section addresses visual and aural style and their influences on the series. Jeremy G. Butler discusses the series’ style and the ways in which it compares to other popular ’60s fare like The Apartment or Ben-Hur. Tim Anderson analyzes the ways in which music and sound critique the idealism of the series and the time in which it is set. Finally, Maurice Yacowar, in brilliant fashion, extends this study to consider how moments of silence in particular episodes continues this critique. Yacowar observes, “If our awareness makes us feel superior to the characters we fall into Weiner’s trap. For it is his advertising men’s sense of superiority [...] that renders them hollow. These suggestive silences draw on our privileged knowledge and pull us into Weiner’s satire” (86).

The third section, “Narrative Dynamics and Genealogy,” places the series in historical context in relation to its structure and development. Horace Newcomb considers the role that television plays within the series and, by extension, in our own lives. Sean O’Sullivan points to the serial nature of the series and its relation to other serialized narratives and even The Odyssey. O’Sullivan realizes that, much like Yacowar’s discussion of silence, the moments of nothingness in between each season and the time that elapses in the narrative have implications for how we view the events that take place in each episode.  David Lavery discusses the poetic nature of the series and Frank O’Hara‘s influence on the ’60s, the series, and series creator Matthew Weiner.

In the fourth section, contributors mine the rich sexual politics and gender themes in Mad Men. In this section, contributors offer insightful essays that shed light on the brilliance of the series but that also reveal conflicting interpretations of the series. Mimi White analyzes the series’ “Mad Women” and argues that they are so for completely different, and sometimes self-imposed, reasons. Mary Beth Haralovich discusses the ways in which Mad Men‘s women characters open up conversations about feminism and how they can bridge the three different waves of it. Finally, Kim Akass and Janet McCabe point to the opportunities for and limitations on “the working girl” in Mad Men, the ’60s, and our world today.

Finally, three contributors focus on “Cultural Memory and the American Dream.” William Siska shows how the “boyish” nature of the men in Mad Men is a critique of American capitalism and consumerism as well as an embodiment of the tension between “gemeinschaft” and “gesellschaft.” Allison Perlman extends her analysis beyond the series, placing it in conversation with “paratexts” like DVD featurettes and accompanying documentaries about race and gender in American history to look at the ways in which the series offers a revisionist history of racism in America while simultaneously undermining that history. David Marc considers the series to be a “Roots Tale of the Information Age” and analyzes it in the context of broadcast advertising, the birth of the radio, and McLuhan‘s observations on advertising.

In Insurrection, Rollins undertakes what he calls “pyro-theology” in an effort to burn away theological chaff and religion itself. He is introducing us to and calling us toward a post-religious Christian experience. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Rollins is not concerned with getting back to the “glory days” of the Christian faith (if indeed there ever were any). Rollins argues that the church should ever be in flux, responding in love to the time and place in which it finds itself. Attempts to re-enact the “early church,” for example, are flawed because that model was appropriate for that time and place. What Rollins desperately wants his audience to return to and ground their experiences of Christianity in are the two central elements of the Christian story, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.

Rollins bemoans the fact that the contemporary church, as most people know it, has de-scandalized the Crucifixion of Jesus and robbed it of one of its key messages. In the Crucifixion, Rollins argues, we have both the death of religion and the absence of God. These are earth-shattering and doubt inducing experiences that most Christians gloss over or rush past to bask in the (re)assurance of Jesus’ Resurrection. Rollins’ assumption of religion, which could certainly be up for debate, is that religion, by nature, cannot co-exist with doubt. As a result, most of our religious communities, in their lived expressions of faith (liturgy, rituals, etc.) do not make space for expressions of doubt, confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, and the like. Rollins boldly claims that the intellectual certainty that some expressions of religion require is antithetical to the message of the Crucifixion, which is itself a moment of doubt and fear. Rollins writes, “It is only when we see the Crucifixion as the moment where God loses everything that we begin to glimpse the true theological significance of the event. What we witness here is a form of atheism: not intellectual [...] but a felt loss of God” (21). He continues, “[...A] properly Christological reflection should lead us to see the felt experience of God’s absence as the fundamental way of entering into the presence of God” (24).

