Another Pentecostal documentary, a new study, and more religion and politics

Three things that are interrelated. Last night I saw the 2001 movie documentary "Hell House."
It may still be airing on the Sundance channel and in reruns of This American Life. Michael and I set it up in the dining room here and many other young folks came in and out. A young lady sat on my left who had never before been exposed to a Pentecostal worship service. You may remember that I recently review Jesus Camp.

The Hell House experience is similar to Jesus Camp, but provocative in different ways. Jesus Camp is a much more politically prescient and provocative experience. The subjects of Jesus Camp are harder to watch than Hell House because they are little children. With Hell House, an AoG church attracts thousands of people into a Halloween experience that's really all about sin, culture, and a final invitation for conversion. In Jesus Camp we follow a number of families around in their subculture and then watch their Christian camp experience. Its interesting that I feel like more action is going on in Jesus Camp even though its much more internalized. Hell House is a church reaching out, Jesus Camp is really the day to day (albeit intense) workings of a church subculture among its own kids.

In other news, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has just released a 10 country 233 page survey of Pentecostalism. Bible Belt Blogger calls it "Everything you wanted to know about Pentecostalism." I just have to say that you can read up all you want on Pentecostals and still miss the fact that it is a uniquely lived experience. From the outside looking in, it could appear downright Shamanistic. Having spent a good deal of time in Assembly of God churches I would warn that that appearance is severly misleading. AoG services can be just as boring, maybe more than elsewhere at times.

Always remember too that members inside are as capable of self-criticism as the most vitriolic outside scoffer. A church worship scene from Hell House last night brought back memories of the style of preaching that smacks more of a pep rally than sermon. But I also remember the opposition to this style among professors in my AoG college. I learned well the lesson in my Pnuematology course: "The Holy Spirit's work always points to Christ. Anything other than that is really not Him." I remember that professor asking and really listening to our different youth group "horror" stories. Illicit use of the Holy Spirit's name for personal ego or monetary gain. One woman with tears recounted how she sought in vain the gift of Tongues and was made to feel sinful and unspiritual for not having recieved it in a certain time-frame. My professor expressed his sorrow and assured her that was not AoG teaching but hurtful error.

Finally, Walter Russell Mead's article God's Country? in Foreign Affairs is worthy of attention. He seems very interested in what Evangelicals can contribute to foreign policy. He writes:

"Evangelicals are likely to focus more on U.S. exceptionalism than liberals would like, and they are likely to care more about the morality of U.S. foreign policy than most realists prefer. But evangelical power is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and those concerned about U.S. foreign policy would do well to reach out."

Well this will make somebody happy. It would be very difficult for me to sit at a table with Richard Land with an open ear toward most anything he has to say on foreign policy or the environment. I went over all this with Ron Sider last year.

Tags: Hell House, Documentary, Jesus Camp, Pentecostalism, Foreign Policy, Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs, Evangelicals, Ron Sider

Jesus Camp

I saw the movie "Jesus Camp" on Friday night. In it the camp director, Becky Fischer, mentions some websites that describe Palestinians training their children as terrorists. Her Christian Zionist sympathies are in rare form. The film is a provocative experience. Watching it was reliving a lot of really bad spiritual experiences from my own youth. From the website I noticed that it was screened in Springfield Missouri (aka. "Jesus Land"). That's intense. I would not agree with Ted Haggard who said the film was hateful. (Of course he's agin it. He's in it!) I would say that it is incendiary, but no more so than GodStuff on the Daily Show. Charismatic Evangelicals should have the experience of viewing themselves through the eyes of their critics, especially when their "B.S. button" is apparently broken. We need the reminder that we have no special patent on the words "Thus saith the Lord" and that indeed we fall under the usual judgment every time we presume to speak for God.

