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I often awake at 5 AM, not quite ready to get out of the bed. So I click a preset button on my mobile phone and for the next hour or so listen through a book of the Bible. I couldn’t have done this just a few years ago.

Even in the days when audio Bibles in mobile phones did not exist, there were quite astonishing technologies revolutionizing the way we could interact with the Bible. Just 15 years ago I installed an online Bible on my personal computer and on the computers I sold. Using Strong’s Concordance, I found myself, a layman, comparing the English text with the original languages. Indeed, it was a celebration of “the death of distance” between modern English and the original languages of the Bible. I could now prepare more detailed notes for use in a Bible study or a sermon.

Since I am now able to listen to the Bible almost anywhere and anytime, I can convert wasted time into profitable time. And ministry? The audio Bible in the fingernail-sized 1.5 GB MicroSD is increasingly my gift to those who admire my own audio Bible.

That is not to say all technological developments have a positive contribution. When from the pulpit my eyes fall on a member of the audience texting as I preach, I am rudely reminded of the disorienting impact of technology. When someone tells me their e-mail address has been hijacked and is now being used to send out invitations to p*rn sites, I feel both angry and helpless because I know such evil will continue unabated.

I do not desire all that is traditional to give way to technological approaches. I don’t want technology to replace the intimacy of my personal conversations with brothers. I have gotten used to new recorded worship choruses that use more instrumentation than voices, but I’d still rather be part of a congregation where I sing old Christian hymns, even if the words are now projected on a screen instead of read from a printed hymn book.

Sometimes technological advances are outright retrogressive. Very personally, to cite only one example, all the floppy diskettes on which I “saved” important notes are now unusable, while my written scrap pads from the 80s still survive.

The key, therefore, is to understand what best fits the context and then do our best to apply technology appropriately—for ourselves and for ministry. As part of the human race we will suffer through poorly designed PowerPoint presentations or agonizing conversations over a poor connection. And think about when brethren “spam” others with e-mails laden with 5mb attachments, causing the recipient to grudgingly pay per megabyte to receive the unsolicited mail. Not prudent. However, we know the dark side will apply to any development—technological, social, or cultural. We live in an imperfect world, where we still see as in a mirror, albeit much clearer mirrors than the brass types of the first century.

When I was 28 and oblivious to my technological advantages, I once held a conversation with my boss about technological advancements. Unable to appreciate or even grasp recent technological developments, he was totally disoriented as I thoughtlessly advanced my position. My boss did not appreciate my arguments, and, inevitably, I lost a huge opportunity. In time, the experience made me aware of the responsibility that comes with change. Those who find it natural to grow into new technologies must invest in the education of those (the majority) who do not.

A greater concern has to do with the undesirable baggage that inevitably comes with technological developments. It’s great to access a clean, educative website, or to download an inspirational song onto my mobile medium, or to extend my impact when I share a message or testimony with millions of people over the Internet. But those interfaces are also like a city in which you will find 20 nightclubs, a gang that robs and kills, and, if the law does not prohibit, even naked girls sitting inside glass shop windows. A newcomer from the rural area finds a first-time experience in this city very puzzling. He needs someone to come get him from the bus stop. He needs help shopping. Then, with help and in time, he may discover that lo, there is also a church with true believers in the city, a counselor’s office right in the middle of the city, and even a cinema hall that only shows Christian films.

Ideally, the bad should not exist alongside the good. But that lies in the future, after the Lord sorts out this wicked world. A lot of learning and discretion must be exercised in the meantime. Just as parents have to think through the management of the television or the video, so we must search carefully for the best way to use—or not use—technology.

Haron Wachira is managing director of Information Technology Associates in Nairobi, Kenya.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today/The Lausanne Movement. Click for reprint information.

Technology is a label for all kinds of things humans create. Some are material, such as machines of various sorts. Others are procedural, such as organizational approaches. In recent times, technologies have become more interdependent and work as systems of many technologies. The automobile, for example, is a complex machine with an engine, safety systems, comfort systems, and so on. In order to work in modern society, it presupposes a system of roads, fuel distribution systems, a maintenance network, a legal system with rules to address the contingencies of many people driving them around, and much more.

Technologies are not just tools we use to do things. They are an expression of our lifestyle and a manifestation of our culture. Technologies, as human products, are congealed decisions and commitments made at the point of design that all future users tacitly agree to. Technologies come with an inherent ambiguity because the designers are never fully aware of the consequences of their decisions embedded in the technologies they create. Nor are the users fully aware of the exhaustive list of original decisions and commitments that were built into technologies they use. So technologies normally, as a rule rather than exceptionally, have unforeseen consequences and reverse implications.

The very popular notion that technologies are neither good nor bad (i.e. neutral) and that what users do with them is what may be good or bad is clearly false. The embedded decisions and commitments of the designers give moral significance to the technical content of technologies. There is a complicated interplay between the moral implications of the technologies themselves and the intents and purposes of future users. Since technologies enable or constrain human action, they come with an inherent power dimension. Technologies either facilitate or impede the realization of various human purposes, sometimes in non-obvious ways. Some things will be made easier and others more difficult. Some people will be able to meet their needs and goals more easily and others will not and may be adversely affected, as is the case when jobs are lost because certain human skills are built into machines.

The main conclusion to draw from this is that technologies are not external factors in human existence, such as the weather might be. They are a direct expression of what we are as a human society. And that is where the relation between technology and the gospel comes in. The gospel is the message of a new order of things in the kingdom of God. According to this message, this new order has already begun, inserted into the old one, one might say, with Jesus Christ. Therefore, the entire arrangement of life embedded in modern technologies is subject to both the judgment and hope of redemption that is inherent in the gospel message.

All too often the gospel has been considered very narrowly when trying to articulate its implications for contemporary technology. If we only think of the gospel in terms of preaching a message, then it follows naturally that we think of technologies as tools to aid in its diffusion. Whether we begin with a narrow conception of technology as tools or with a narrow view of the gospel as proclamation alone, we miss the heart of the issue. The call to live in the new order of the kingdom of God includes our involvement with technologies in all dimensions and not just how we use them for church meetings. For example, a transportation system that is associated with urban sprawl, long solipsistic commutes, and greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming—among other results that are clearly not sustainable—is highly dubious from a broad view of the gospel. The message of the gospel is about eternal life, the epitome of sustainability. As citizens of the kingdom who already embody its priorities as a witness to a world in need of redemption, we cannot be unconditional supporters of unsustainable ways of life. We should actively press for alternative arrangements that suggest different sorts of technologies more in line with kingdom priorities.