Rollins claims that we cannot rightly understand the Crucifixion without the Resurrection, but at the same time, we cannot understand the latter without the former. As such, the Resurrection is not a white-washing of the Crucifixion or a means by which we simply overcome the fears and pains of life, but a means of living with them. The Resurrection is life- and world-affirming, an invitation to turn towards the world in love, not despite its blemishes but because of them. For it is in the act of loving, Rollins argues, that we experience God, who is not an object to be pursued and obtained but the very act of loving itself. The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus are events that took place over 2,000 years ago, however, they are also events that are present here and now. Rollins asserts that these are ways of being that we are to enact here and now if we are to experience the Kingdom of God and eternal life. Rollins writes, “[...The] New Testament writers are clear that they are not speaking of the prolonging of our present life but rather about our entry into an utterly new mode of life, one that starts right here, right now. Eternal life is thus fundamentally a transformation in the very way that we exist in the present” (111). Part of the beauty and hope of this message is that we are called and allowed to take responsibility for our own actions and for shaping our own destinies and the future of our world.

The parables that Rollins includes at the beginning of each chapter make his book accessible; however, his discussion and arguments require some deeper engagement on the part of the reader. Few books have had me leaning forward in anticipation of where the author was going quite like this one. Rollins moves back and forth between Scripture, Bonhoeffer, and Batman with graceful ease. Insurrection is something that every person of faith (or none at all) should read and re-read. I imagine that Rollins will have his “enemies,” like all prophets do. However, they will most likely come from the ranks of the religious professionals, those fundamentalists, be they liberal or conservative, who benefit from having a firm grasp on truth. Rollins seems to be calling out the liberal theological establishment when he writes about “a new kind of fundamentalism, one that is rarely noticed or talked about [...], a fundamentalism that continues to operate in the very place where it is directly ridiculed and rejected” (51).

The implications for enacting Insurrection in our communities of faith are nearly endless because Rollins is not giving us a twelve-step checklist, but is rather calling us to use our imaginations…to think creatively and liberatingly about how we move through our world. He does claim that pastors should endeavor to express doubts, fears, and uncertainties from the pulpit and that churches should employ elements in music and liturgy that allow for expressions of those feelings. What Rollins understands about pop culture that so many churches and ministers fail to grasp is that it is so appealing to so many people because through film,s, television, music, etc., they see their own experiences played out before them. Lady Gaga, for example, is so threatening to the church because these are the spaces that she inhabits with her music.

There are countless questions that remain after reading Insurrection…as there should be. Chief among them would be where we go from here. Other questions center on Christian identity and the necessity of it. One thing is certain, enacting Insurrection is not easy and it will be painful. But for a fearful and broken world, it seems to be one of the most hopeful and healing ways forward.

Here’s a video of Rob Bell talking with Rollins about pyro-theology:

In 1994, three independent explorers discovered a cave in southern France, the entrance of which had collapsed some 20,000 years ago keeping both it and its hidden treasures preserved all along. The cave houses some of the oldest, if not the oldest, works of art known to humanity. The prehistoric drawings in Chauvet Cave feature images of bison, mammoths, lions, deer, rhinoceroses, and even a bison/woman hybrid. The cave walls also feature (seemingly) sporadic hand prints throughout its various rooms by an artist with a crooked little finger. Alongside these images lie the bones of various now-extinct animals and beautiful, glittering calcium deposits. Scientists suspect that early humans did not live in the cave but perhaps used it for painting, ritual, or religious purposes. Long-preserved footprints of both humans and animals weave their way throughout the cave. Again, through various dating practices (some of which are under debate), scientists date these drawings to as far back as 32,000 years ago with some of the drawings taking place over 5,000 years apart.

The multiple images of the rhinoceros on the right suggest an attempt to capture movement.

