FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Taking Film Seriously

By LeRoy Lawson

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Five Books About Film Written by Christians

Finding God in the Movies, by Catherine M. Barsotti and Robert K. Johnston (Baker Books, 2004)

ReViewing the Movies, by Peter Fraser and Vernon Edwin Neal (Crossway Books, 2000)

Reel Spirituality, second edition, by Robert K. Johnston (Baker Academic, 2006)

Faith and Film, by Edward N. McNulty (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007)

Through a Screen Darkly, by Jeffrey Overstreet (Regal, 2007)

 

 

When television was new and commercial films were viewed with deep suspicion by all right-thinking, Bible-believing Christians, the young idealist I was then would never have suspected that one day I would be lecturing in a seminary on, of all things, the movies!

Thanks to the good graces of President Robert Wetzel of Emmanuel School of Religion, I have the periodic privilege of co-teaching with him a course entitled “Theology and the Cinema.” What a treat it has been””for us, anyway, if not necessarily for the students. Bob has said publicly that the course is a good excuse for us to watch good movies. Well, he speaks the truth. But it has entailed right much work as well. For most of my life, I”ve been too busy to frequent the theaters and too disgusted to watch much television. As a result, I”ve had a lot of catching up to do.

PREACHING DIFFERENTLY

One reason I”ve needed to catch up has to do with the changing art of preaching, my profession for so long. When I began, a visually illustrated sermon was one that included charts or flannelgraphs or, later, overheads or slides or, if you were really innovative, projected home or religious movies. I didn”t use many, not being the most adept adapter around.

Then for awhile live dramatic skits were the rage (thanks to Willow Creek”s influence), but their popularity seems to have waned. Soon video clips and film excerpts became popular, but I never mastered the use of them, either. Now YouTube is the rage. My young friends are trying to help me adjust.

It”s tempting to rue the passing of the well-crafted sermon with its reliance on verbal dexterity and incisive uses of metaphor and allusion; it”s being overshadowed by sermons chock-full of audio-visual supplements, the kind that a good movie can provide. It”s tempting to bemoan, but futile.

Ours is a visual, technologically sophisticated age. Learning is nonlinear, fragmented. Seeing is in. So is feeling. Motion pictures have, inevitably I suppose, become the leading popular art form of our time. To understand today”s culture is to pay attention to the movies. No wonder preachers are tapping this vast reservoir to help their sermons connect with congregations more familiar with the moralizings of Clint Eastwood than the prophecies of Ezekiel. People who would never talk about God with you will passionately discuss the baptismal scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

INFORMING SOCIETY

In case you, too, are interested in learning what to think about how Hollywood deals with the major issues of our era, I have listed five books by Christian authors who study films professionally, ferreting out the theological themes in such unlikely places as Forrest Gump, The Matrix, The Grapes of Wrath, Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather series, and hundreds more. You won”t agree with all the authors” interpretations. You may question their choices, as I sometimes do. I don”t recommend every movie they analyze; some are, quite frankly, inappropriate for sermon or Sunday school use.

What I appreciate about these books, though, is they take film seriously and believe thinking Christians can benefit from an enlightened look at films, treating them as informers of contemporary society.

So that you”ll know these writers are bona fide Christian critics, let me give you some information from the back covers of their books:

Robert Johnston is professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary.

His coauthor, Catherine Barsotti, has had diverse ministry experience within Anglo and Latino communities (missionary, youth minister, associate pastor, chaplain), and teaches courses in theology, ethics, and spirituality.

Peter Fraser teaches film and English at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee. His coauthor, Vernon Edwin Neal, is a freelance film critic whose passion is helping Christians evaluate contemporary films.

Edward McNulty has also authored Praying the Movies and Praying the Movies II.

Jeffrey Overstreet for more than a decade has been reviewing films for his Web site lookingcloser.org and is a weekly columnist and critic at Christianity Today“s movie Web site.

Dr. Johnston”s Reel Spirituality is a textbook. The others are for popular consumption.

DISCUSSING THE MOVIES

These introductions to theology and the cinema are best employed in small-group discussions. McNulty provides a good outline for a group study, suggesting what to look for before the viewing, and then asking pertinent follow-up questions.

Barsotti and Johnston take a pretty in-depth look at 33 films; Overstreet briefly highlights more than 200 of them. Studying all five still won”t make an expert of you, but each contributes to a growing confidence in coming to your own conclusions.

In addition to preparing for the seminary course, my appetite for viewing films has been whetted because I hang out with a lot of young people. All of them””my children, my grandchildren, their friends, my students, my friends” children, the kids at church””go to the movies.

Their generation may listen to their parents or grandparents out of respect, but they easily dismiss us because we”re just not with it. Repeated studies have proved their primary source of information and morality is their peer group. And their peers rely for information and morality on what my generation called the moving pictures (on television, on YouTube, at the local cinema). So, because I like to know what they are thinking, I join them at the movies.

And then, if they give me a chance, I”ll try to explain the theological, ethical, and social implications of what we have just seen.

Sometimes they listen. But first I must listen to them.

 

 

LeRoy Lawson is international consultant with CMF International, a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor, and a member of the Publishing Committee. His column appears monthly.