A theologically sound view of the gospel of the kingdom of God should enable us to see through the shiny surfaces of sophisticated new technologies and capture the underlying networks of decisions and commitments that are embedded in its systems. One practical way to be faithful is to take time before deciding that we will adopt new technologies, especially when many people will be affected. During that time a pilot trial could be set up and the initial consequences carefully watched. If there are concerns, they should be heard and articulated and alternative approaches considered. Let the kingdom priorities shape our technological choices rather than the other way around.

Juan D. Rogers, a native of Argentina, is associate professor of Public Policy and director of the Research Value Mapping Program at the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today/The Lausanne Movement. Click for reprint information.

The technological transformation that Koreans have gone through since the last century is unprecedented in terms of its speed, scale, and scope. My father, born in 1938, saw a train for the first time when he was 13 years old. These days, he regularly takes a bullet train, speeding up to 300 kilometers per hour, to give lectures to seminarians in Busan, a city 500 kilometers from home. There was virtually no industry left in South Korea just after the Korean War in the early 1950s, but now one can see Korean mobile phones and cars almost everywhere on earth.

Looking back over the recent Korean experiences, I find that Al Erisman’s analysis of the five layers in information technology provides good insight into all forms of technology. So far, the common discourse has focused on the first three layers, namely the underlying basic technologies, products, and the infrastructures made out of these products. The influences of technology on what we do and on ourselves have largely been forgotten or ignored. In Korea, the achievements of technology have been emphasized even more than in most places, as science and technology were considered the only way to overcome poverty and threats to survival.

While appreciating Erisman’s perspective, I will add a few points that he did not fully develop. First, the impact of technology should be considered on a deeper level than Erisman touched upon. Technology not only alters the way people do things but also the nature of the activity and the agents involved in that activity. Fast transportation, for example, transforms the context and meaning of family life and work. When sermons are televised, the message itself is bound to change to a certain degree. During the last few decades, Koreans experienced a radical change with respect to the definition, context, and meaning of tradition, education, work, leisure, family life, community, birth, aging, illness, death, etc. Christian ideas and activities were no exception. Technology has touched us to the core of our being.

Unfortunately, we have been so busy coping with and adapting to the new technologies that we have failed to seriously reflect on the impact and place of those technologies in our lives. There have been some discussions concerning the “bite back” effects of technologies in Christian contexts, but not how those technologies influence the context and meaning of Christian lifestyle and worship. It is probably pointless to ask whether or not Christians should use an iPad, but it is still worthwhile to consider how it affects human relationships and how Christians should react to the transition.

Second, I suggest that we pay more attention to the global context of technology. When we talk about what is good and bad, we should think not only of the direct producers or users of the technology but also of those who are indirectly influenced by them. Korea used to be a country of sweatshops that produced low-tech products for developed countries. Because of this experience, it is easier for Koreans to understand that our affluence is related to the sufferings of people in other parts of the world. In this sense, it is welcome news that Christian engineers in Korea have recently started a movement called “engineering design for the other 90 percent,” which is concerned with changing the trend in engineering that uses 90 percent of resources for the richest 10 percent of the world population.

Furthermore, I believe that it is time to leave behind the endless examining of good and bad aspects of technology. We need to look for a new paradigm. Probably the time has come for Christians in developed countries to honestly ask whether it is justifiable to pursue the current trend of technological progress—both in the way engineers design it and in the way ordinary people adopt it. We might have to start searching for new technologies that are available for more people, in a more efficient, a more environmentally friendly, and a less expensive way, rather than those developed at the expense and sacrifice of other people’s needs and well-being.

I am not saying that the current technology is a Tower of Babel or that progress is wrong. I am simply making a proposal for expanding our options in dealing with technology. When Paul rebuked rich Corinthians for not waiting for brethren to share the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11), he was not saying that eating was wrong or the bread was bad. All he asked was for Christians to wait for others. At some point in history, science and technology were good news for Koreans. Now the time might have come to take a deep breath and ponder how to sustain and share the blessings.

Wha-Chul Son teaches philosophy at South Korea’s Handong Global University and is the author of The light and Shadow of Modern Technology: Alvin Toffler and Jacques Ellul.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today/The Lausanne Movement. Click for reprint information.

Al Erisman is absolutely right to note the dramatic effects of emerging technologies and to use Information Technology (IT) as his example. It is the most developed and familiar of the new technologies; and since it is all about communications, it is plainly the most relevant to people with a message. An emerging key skill is knowing when to call, when to e-mail, when to IM, video-conference, tweet, blog—or when you need to slog through security and fly and meet someone face to face. One of the ironies of web-based communications is that some of us have ended up traveling more as a result. Our projects and (in some cases) friendships become transnational. For a difficult conversation, or a truly creative one, you just need to be there.

Of course, at one level, there is nothing new: Paul wrote letters to the churches, and he visited. What is fascinating is to see how similar the old technology is to the new. Phones pulled from the wall, and typewriters endowed with new powers—19th century technologies on steroids, whose final impact we can hardly start to grasp.

Yet the opportunities of e-mail and the Web, while they are enormous, merely scratch the surface of what is underway as we press further into a century which will see not just an explosion of new technologies but, as it were, a series of such explosions, each bigger than the last. Since Christians of most stripes have so far been distinguished only by their lack of interest in these questions, reflection on technological change is timely. Perhaps Cape Town 2010 will lead to a fresh recognition that the Christian’s commitment to the stewardship of God’s world is not merely over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, but over humankind and every level of human culture. Which in the 21st century means, especially, the frontier of science and technology.

So what else is out there? IT is fundamental and is driving every technology. But there is little in the sci-fi literature that is not also, in one form or other, already in the lab. Synthetic biology may enable us to create novel complex organisms. Nanotechnology—engineering on the tiniest scale—is already seen as the most revolutionary technology of all, producing amazingly light and strong new materials. Tiny nanoscale machines could replicate themselves and be used to make pretty much anything else. Some visionaries see artificial intelligence—following the principle of Moore’s Law—compounding until machines are smarter than we are. (Ray Kurzweil is the leading advocate of this vision, and he is respected even by those who think he is too optimistic.) Robotics will lead to the confusion of humans and machines. Smart human look-alikes are already available for many domestic duties. Will they destroy low-paid work and strip our economies of labor and income for those at the bottom of the tree? Or make life easier for all of us?

Meanwhile, virtual reality—our ability to live part of our lives in a world of online imagination—is also rushing ahead. Second Life has been around for a while, but you have to type to make it work. Already there are video games that work with brainwaves. Once the link of human and machine is seamless (through thought control or a jack in your head), a Matrix-like world will have arrived. “Transhumanists” think it will be wonderful to have superhuman powers.

