"Amazing Grace" and Christian action in the world...

[regnaD kciN]

The William Wilberforce biography Amazing Grace has already generated some notice on DU; my opinions about it as a film can be found here. However, there's one additional point that really bothered me, and that I find worth bringing up in this forum.

Ironically, my biggest gripe with this film has to do with the overly-simplistic, if positive, presentation of Christian faith. While Wilberforce's own religious fervor, along with those of his compatriots like John Newton, was brought to the fore, the film often made it seem as if they were the only Christians in England at the time. In fact, many of the proponents of slavery were just as quick to justify their support of the slave-trade, both according to Scripture (the tacit acceptance of slavery in the Bible, particularly in the Pauline epistles) and "Christian values" (the dreaded "White Man's Burden," whereby Europeans rationalized slavery as necessary to "civilize" Africans and bring them to Christianity).

Why does this matter? Because, in Amazing Grace, the link between faith and "right action" is shown to be near-automatic. Wilberforce is a Christian, therefore, because of his faith, he is automatically driven to free the slaves. The message seems to be "simply believe in Christ and follow your instincts, and you will automatically become a force for good." But, in fact, it isn't that easy. Having Christian faith does not put one on autopilot for doing good. In Wilberforce's time, there were many, many more Christians who either supported slavery or viewed it as a necessary evil, and did so on the basis of their own Christian faith. In other words, part of the real William Wilberforce story is that simple faith married directly to action isn't enough -- that it takes reason, wisdom, discernment, and a sensitivity to others to detect one's own truest course of action. Likewise, it would follow that there are many who, while "following Christ" with an "automatic" but unthinking culture-driven faith, do not perform good but rather its very opposite.

Why does this concern me so much? At the theater where I saw Amazing Grace, there was a long delay before the showing because of the last-minute arrival of a large number of people. As far as I could tell, these people were part of a group charter for one or more of the large churches (probably fundamentalist "mega-churches") in the area. These people seemed to really get into the film, and obviously identified with Wilberforce's religious fervor. At a key point early in the film, William Pitt suggests to Wilberforce that one can serve the Lord as much through the political arena as one can through ministry. The murmur of approval through the audience at that moment was surprising and a little unsettling -- my strong suspicion was that they were finding reinforcement for their notion that the truest way to serve the Lord is by using the political realm to fight back for "God, family, and country" against liberals, feminists, secular humanists, and The Homosexual Agenda. :eyes: Thus, for lack of a properly nuanced religious view, a story which should serve as an inspiration to Christian progressives everywhere is instead just as likely to buttress the determination and self-justification of the Religious Right. How much better would it have been if Amazing Grace had not unwittingly framed the issue so that all you needed was faith and zeal, and "good works" couldn't help but happen? If only it were that simple...

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. And this is what I fear about religious movies

They take all the ambiguity, all the tension, all the muckery out in order to slide through a very clean, very linear story. In this case, one in which Christians are not shown supporting slavery, only Newton's story of - as you said - "I am a Christian and therefore it is automatic that all I do is right and good".


As to the political comment, I'm sure all the Jesus Crispies took it the wrong way, thinking Pitt meant that "one can serve the Lord by forming political policies that require people to be Christian" instead of "one can serve the Lord politically by forming policies that help the poor, the widows, and the orphans".


Shit like this pisses me off. It's Christian apologetics, but an entirely dishonest and, I will say, unfaithful - maybe even heretical - form of it.

Instead of showing a story in which a guy, after much suffering and thought, makes the determination that his baptismal vows mean something (or, at least, that being a Christian has a demand on one's lifestyle) and changes his life around, the JEsus Crispies portray it as "He became Christian, and then was perfectly good, like all Christians, especially like America in the 1950s."

[regnaD kciN]

2. Which is one reason why I loved "The Mission"...

It wasn't simplistic, it implied that living the Christian life might involve sacrifice -- in the long run, even sacrifice of one's life -- and that said sacrifice might take place specifically in one's battles against fellow-Christians whose roles as leaders of the dominant power structure blind them to that structure's injustice. A story that ends, not with a celebration, but with the quiet remorse of the Cardinal who allowed the massacre of the Jesuits who fought against enslavement of the natives:

So, Your Holiness, now your priests are dead, and I am left alive. But, in truth, it is I who am dead, and they who live. For, as always, Your Holiness, the spirit of the dead will survive in the memory of the living.