The first striking feature of the Chauvet Cave drawings are their beauty and symmetry, both of which stand in stark contrast to any sort of evolutionary notion of art history. These artists may have been prehistoric, but they were not simple-minded. Second, is the reality that these artists attempted to capture motion in their drawings. An animal with six legs or multiple heads is not some extinct species with which they would have been familiar, but rather an animal running. Herzog refers to these images a proto-cinema. Whatever you call them, they shed light on the intelligence, conscience, experience, and shared meaning among some of our most distant ancestors.

Herzog's (left) documentaries are not immune to his idiosyncracies. Here he is displaying a prehistoric flute alongside an experimental archaeologist.

In conversation with geologists, archaeologists, scientists, and the like, Herzog speculates on what life might have been like for these artists. While certain geographical realities like a glacier-covered Europe (in some places as thick as 2,500 meters) give us an idea of their day to day existence, Herzog is more concerned with the unknowable and hence dwells in a creative agnosticism. These dreams are forgotten after all. What these images do point towards is prehistoric humans with, perhaps, a better understanding of the interconnectedness of all of life than we more evolved iterations of the species could ever have.

In conversation with the documentarian, Jean Clottes, one of the earliest scientists to study the caves, tells Herzog that he feels like homo-sapien (the man who knows) is a far too inadequate description of the human species. Rather, he argues, we might best be described as homo-spiritualis (you define it). He also argues that two things are apparent from his studies of the Chauvet Cave drawings: these prehistoric humans understood fluidity and permeability. That is, distinctions like male and female or person and animal or human and nature or even this world and the spiritual did not matter. Humans could “communicate” with the “other side” and with nature. Hybrid artworks like the partial bison/woman figure at Chauvet point to a blurring of the lines…or a fluidity of life that escapes most of us today. Of course, the spiritual and/or religious assumptions about that time can run in countless directions.

This is the beauty of Herzog’s film…as it is with most of his documentaries…which feels more like a lingering question(s) rather than definitive statements (e.g. Michael Moore‘s documentaries). In often humorous and always sincere ways, Herzog makes a handful of observations and poses a series of questions that inevitably beg more. While he is of course concerned with the Chauvet Cave drawings (and other prehistoric artifacts in surrounding areas), he is pointing his camera at nothing less that the question of what it means to be human, a task for which few filmmakers are as well equipped to undertake as Herzog.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is as beautiful a film as the drawings on which Herzog focuses. It benefits from cinematography that is as moving and haunting as the score that accompanies it. My only regret is that I missed it in 3D, a version of the film that would have no doubt lent both a sense of size and texture to the cave drawings that I missed out on by watching it at home. The medium of Herzog’s art, film, also opens up questions about the permanence of his work and, by extension, our role as observers in relation to the drawings. With a film as moving as Cave of Forgotten Dreams, one hopes that it has as permanent a place in the history of humanity as the drawings that grace its frames.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (90 mins.) is available on DVD and streaming on Netflix.

Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. And as he had predicted, there were no stories of a deathbed conversion or recanting of his atheism.

If Jesus was the “wounded healer,” Hitchens was the “bullied bully.” Something about his demeanor and well-known abuse of his body through alcohol and tobacco suggested a man who had been deeply scarred by the events of his life. He used his prodigious talent at writing and argument to tear down both the good and the evil, the just and the unjust. Whatever calculus he applied to come to his intellectual opinions (and, as one writer suggested, his main ideology seemed to be apostasy from previously held positions) whoever ended up on the wrong side of a debate with him, God help them. He would resort to ad hominem and straw man attacks while denouncing his opponent for doing the same. He would confound his opponent with obscure words and writers and a certain slurred charm that would soon have his enemy holding onto the wrong end of the cobra. While it was enjoyable to see him do this to a religious charlatan like Ralph Reed, or a gargoyle like Henry Kissinger, his merciless attacks of Mother Teresa were in bad taste, and his defense of nitwit neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz was downright dangerous.