How far away is all this? That is hard to know, but some of it is not very far at all, and much of it will come our way in the next 10 to 20 years. The impact of these technologies will be like the Internet—which has hugely changed our lives—being reinvented over and over and over.

What’s a Christian to do and to think? Here are my three conclusions:

1. We can get the Christian message out more easily through technology, and connect with fellow believers around the globe, but it is naïve to think of that as the main thing. The bad guys and many bad messages have just the same opportunities. And the focus on communications (IT) can be a distraction.
2. Christian leaders need to work out what to make of these new possibilities, and that will take a lot of time and a lot of resources. Then we need to teach the church and prepare the people. We are far, far behind.
3. I don’t think you can be an effective human leader—let alone a Christian leader!—unless you come to grips with these questions. Read sci-fi. Read

   Wired

   magazine. Think and teach. And pray that God will graciously kick the church’s thinking into the 21st century.

Some techno advancements will be good, some bad, some it is hard to tell. But the one thing we know is that they will transform the human community and perhaps human experience itself. Let’s get ready, under God, for the techno age. Al Erisman is so right when he says these changes are not going to slow down. Up the exponential curve we go.

Nigel Cameron, a former contributing editor to Christianity Today, directs the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, a nonpartisan and nonsectarian think tank in Washington, DC (c-pet.org).

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today/The Lausanne Movement. Click for reprint information.

Technology is changing our lives at breakneck speed and in unpredictable ways. In just one decade, for example, the mobile phone has transformed the daily life of virtually every church leader in the world. Technology also changes the way the gospel gets communicated, whether through PowerPoint slides, websites, or screens at multi-site churches. We sought out a man who has decades of practical experience with technology in business—as well as wide and deep thinking about its significance.

Al Erisman spent 32 years at Boeing, and for the last 11 of those years was director of research and development for technology. He now teaches in the business school at Seattle Pacific University and is co-founder and editor of Ethix magazine (Ethix.org). He also consults and lectures on faith and economic development, most recently in the Central African Republic and Nepal. He recently spoke with Global Conversation editor and CT senior writer Tim Stafford.

What does technology have to do with the gospel?

A lot. Narrowing our scope just to information technology, we recognize it is all about information and communications, a fundamental element of proclaiming the gospel. It is also about what kind of people we become, and how we communicate to people who are part of the digital generation. We could also look at the broader impact of other technology, such as automobiles, nuclear power, or biotechnology—anything that comes from a step-by-step process or the use of tools. But we have our hands full talking about information technology.

I think of information technology in five layers. The bottom layer is the basic technology—the microchip, for example. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted what is now called Moore’s Law: The microchip will halve in size every 18 months. This translates into the chip’s performance getting both faster and cheaper at an astonishing rate—a factor of 10 in price and performance improvement every five years. That enables a fundamental, unending churn.

The second layer is the products the basic technology makes possible. Here we are more directly influenced. In the case of the microchip, our computers regularly become both faster and cheaper. This part is fairly predictable, but we also see the unpredictable emergence of new products and capabilities. We have the Internet, Google, social networks, Twitter, digital cameras, the iPhone, and so on. Sometimes we use these devices simply to do what we did before, only faster. But sometimes new products introduce a whole new way of thinking and working.

The third level is where products are put together, made to work, made secure, and all of the things that go into infrastructure. About this layer, users usually only need to know that there are talented people who keep everything working.

The fourth layer is where the lives of church leaders could be changed—where the technology enables fundamental redesign of what we do. For example, a pastor can readily access many more sources and incorporate video into a presentation. He or she can put sermons online and thus reach many more people. Discussion groups can reach across a community, even across the world. More than one author has suggested that this is “the death of distance.” If you have just returned from another part of the world, you can maintain communication with people there in a remarkable way.

Aren’t there risks as well?

Certainly. Every technology has a “bite back” effect. It allows us to do something new and good, but that something is different.

In Acts 2, the disciples were proclaiming “the wonders of God” when some accused them of being drunk. Peter immediately addressed the point, taking his presentation in another direction. How does this happen when someone is viewing a video or downloading a sermon from the Internet?

In the 1980s, critics panned televangelists’ sermons because isolated listeners could not experience congregational life. They also complained that the medium required a flashiness that competed with the gospel. Today video is used to extend a preacher’s reach to multiple congregations. Does real preaching require real presence?

Television [cannot provide] the worship atmosphere that being physically present does. But if we think of previous technology advancements, the written text of a sermon also lacked this key ingredient. Yet we have seen God bless gospel tracts. I recently talked with a pastor in Nepal who had come to Christ through a tract he found in the street. What is gained by the text (compared with both live preaching and television) is the ability to go back over it and study it. What is gained by the television (compared with print) is some nuance (a frown, a smile, a pause). As we move to e-mail or WebEx conferencing, we see similar pluses and minuses. So it will be when we start using holographic images to present the illusion that we are in the same room with a person.

We shouldn’t think of these technologies as replacing each other. We should think of them as layering to form an effective pattern of communication. Television, Web conferencing, and e-mail should not replace face-to-face communication but rather complement it. A live small group is wonderful and was our Lord’s primary method of discipleship. But he also spoke to large groups. If he had come in the 21st century, I believe he would also have used these new tools, but not to replace the intimate or even large group discussions.

That brings us to the fifth layer, where we consider what technology has done to people. We all see that people have shorter attention spans, read less, and try to do two things at once and get distracted. Churches see both the positive and negative aspects of technology every week. It is great to deal with people who can instantly respond to needs since they are always connected. It is challenging to deal with a congregation that is text messaging in church or gets distracted when the sermon goes longer than 20 minutes.

We need to think about the communications challenge similar to a cross-cultural challenge. A missionary would not go to the Philippines without trying to understand the language and culture of the people there. So is it important for both church leaders and missionaries to understand the culture of the digital generation.

By dissolving distance, will communications technology undermine congregational fellowship? What aspects of Christian life together can technology extend? What can it undermine?

Someone suggested that they could program their computer to work through a prayer list every morning so that they could sleep in. “Does that count?” they asked. I think not. But if you put your best into an article and people read it at another time, does that count as communication? We know it does, though it’s a different kind of communication than having a conversation.

Former Intel vice president Pat Gelsinger said, “If I go back and forth with someone in e-mail more than four or five times on the same topic, I stop. We get on the phone or we get together face to face.” You can do some things with a conversation face to face (build trust, get to know each other as people, establish context for remarks, clarify) that would be very difficult to do with back-and-forth e-mails. Still, when I return from a visit to Singapore, I can carry on a relationship through e-mail that makes a very valuable contribution to building community.