The hullabaloo on youtube over kids praying to GWB is a misinterpretation. That particular scene in the film is provocative, but it's also clear when you see the whole clip that the kids are not praying to Bush. They are pronouncing a blessing on him and praying for him. But the trailer edit is quick enough to give a wrong impression. Even so the use of the Christian flag, the US flag, and the words spoken are enough that I'd consider it blasphemous. Another scene that I found worse in a way was when the kids are given ceramic cups with the word "government" on them and told to smash them in the name of the Lord. Somehow that's not anarchist, but prophetic in nature. But I'm sure the whole thing is not meant to be analyzed in great detail. We're supposed to be in the Spirit and not use our brains.

Therein lies the true escape hatch for all that goes on in the Jesus Camp services. These are ecstatic spiritual moments which the viewer must share in order to rightly interpret. The scenes are shocking because we're not in the "Spirit." Unbelievers have no right to judge. I can see and feel the reasoning in this. When I'm speaking in tongues I don't care to have a camera on me. I wouldn't care to have a camera follow my seven year old daughter around. When Rachael is speaking about dead churches or people who don't know Jesus you have to take it at face value. This is a child speaking of her experience, of things she's been told, of the way she percieves life. At age seven your world is pretty small. Things are very simple and that's ok.
On the other hand, when a mom says "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who love Jesus and those who don't" I can honestly say this woman is willfully choosing a small world that, though said to be out of love for Jesus, is blissfully ignorant of His work in the world. When she teaches her son to be ignorant of evolution and American history she is doing him a dis-service.

These are the kind of hard issues in the film. See it if you can. Rich Tatum, former webmaster for the General Council of the Assemblies of God, has a review of Jesus Camp up on the Christianity Today website. I think he's being very hopeful about a mainstream Pentecostal position, but unless things have changed a whooooole lot in Springfield since I lived there--the AoG is still very anti-left.

Tags: Jesus Camp movie, George W. Bush, Ted Haggard, God Stuff, Evangelicalism, Charismatics, Becky Fischer

"Ray" and "Walk the Line"

I finally saw the movie Ray last night, the biographical movie on the life of Ray Charles Robinson starring Jamie Fox. Billy Crystal made that comment at the Oscars that Walk the Line was the same story with a white guy. It made me want to see and compare. You might find it really silly or trivial to compare the two lives and movies but I'll do it anyway.

Ray Charles and Johnny Cash both grew up dirt poor in the South.
Ray and Johnny were both tortured by memories of the deaths of their brothers.
Both men were severely addicted to drugs just as their music careers took off.
Both men cheated on their wives on the road.
Both men became music legends for mixing and matching musical styles and reinventing their musical approach repeatedly.
That's about all I see that's similar.

Here are the BIG differences:

Ray was blind and black, Johnny was sighted and white.
Johnny was a master story teller, Ray loved story music but focused on musical innovation.
Johnny had both a father and mother who lived to old age.
Ray's father rambled around leaving his mother to care for two boys. Ray's mother died while he was a young man. He never saw her again after being sent off to a school for the blind.
Ray had to deal with being used and ripped off financially because of his blindness.
The movie Ray does not present Ray as being very personally effected by a family faith. Ray loves gospel music but we don't know how religious he is. He is persecuted for setting sensual lyrics to gospel music.
Early on Johnny's parents were deeply religious. Even as an addict he thought long and hard about faith. He had a radical conversion experience that he often talked about.
Johnny Cash is legendary for embodying the darkness and light in all people. The story telling and presentation made his mythos, his shadow if you will, much larger than the man. As a white male his strength could have been used to embody all the perfections of white America. Instead he focused on the disaffections of the marginalized. Prisoners, killers, drunkards, drug addicts, losers in love, the hypocritically faithful.
Walk the Line is different from Ray in that it bears witness to the birth of the myth Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Ray is more of a biography with a celebration of an innovator. It also testifies to the evils of heroin addiction. Walk the Line is a love story wherein Johnny and June fight hard and beat the odds to win each other.

Tags: Movie Reviews, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, similarities, differences, Southern