My own life is worse for Hitchens having been on this planet. One of my best and closest friends had been in a contentious relationship with his Catholicism for some time when he read God Is Not Great. Imagining Hitchens’ bigoted screed to be a new and heretofore unmet argument against religion, my friend finally lurched into atheism. If my friend was not cut out to be a Christian, he made an even worse atheist. Whatever spiritual duct tape had been holding him together through bouts of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder came unglued, and he plunged into near-suicidal despair. After my desperate pleas for him to get help from a counselor, he finally emerged from this period, spiritually broken but still alive. Perhaps as a means of survival, he had taken on cynicism towards many of his previous ways of thinking, including his former spirit of generosity and openness to the world. After several e-mails this past January in which he expressed virulent anti-Islamic sentiment using overwrought Hitchensian prose, I have chosen not to keep in contact with my friend for most of the last year.

I suspect, like Hitchens, my friend, who had experienced the trauma of bullying, both from his father and from schoolmates, had tried to become the bullied bully. Do I know for sure the changes in my friend’s personality would not have happened had he not read that book? No, I don’t. There were numerous other contributing factors to his breakdown. But the many encomiums after Hitchens’ death suggest that ideas and words really do matter in how they shape personal thought and public debate. Otherwise, why would we care that another pundit has met his reward? (Or lack thereof.) Public intellectuals are people who, through their erudition and eloquence, have an uncanny ability to crystalize opinion and move the world to action. They have an awesome responsibility to use these talents for the greater good.

Hitchens himself reflected on this in a late essay of uncharacteristic humility in which he described attending the funeral of an American soldier who had joined up to fight in Iraq after reading Hitchens’ powerful, pro-war essays. One wonders how many families of the nearly 4500 soldiers killed, or thousands of Iraqi orphans, he would have had to meet before he would finally admit he was wrong about the war. For all of his claims to scientific rationalism, if Hitchens had merely listened to the sound objections of the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and several public Christians like Jim Wallis, Stanley Hauerwas, William Sloane Coffin, and Jesse Jackson, he would have come out on the right side of history in opposing America’s war on Iraq. His unapologetic cheerleading for this horrific misadventure was his greatest misdeed as a writer and producer of public opinion.

For the man who wrote, on Jerry Falwell’s death, “It’s a shame there is no hell for him to go to,” it’s a shame there is no hell for Hitch. How I would love to imagine a No Exit scenario in which Hitchens is forced to endure an eternal cocktail party (with low quality booze) with Falwell and Saddam Hussein, in which his only succor would come by asking forgiveness from his nemesis Mother Teresa.

But I suspect what will really happen is that Hitchens will get what’s coming to him, what’s coming to all of us, atheist and believer alike: an encounter with the all-encompassing, penetrating, and awesome love of God. Whether or not in the state in which he died he would be capable of accepting this gift is of some question; God’s love is freely given and has to be freely accepted, no one will force him to take it. This is really the only eternal judgment we face: whether after a lifetime, we can stand in the light of such a love that burns away the dross of our hatred and fear and leaves us both individually whole and communally connected to God. I believe this love can be resisted, in death as in life, but it is awfully tenacious, and I don’t think any of us—not Hitchens, not my friend, not Saddam or Jerry Falwell—can hold out against it forever.

In this life we like to imagine that at the End we’ll get some “accounting” of events, some kind of weighing of right and wrong. In general, we imagine this for other people, those we dislike, rather than for ourselves. (Although there is a certain spiritual S&M in my natal Calvinism that would be disappointed if we weren’t all just a little punished). After all, we tell ourselves that God is a God of justice. And God is, at least this side of the material/spiritual divide. But I find it hard to believe that any of us, if we truly experienced an overwhelming love that salved our wounds and enveloped us in the fullness of the Ground of All Being, would be quite so concerned with such earthly concepts as “justice.” The gerund that comes to mind from such a love seems closer to “basking” (in God’s love) than “bitching” (about those who don’t deserve it).

Atheists like Hitchens would no doubt find my speculation on what happens after death incredibly naïve and even a bit silly. I’m not sure I disagree with them. But I guess that’s what I count on, what gives me the spark to keep living in what is sometimes a painful and always uncertain existence: my somewhat naïve, somewhat silly insistence that Love wins out in the end.