In business, where we work globally with virtual teams, we have found that when a team begins its work, it has to define its objectives and make sure team members understand them. Plus, they need to learn how to trust each other. This can best be done face to face. Personal contact is vital.

When you start defining the work and parceling it out, that can be done synchronously over the telephone or through a videoconference. And at the stage of implementation and evaluation, you don’t have to be together in real time. You can use e-mail to update each other. Different forms of communication are best in different contexts.

This interview is part of a Global Conversation—a virtual dialogue via the Internet with leaders from around the world. Contrast that with the enormously more expensive conversation set for October in Cape Town.

The virtual forum is wonderful, but we make a mistake if we think that the new technology replaces the old. The value of being present with another person happens over coffee or dinner and through side conversations with people we meet unexpectedly. We haven’t found a way to make that happen in the virtual world.

The value of being present with another person happens over coffee or dinner and through conversations with people we meet unexpectedly. We haven’t found a way to make that happen in the virtual world.

Information overload threatens to cut off communication. Many of us delete messages without reading them. How can congregations make sure their attempts to connect do not become part of the background noise?

When we live in a large city, we have the same tendency to cut off communication with our neighbors because there are so many of them. Technology simply ramps up the number of those connections. Our Lord dealt with this by leaving the crowds and going off with a small group for weekends at a time. We are no more able than he was to carry on in-depth relationships with everyone. “A servant is not greater than his master.”

How can church leaders learn about new possibilities and challenges of technology?

Though I read and consult widely on these matters, I have not seen a systematic look at these things in the context of the gospel—only pieces of the whole. A lot has been written in the secular press related to business and society. Some of this could be carefully adapted to the needs of the church. Reading discriminately (for example, Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital or Robert Reich’s The Future of Success) is a good start. Creating Christian study groups around this material is even better.

Technological innovation is part of God’s world, built up by creative people made in his image. But some see only the Tower of Babel.

In Genesis 1 and 2, we see Adam and Eve carrying on God’s work in the world. In the first two chapters, that is done under the authority of God. The problem came when people thought they could do this autonomously. Now we have a world in which some people use their creativity under the authority of God, and others use theirs autonomously.

Is technology like the Tower of Babel? Yes. Is it also like Eden under God’s authority? Absolutely. But by God’s grace, even people who are not Christians develop wonderful technology because they are made in his image.

Why do so many people, Christians or not, see technology pessimistically?

These technologies used to affect just our businesses. Now they affect us personally. They hit the ways we communicate with our neighbors and spouses. We have come to depend on the devices we have to carry, and others depend on us depending on them. If you don’t answer your mobile phone, people say, “What’s wrong with you?” Technology has intruded in a very personal way. This has caused many to look at it pessimistically.

Also, people understand that technology is the reason they lost their jobs through outsourcing. The 19th-century cotton mill eliminated jobs for people who were weaving at home. But information technology affects everyone—in their personal life as well as in their business life. It’s disruptive and persistent.

Some digital people feel alienated and alone with their technology. There are well-documented reports on the increase in suicide among young Japanese who are spending long periods of time using technology and are isolated from others. They have lost elements of what it is to be human. I suppose this is like other addictions and must be recognized as such. Just as Paul spoke to those on Mars Hill about the idols in their culture, we can offer something to those trapped by the idols of the digital culture.

In a recent article for Ethix, former software designer Rosie Perera noted, “German philosopher Martin Heidegger writes that humans are so immersed in technology that we are rarely even aware that we have a relationship to it that affects us …. Taking time away from technology on a regular basis can help transform the way we relate to it and can bring life back into focus.”

We don’t expect these changes to slow down soon. Our challenge will be to continue to unpack the changing culture, communicating effectively with the tools we are given and to the generation we encounter. Years ago Francis Schaeffer warned us not to flee our emerging culture but to embrace it and think it through. We shouldn’t be afraid.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Political Advocacy Tracker is a roundup of what Christian activist organizations have been talking about over the last week.

New Law, Old Fight

The Senate Armed Services Committee and the House of Representatives voted yesterday to overturn the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly. The votes signal that conservative activists may be losing the battle over gays in the military.

The new law is a compromise between the White House and Capitol Hill that clears the way for the military to change the policy, but the repeal would not take place immediately. Before the repeal would take place, the Pentagon must finish its review of the policy, and the defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff must agree that the repeal would not harm military readiness.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), called the compromise a “cultural time bomb, strapped on the backs of the men and women who honorably serve this country.”

The FRC also created a website devoted to DADT (complete with a customizable color palate depending on one’s favorite branch of the military) that says, “Our military exists to fight and win wars, not engage in radical social engineering. Forcing soldiers to cohabit with people who view them as sexual objects would inevitably lead to increased sexual tension, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault.”

The organization’s link between gays and sexual assault createdheadlines. The FRC issued a report that claimed gays in the military are more likely to commit sexual assault than heterosexuals. The conclusion is based on the number of same-gender sexual assaults in the military compared with the percentage of civilians who openly say they are gay and lesbian.

“If open hom*osexuality is permitted in the military, these numbers will only increase,” said the report’s author, Peter Sprigg. “The numbers of hom*osexuals in the military would grow, the threat of discharge for hom*osexual conduct would be eliminated, and protected class status for hom*osexuals would make victims hesitant to report assaults and make commanders hesitant to punish them.”

Frank Turek suggested on the American Family Association’s blog that women should also be excluded from serving in the military. “Having served, I believe that the military needs as few sexual distractions as possible, be they from men and women serving together in combat or open hom*osexuality,” Turek wrote. “The job is too difficult and critical to be complicating matters sexually.”

Liberty Counsel founder Mathew Staver joined a campaign led by Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, which opposes gays in the military, women in combat, and co-ed military training. In a letter to Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Staver wrote, “Open hom*osexuality disqualifies an applicant. The military must have discipline and order and, of necessity, must house people in close and confined quarters, whether on the battlefield, a ship, or a submarine.”

The Traditional Values Coalition said that gays serving openly in the military was a threat to national security. It asked its members to contact their representatives and tell them that “during a time of war against Islamic terrorism on two fronts is not the time to engage in social experimentation with our military.”

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commistion (ERLC), also asked for quick action opposing the proposed change in policy.

“Overturning the current policy would strain our forces, weaken troop morale, and propel countless chaplains to leave the services. Using our military to advance radical social policy is an affront to the greatness of our armed services,” said Land.

Land thanked supporters for “standing in defense of our armed forces as they continue to sacrifice in defense of our nation.”

Reacting to religious leaders making such statements, Nick sem*ntelli of Faith in Public Life said, “Religious leaders who use DADT to unfairly malign our troops and LGBT Americans are becoming further and further out of touch.”

sem*ntelli said allowing gays and lesbians to serve will strengthen the military. “Our country will be safer for having a military that doesn’t waste time and money discharging good soldiers and that can actively recruit the best and brightest citizens who want to serve,” said sem*ntelli.

Odds and Ends

• Focus on the Family Action has a new name: CitizenLink. The organization was already using the name for its website and newsletter. The new name is designed to eliminate confusion between Focus on the Family and its political arm. The two are affiliated but legally independent. “Focus on the Family will continue to provide resources to help families thrive, while CitizenLink will specialize in equipping citizens to make their voices heard on behalf of life, marriage and the family,” said Jenny Tyree of CitizenLink.

• The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has launched a new initiative to discuss possible ways to decrease abortions. NAE President Leith Anderson said that “a million abortions in the United States every year is unacceptable. The NAE is engaging a fresh national dialogue seeking effective ways to significantly reduce the number of abortions.” In a resolution, the NAE said that it will seek to work with pro-choice groups and others “without compromising our core convictions” to find solutions that will lower the number of abortions.

• Al Tizon of Evangelicals for Social Action wrote about Glenn Beck’s recent commencement address at Liberty University (LU). Beck has been controversial among Christian advocacy groups for his criticism of social justice activism. “The only reason I can think of then is that LU wanted to show its support of Beck’s politically conservative, anti-Obama agenda in general and his thoughts about social justice in particular,” said Tizon. “The former, I suppose, is understandable coming from LU, but the latter is deeply disturbing no matter where it is coming from.”

• Sojourners president Jim Wallis was a guest on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, discussing the BP oil spill as a moral and religious issue. “This oil spill is really apocalyptic. It mirrors our oil addiction. We have to do something about it right now. And that’s what churches are saying. And that’s just our responsibility to say, ‘This is, for us, protecting God’s creation,'” said Wallis.

• The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good is calling for support of legislation that would give the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to military detainees. The ICRC currently has access to detainees because of an executive order; a law would make the access permanent.

• Chuck Colson said on BreakPoint this week that Christians should not get “a tattoo or, even worse, a body piercing.” Colson said, “Tattoos last a lifetime—unless they are painfully removed. But the spiritual marks of a Christian last through all eternity.”

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Spiritual formation occurs primarily in the context of community. Persons who remain connected with their brothers and sisters in the local church almost invariably grow in self-understanding. And they mature in their ability to relate in healthy ways to God and to fellow human beings. This is especially the case for those courageous Christians who stick it out through the messy process of interpersonal conflict. Long-term relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay grow.

People who leave do not grow. We all know persons consumed with spiritual wanderlust. We never get to know them well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move from church to church, avoiding conflict or ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots, and they seldom experience lasting, fruitful growth in their Christian lives.

Despite what we know about spiritual growth, nearly all churches in America are characterized by an unwillingness of members to commit themselves deeply to their respective church. For some, it means church hopping; for most, it means keeping the church at arm’s length—that is, living as if the individual’s life is primary and that of the church is secondary.

Social scientists have intensively studied the particularly pervasive loss of social capital and lack of genuine community that characterize life in America and its churches. They have concluded that we are a radically individualistic society, oriented toward personal fulfillment in ways profoundly more “me-centered” than any other culture or people-group in world history. It is our individualism—our insistence that the rights and satisfaction of the individual must take priority over any group to which one belongs—that has seriously compromised our ability to stay in relationship and grow with one another as God intends.

As George Barna noted over a decade ago, American Christians are now quite convinced that “spiritual enlightenment comes from diligence in a discovery process, rather than commitment to a faith group and perspective.” The faith is all about me—about God’s wonderful plan for me, about my spiritual gifts, about how God can meet my needs and save my marriage. Culture has hijacked Christ. We have recast the wondrous God of salvation history in the role of a divine therapist who aids the individual Christian in his or her personal quest for spiritual fulfillment and self-discovery.

With such meager commitment to the church, it’s little wonder that spiritual life in North America is so stunted.

Group Comes First

The early Christians had a markedly different perspective. Jesus’ early followers were convinced that the group comes first—that I as an individual will become all God wants me to be only when I begin to view my goals, desires, and relational needs as secondary to what God is doing through his people, the local church. The group, not the individual, took priority in a believer’s life in the early church. And this perspective (social scientists refer to it as “strong group”) was hardly unique to Christianity. Strong-group values defined the broader social landscape of the ancient world and characterized the lives of Jews, Christians, and pagans alike. Note the second-century historian Josephus’s perspective on activities at the Jerusalem Temple:

At these sacrifices, prayers for the welfare of the community must take precedence over those for ourselves; for we are born for fellowship, and he who sets its claims above his private interests is specially acceptable to God.

Note also Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (circa A.D. 250), and his commentary on the prayer Jesus taught his disciples:

Before all things, the Teacher of peace and Master of unity did not wish prayer to be offered individually and privately as one would pray only for himself when he prays. We do not say: “My Father, who art in heaven,” nor “Give me this day my bread,” nor does each one ask that only his debt be forgiven him and that he be led not into temptation and that he be delivered from evil for himself alone. Our prayer is public and common, and when we pray, we pray not for one but for the whole people, because we, the whole people, are one.

“We, the whole people, are one”—Cyprian’s strong-group sensibilities could hardly be more pronounced.

Early Christian communities, moreover, represented a specific kind of strong-group entity. Historians have struggled for generations to situate early Christianity in its social world. Were churches like Jewish synagogues or Greco-Roman voluntary associations or what? As it turns out, the social model that best accounts for the relational expectations reflected in our New Testament epistles is the Mediterranean family. Most of us are familiar with the surrogate kinship language (brother, sister, Father, child, inheritance) that permeates the New Testament. Family remained the dominant metaphor for Christian social organization in the writings of the church fathers, as well.

To illustrate a key difference between ancient and modern family systems, let us think about a popular film from a decade or so ago, the blockbuster Titanic.

Rose is a high-society girl engaged to be married to an arrogant, distasteful fellow for whom she feels no affection. In a memorable scene, Rose’s mother reminds her that the arranged marriage is in the best interest of her family. It seems that Rose’s father died after squandering his fortune, so for Rose’s mother and her family, the impending marriage represents the only hope of maintaining their wealth and preserving their social status. Rose has been set up with a man she detests in order to guarantee an honorable future for the group, her extended family.

But then one evening Rose meets a street kid named Jack on the deck of the ship, and the encounter ignites a romantic fling that serves as the film’s main storyline. Rose loves Jack. But she is engaged to a highly unappealing man whom she is obligated to marry for the sake of her family. Whom will Rose choose?

Jack, of course. If Rose had chosen otherwise, the film simply would not have worked for the tens of millions of North American viewers who followed the tragic tale. We are quite unmoved by the potential social dilemma confronting Rose’s extended family. Our sympathies lie, rather, with the heroine’s personal satisfaction. As I watched Titanic, I could almost hear the thoughts of the audience: Forget your family’s fortune, Rose! Ignore your mother’s wishes! Dump the rich jerk! Follow your heart! Go after Jack!

If Titanic were shown in first-century Israel, the audience would be utterly appalled that Rose would even consider sacrificing the good of her extended family for her relational satisfaction. They would find Rose’s fling with Jack risky and foolish. First-century Jews and Christians alike would expect Rose to marry the rich fellow, if such an arrangement could somehow preserve the honor and social status of her extended family.

Taking Care of the Family

Stories of the ancient church living out its family values appear throughout early Christian literature. For example, sometime around A.D. 250, a marvelous thing happened in a small church in the rural town of Thena, just outside the Roman metropolis of Carthage in North Africa: An actor converted to Christ. We do not know his name, but let’s refer to him as Marcus. Marcus’s conversion created a stir in the church in Thena.

Theater performances in antiquity were typically dedicated to a pagan god or goddess, and the plays often ran as part of larger public religious festivals. Scenes portraying blatant immorality were commonplace. All this proved rather troubling to the early church. Christian leaders, such as Tertullian, spoke out in opposition to the idea of believers going to the theater:

Why is it right to look on what it is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at his eyes and ears—when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants of the spirit? You have the theater forbidden, then, in the forbidding of immodesty.

Thus, when an actor converted to Christ in third-century Carthage, the church demanded that he quit his profession.

Marcus did just that. Our new convert now faced an economic dilemma, however, since he was no longer gainfully employed. So, instead of acting, Marcus opened an acting school. This apparently created quite a stir among Marcus’s fellow Christians, and the surviving letters exchanged by his pastor and the church’s bishop paint a portrait of the church truly living out its strong-group family values.

Marcus’s pastor, Eucratius, naturally wondered how it could be acceptable for Marcus to teach others what he himself was forbidden to do. Yet Marcus had already made a tremendous sacrifice to follow Jesus. So Eucratius wrote to his spiritual mentor, Cyprian of Carthage, to ask “whether such a man ought to remain in communion with us.”

Cyprian’s reaction to Marcus was unequivocal:

It is not in keeping with the reverence due to the majesty of God and with the observance of the gospel teachings for the honor and respect of the church to be polluted by contamination at once so degraded and so scan-dalous.

No compromise. No drama teaching. Marcus must either leave the church or quit his job—again.

Marcus’s story has the “strong-group” aspect of the strong-group, surrogate family written all over it. It is Cyprian’s conviction that “the honor and respect of the church” must take priority over Marcus and his acting academy. Marcus, on his part, finds himself answering to the church for his whole vocational and financial future.

Cyprian’s handling of Marcus’s dilemma grates harshly against modern social sensibilities, since we tend to prioritize the needs and goals of the individual over the viability of any group to which he or she belongs. But for all of his hard-nosed strong-group convictions, Cyprian is not unaware of the suffering Marcus will face. As Cyprian’s comments clearly demonstrate, the intense emphasis on personal holiness that characterized the North African church had a beautiful complement: a genuine concern for those whose livelihoods might be adversely affected by assenting to the church’s demanding moral standards. In short, Cyprian tells Pastor Eucratius that the church should provide for Marcus’s material needs:

His needs can be al-leviated along with those of others who are supported by the provisions of the church …. Accordingly, you should do your utmost to call him away from this depraved and shameful profession to the way of innocence and to the hope of his true life; let him be satisfied with the nourishment provided by the church, more sparing to be sure but salutary.

And if this is not enough, Cyprian concludes by telling Eucratius that Cyprian’s church will foot the bill if the rural church in Thena lacks the resources to meet Marcus’s basic needs:

But if your church is unable to meet the cost of maintaining those in need, he can trans-fer himself to us and receive here what is necessary for him in the way of food and clothing.

Cyprian made sure that the church would serve as the economic safety net for any brother or sister whose finances were adversely affected by their willingness to follow Jesus. Why? Because the church was a family, and this is what families in the ancient world did.

The conviction that church members should meet one another’s material needs is, of course, central to the New Testament understanding of church family life: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:17, NRSV).

Ancient-Future Community

Can we recapture in our churches the biblical vision for authentic Christian community as reflected in the strong-group, surrogate family model that characterized the early church? I believe we can, with careful reflection and culturally sensitive contextualization.

First, I am advocating a markedly relational approach to Christian community, not the institutional model that most associate with the word church. I suspect, in fact, that our aversion as Westerners to the idea of a strong-group church finds its origins in the institutional nature of our own church experiences. For the early Christians, belonging to a local church was a commitment to a group of people, not to a highly programmed institution driven by corporate management and numerical growth. First and foremost, then, we must return to the concept and practice of church as a relational entity.

As inspiring as it is, moreover, the North African scenario above will likely prove exceptional in one important sense. Most of us do not belong to church communities where decisions are handed down through the channels of formal church leadership. Rather, the benefits of a strong-group, familial church will accrue informally, in the course of daily life, as we work through conflict, share victories, and endure heartaches together in those relationships that inevitably develop and bear fruit among Christians who determine to stick it out together.

Second, then, commitment to such a group must remain a decision belonging to each member, not one imposed from above. And it will be a decision that will need to be renewed on an almost daily basis. Our friend Marcus had little choice in the matter. He could either assent to the church’s demands or lose his place in the community. We have other options. We can simply leave one church to attend another across town. We must choose, instead, to stay. For people who stay grow. And people who stay help others to grow as well. But we had better prepare ourselves at the outset to make the choice to stay, again and again, in the face of cultural pressures—pressures often reinforced by the raging whirlpool of our own emotions that are screaming for us to do otherwise.

There are many other cultural specifics to consider—for example, how to create a strong-group church without turning into a cult, and how to convince strongly individualistic North Americans to make the group a priority. To be sure, the cultural challenges are great. But if we are really serious about spiritual formation, we must become really serious about creating churches that act like real families.

Joseph H. Hellerman is professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. He is the author of When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community (B&H Academic).

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous Christianity Today articles related to spiritual formation and theology include:

In the Beginning, Grace | Evangelicals desperately need spiritual and moral renewal—on that everyone agrees. But what do we do about it? (October 2, 2009)

Spiritual Formation Agenda | Three priorities for the next 30 years. (February 4, 2009)

The Blind Spot of the Spiritual Formation Movement | Let’s not forget the spiritual discipline of choice for the masses. (September 24, 2008)

With the second half of the film’s title, it’s obvious that Walt Disney Pictures would love for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to kick off a new action-packed franchise. Reteaming again with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they’re clearly positioning this as the next Pirates of the Caribbean. And since it’s inspired by a popular video game series dating back to 1989, the hope is that Prince of Persia has a strong built-in audience.

But that’s all marketing rhetoric. I’d love to say POP:SOT is the first truly successful movie adaptation of a video game (at least it’s better than most attempts) or that it’s true to the source material (though faithful in spirit, the plot details are different), but who cares? Does any of that ultimately matter if the results yield another mediocre and forgettable summer blockbuster?

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Dastan, the prince in the title, and there lies one key problem. With all-American boy-next-door good looks and a put-on British accent, Gyllenhall looks about as Persian as Canadian teen-pop star Justin Bieber (or as Siamese as Yul Brynner in The King and I, or as Mongolian as John Wayne in The Conqueror). The story takes place within the heart of The Persian Empire during the height of its reign hundreds of years before Christ’s birth—not exactly an ideal time for Persian-European relations. Gyllenhaal isn’t the only casting oddity, though at least some of the other British actors are passably Middle Eastern.

Still, the main problem isn’t whitewashing, but believability. Everything seems staged rather than recreated; it feels more like another sword-clanging fantasy in Middle Earth than an adventure in the Middle East.

Dastan, a street urchin, is adopted by King Sharaman because he shows “great courage” standing up to guards who threaten one of his orphan friends. He leaps across rooftops like a monkey before he is caught, pardoned, and ultimately raised as royalty with the King’s sons Tus (Richard Coyle) and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell).

Fifteen years later, the three brothers are off to war with their uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) as their military advisor, who suggests they attack the holy and peaceful city of Alamut for suspicion of forging weapons for enemies of Persia (WMDs, anyone?). The brothers reluctantly agree, despite Dastan’s misgivings, capturing the city along with its beautiful Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, Clash of the Titans).

After single-handedly infiltrating the city, Dastan uncovers a strange (plastic-looking) dagger with magic sand inside its handle, allowing whoever wields it to rewind time by a minute and change events—it’s basically a “save game” device. Soon, King Sharaman is killed and Dastan is framed for the murder. He flees with Tamina, who turns out to be the sworn sacred protector of the magic sand, and the two forge the usual squabbling romantic-comedy bond while trying to uncover the villain responsible for Sharaman’s death and to thwart a plot to use the sands of time for evil.

POP:SOT aims for a swashbuckling Arabian Nights-styled adventure with feats of derring-do, but it never provides enough thrill to set it apart from so many other CGI-fueled fantasies over the last decade. Given the agility of the Prince from the game—leaping the rooftops, diving off ledges, and climbing up walls—you would think the movie would be filled with breathtaking parkour (“free running”) action sequences similar to the chase from the beginning of Casino Royale or the French film District 13. Instead we have lots of slow-motion leaping that often suggests the use of wire work and quick-cut editing. As far as the swordfights, they’re not impossible to follow, but they tend to be shot close-up with lots of noise and little attention to technique.

This is another one of those films that relies more on effects than good stunt work. When Dastan makes the game’s trademark dive near the start of the film, there’s no sense of dizzying vertigo or danger to the event—he looks like a guy standing on a platform with computer-generated special effects in the background. For that matter, the nasty looking snakes used by the villain’s “Hassansin” henchmen are all computer-generated. Even the fire looks fake in a couple battle sequences. Topping it all off is one of those big effects-heavy finales that’s heavy on magical swirls of fire and sand where the hero doesn’t seem to know what’s going on—and neither do we.

It doesn’t help that the story doesn’t aim for anything new either. Of course Star Wars and Lord of the Rings still played to archetypes, but the characters were fleshed out with heart and humor. Here everyone seems conventional and two-dimensional, with forced attempts at humor by Alfred Molina as a black-market sheik, played as a more comical version of Oliver Reed’s character from Gladiator. He has a knife-throwing African sidekick who is silent for his couple scenes in the first half, but later he suddenly gets dialogue and a pivotal action sequence.

Meanwhile, Dastan and Tamina fall in love not out of natural chemistry (or a sense of destiny as the film suggests) but because the script requires them to. And particularly frustrating is the way the trailers and character makeup make it painfully obvious who the bad guy is, yet the script boldly pretends as if there’s mystery and surprise to the identity of the King’s assassin. Trust me, you already know.

Director Mike Newell is capable of heartfelt romantic comedy (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and drama (Donnie Brasco), but he’s struggled with fantasy-adventure (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the weakest of the franchise). He seems similarly ham-fisted here, going through the motions of a typical lame-brained Bruckheimer blockbuster.

The film isn’t awful, but how I miss the days when big-budget movies (Avatar notwithstanding) actually delivered on memorable thrills and characters. POP:SOT has neither—only a lazy script enhanced by computer-generated visuals.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Why does the king show compassion to the orphan Dastan? What does this say about our potential to overcome destitution and achieve greatness? How does this compare with our relationship with God?
2. Shortly before his death, King Sharaman explains why he admires Dastan. What does he mean by the difference between a good man and a great man? How does Matthew 5:43-48 fit in with this philosophy?
3. Princess Tamina tells a story of how the gods threaten to destroy mankind for their evil with a massive sandstorm, only to show compassion in the end. Does this remind you of any stories from the Bible? (See Genesis 6-8. Why do the gods show compassion in Tamina’s story? Why does God show compassion to Noah and what does he promise at the end of the story?
4. What would you do with a device that could turn back time? Would you use it to correct mistakes? Exploit it for personal gain?

The Family Corner

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action. There’s lots of swords clanging and arrows through chests, but little blood. Several scenes involve menacing snakes, sometimes leaping at the screen—the ickiest scene involves gutting a snake to retrieve an item. King Sharaman is murdered with a poison-lined robe that burns his skin like acid. Aside from a passing reference to a venereal disease the film is free of profanity, and aside from a few scenes of scantily clad women there’s little sexuality. Keep the rating in mind when considering whether to take small children.

Photos © Walt Disney Pictures

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Early in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s film 21 Grams (2003), a Pentecostal convert and ex-con named Jack (Benicio del Toro) sits at dinner with his wife and young son and daughter. The boy hits the girl in the arm. She whines. Jack glares at her and says, “Hold out your other arm, and let your brother hit you.” When the girl refuses, Jack lurches across the table, grabs his daughter’s tiny limb, and recites, “Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also.” Jack looks to the boy: “Hit her. Don’t be afraid. Hit her!” The boy obeys, only to have Jack smack him. “There’s no hitting in this house, understand?”

Jack is one of many depictions of Christians behaving badly in Hollywood, where severe religious faith almost always equals severe hypocrisy. Jack’s retributive grasp of Jesus’ teachings will come to haunt him before 21 Grams is over, and indeed one reliable aspect of contemporary films about Christians is good ol’ narrative wish fulfillment: like all movie villains, bad believers get what’s coming to them in the end.

Peter Dans does not mention 21 Grams in Christians in the Movies: A Century of Saints and Sinners, an encyclopedic and chronological overview of Hollywood’s Christian characters from 1905 through 2008. But Dans says the book was inspired by a spate of films over the last decade or so that show Christians acting brutally, including The Shawshank Redemption (1994), with its Bible-thumping, murderous prison warden, and Primal Fear (1996), with its “complete trashing of the Catholic Church.” It’s curious, then, that Dans overlooks movies such as Cape Fear (1991), A Few Good Men (1992), Seven (1995), Escape from L.A. (1996), Contact (1997), Frailty (2001), and, more recently, Lakeview Terrace (2008) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)—movies whose depiction of cruel Christians is pronounced and (in some cases) complex enough to warrant attention in a book like this one. Dans also misses a chance to comment on Amistad (1997), Steven Spielberg’s slavery film, which is infused with religion; The Big Kahuna (1999), an earnest examination of evangelism-as-sales-pitch; and You Can Count On Me (2000), which subtly captures a type of modern mainline Protestant ministry that has given up ministering.

To Dans’ credit, however, he does not miss much else. Dans is a physician and professor by trade, and a man of good film taste by a lifetime of cultivation. The longtime writer of a movie column for the Pharos journal and author of Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah, Dans is a true cinephile. If he hasn’t watched some of the films on his topic that I care about, he has watched many more besides—approximately 200 titles are covered in this volume, from the silent era right up to 2008’s Doubt. Each entry features a plot summary and brief commentary from Dans on how a film fares in its treatment of Christianity. We hear a fair amount of grumbling about Hollywood’s “ridicule of organized religion, especially Christianity,” but Dans also enjoys highlighting films that handle the faith with sympathy or ingenuity, from mid-century Bible spectaculars to made-for-TV gems that you probably missed. (Remember The Scarlet and the Black [1983], with its fine performances from Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer? Me neither, but it’s in my Netflix queue now.)

I was thrilled to learn about Stars in My Crown (1950), an overlooked masterwork from Jacques Tourneur, the director of the noir classic Out of the Past (1947). Dans says the chance to call attention to Stars was a primary inspiration for his book, and now I know why: the film delivers a stirring tale of pastoral care in the face of racism and violence. In fact, Dans inspired me to catch up on a lot of films I’d neglected, such as Alfred Hitchock’s I Confess (1953) and all of Luis Buñuel. Dans packs his chapters with tons of information, including mini-essays that historicize cinematic and cultural developments, institutions like the Catholic Legion of Decency, and directors like Buñuel. These essays are delivered in Dans’ frank style, and his writing is enjoyably informed by a lifetime of learning. The Buñuel essay, in about 500 words, offers a quick bio, points of distinction about Buñuel’s early work, and a closing suggestion that Buñuel’s tortured persona, forged by a rough Catholic upbringing, resembles the narrator of Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven,” which Dans reprints in part. My copy of Dans’ book is already tattered and marked up.

As interesting as the book is in its details, however, it offers little assistance in stimulating Christians to reflect on what all these films are up to. Instead, it reinforces a general defensiveness toward Hollywood’s treatment of believers. Dans is fond of films that were made under Hollywood’s Production Code, a set of moral rules for filmmaking followed by the major studios to varying degrees from 1930 until a rating system was established in 1968. Dans, along with First Things editor Joseph Bottum, who contributes a forward, praises this era for its artfulness in addition to its regard for moral decency and respect for religious and governmental institutions. Dans is not wrong to assert that “many of the most respected films in movie history were made from the 1930s to the 1950s,” but it’s actually a complicated claim—the Production Code corresponded to “The Golden Age of Film,” but it was hardly the only creative condition of that age. One canard of Code-era celebrators is that the moral restrictions improved the creative process by forcing filmmakers to tell good stories rather than dwell on sex and violence. That might seem right when you’re watching Turner Classic Movies, but the era produced its share of junk. And while it is true that, as both Bottum and Dans declare, the pleasure of 1934’s It Happened One Night is that Clark Cable and Claudette Colbert go to great lengths not to sleep together, that’s also the pleasure of today’s ongoing Twilight series. (There, a vampire has to distance himself from his lover so as not to kill her.) The latter is not the aesthetic equal of the former, but Twilight scribe Stephenie Meyer did not need the Production Code to inspire a similar moral conceit.

Dans pines for the era when Hollywood adopted a “reverential approach to how religion was portrayed in film.” But Hollywood studios did not reverence religion so much as they hewed to economic motivations for abiding by the Production Code, which stated—at the threat of non-distribution—that films could not “throw ridicule on any religious faith,” nor portray ministers “as comic characters or as villains.” I love the streetwise, heroic Irish priest in 1938’s Angels with Dirty Faces, which is one of several films in the era that throws bones to the Production Code. Angels is sympathetic toward religion, but it’s also sycophantic. It’s a film to be enjoyed, but perhaps not to be trusted.

If the Production Code provided economic incentive for mid-century filmmakers to mind their manners, current Hollywood has its own motivation for producing Christian-friendly films. Dans suggests in his opening essay that people who want “movies that are more reflective of our values” should “use the power of the purse and our voices.” But we’ve had plenty of that mode of engagement already, and the results are not encouraging. The success of The Passion of the Christ (2004) gave us One Night with the King (2006). What will Fireproof (2008) and The Blind Side (2009) give us? I don’t pine for more characters like 21 Grams‘ Jack, but I’ll take him over whatever a pandering studio executive imagines pious Christian audiences want to see.

Accurate representation in Hollywood is a problem for groups of all kinds—ethnicities, religions, social classes—not just Christians. The path to improvement is the creative path, the complicated and contested one forged by Spike Lee for African Americans or Mira Nair for Indians. Such filmmakers create art that is at once legitimately about their own culture and available to an entire public; that kind of reach has always been the promise of cinema to those who know the craft. Many a young Christian is already on that path—think of how many college students you know with Los Angeles and New York on their minds. The best of those, one hopes, will improve on 21 Grams, Angels with Dirty Faces, Fireproof, and all the rest, not so Christians can have a cinema of their own, but so they can have a cinema to provoke viewers of all kinds.

Patton Dodd is the author of My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion (Jossey-Bass).

Copyright © 2010 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.