Theology Goes to the Movies

An Introduction to Critical Christian Thinking

Clive Marsh

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134180639
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoria: Film & Video

Drawing a comparison between religion and cinema-going, this text examines a range of contemporary films in relation to key theological concepts. Cinema as a religion-like activity is explored through cognitive, affective, aesthetic and ethical levels, identifying the religious aspects in the social practice of cinema-going.

Written by a leading expert in the field, Theology Goes to the Movies analyzes:

• the role of cinema and Church in Western culture
• the power of Christian symbols and images within popular culture
• theological concepts of humanity, evil and redemption, eschatology and God.

This is an ideal text for students seeking a new way into the study of theology.

Part I
CONTEXTUALIZING THEOLOGY IN A MEDIA AGE

Chapter 1

THEOLOGY IN A CHAOTIC CLIMATE

What is ‘theology’?

THEOLOGY IS ULTIMATELY A PRACTICAL UNDERTAKING. GOD-TALK is meant to help people live.Whatever people make of ‘God’ – as concept and/or reality – the point of talk about God is to understand human life better and to decide on how to act in relation to an overarching theological framework for living. Some readers may admittedly balk at the suggestion that the point of God-talk is to help human beings. For is not that too pragmatic a procedure? Is not the point of God-talk to understand God better? True. Or, more critically, is not theology’s job to serve the task of praising and worshipping God rather than understanding God? From a standpoint within a particular religious tradition that is surely true too. My point, though, is that once God-talkers believe they have grasped something of the meaning of God, this has inevitable consequences, both for them and others. God-talk is not undertaken in isolation from the practice of living. Or if it is, then it has lost its way. The very notion or name ‘God’ identifies a concept or reality with existential import for people using the word. Even to reject the term, or to argue for the dangers of its use, let alone its misuse, is existentially significant.

Theology would not exist without religion. Religious traditions see it as their specific responsibility for carrying theologies in society even if God-talk also happens outside of religions in the context of wider society. Religions carry different theologies from each other. Religion scholars and specialists in inter-faith encounter may be able to point to common ground between religions.¹ But the irreducibility of religions to a common core of human experience is now more commonly accepted than the view that appeal can be made to some basic spiritual impulse in the human being. That there is some such spiritual or religious impulse need not be disputed. But this does not produce ‘religion’ in any generic sense. Religions are contingent, particular, historical, culture-related and contextual, and the theologies that they carry are too. This does not mean that ‘God’ as understood within any particular religious tradition is nothing but the result of the impact of contingent factors. It means that these factors have to be acknowledged and highlighted whilst theological viewpoints are examined. Otherwise the reality about which one seeks to speak, God, may not be spoken of at all. Recognition of the radical contingency and pluralism of religions does not turn all theologians into relativists. It simply means that theology is hard work and that all who engaged in it have to be prepared to ask hard questions of their own contingency and context.

Religions also carry a diversity of theologies within themselves. This insight applies the recognition of the historical, culture-related character of all religions to a single religious tradition. Christianity is identifiably the same across the world in some respects (e.g. God is always understood in relation to the figure of Jesus Christ, and Christian communities are called ‘churches’), but a variety of theologies exists within it. Admittedly, not all religions depend on the existence of a supreme being. Theravada Buddhism, for example, explicitly denies the existence of such a being. Even those traditions which are theistic (Hinduism, for example) do not speak of a theology in quite the same way as ‘religions of the book’ (Christianity, Judaism and Islam).

In the light of all this, theology could therefore immediately become something of a vague term which may or may not imply the existence of any ultimate, transcendent reality (‘God’) in relation to which human beings live their lives. It may be better to speak of the ‘ideology’ or ‘philosophy’ of a religious tradition. In this book I shall, however, speak of ‘theology’ both because I think it is still viable and necessary to continue to speak of God, and because the religion which provides my extended case-study, Christianity, still does so. Furthermore, Christianity still speaks in this way because most of those who practise it believe that ‘God’ names a reality in relation to which Christians believe that human beings live their lives. Distinguishing ‘theology’ from ‘religion’, whilst also keeping them close together, however, opens up the question of what theology as an analytical discipline is seeking to do with respect to religion as a practice and also where its subject-matter comes from. Does the material with which theology works come only from a religious tradition itself (from scriptures, creeds, classical writings, liturgies, sayings of religious leaders, accounts of religious experience)? Is theology but the explication (even if with some critical reflection) of what people in a religion believe and articulate?

Theology certainly does derive its subject-matter from the practice of religion. Because religion is not simply ideas and beliefs, but involves rituals and practices which shape, and are shaped by, ideas and beliefs, a religion’s theology cannot simply read off from a religion’s scriptures. At its fullest, therefore, theology has to work with symbols, rituals, gestures, ethical actions, art, and architecture, as well as texts and the history of people.

But the task of theology is more complex still. Religions exist within culture, and are themselves cultures. Theology’s subject-matter thus in part results also from the ways in which religions interact with the wider cultures in which they are located. Direct engagement with themes and symbols of religious traditions appears throughout culture outside of ‘official’ religious locations. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun are examples of such explorations in film. Furthermore, believers within a tradition practise their religion within a context of constant interaction with world-views and outlooks different from their own. This applies to official leaders within a religious tradition as well as so-called ‘ordinary believers’. However much a religion may entail the ‘handing-on’ of a clearly identifiable Great Tradition, history shows that changes do happen to that ‘Great Tradition’ in the process. Identifiable continuity contains within it discontinuity as a result of the interactions which constantly occur between a religion’s adherents and those of other traditions and outlooks within any given culture.

Theology, then, is a critical discipline that makes the attempt to study God in this context. It recognizes it would have no work to do without religions. But it does not simply expound a religion’s ideas from within. However much attention to the internal authorities within a given religious tradition may dominate its work, theology recognizes that religions are more than ideas. It will therefore always be in the task of teasing out ideas and beliefs from both religious traditions and practices and from the results of its participants’ interactions with wider culture. Theology will need to be particular, for although it is addressing an aspect of what may prove true of all human beings, God will inevitably be spoken about in limited ways, using specific cultural forms. In undertaking a limited task, theology at its best is, however, always conscious of the broader cultural context – that of religious and many other pluralisms – within which theology is done, and which is likely to affect how it is done and the conclusions it may reach.

The chaotic Western climate

So much for the first stage of clarifying what theology is and what it must do. But much more must be said about the cultural context in the West in which the discipline is practised. For if more and more people are studying religion and theology who do not begin from a standpoint of commitment to a religious tradition, then what sense is to be made of how such students experience the world? In this section, then, I shall characterize the culture and the experience of that culture which contemporary students of theology and religion report.

All students of theology and religious studies will have had some contact with religion. That ‘contact’ takes less and less the form of a religious upbringing. Though some bring to their studies past or present experience of belonging to a religious community, this is less the case than for much of the modern period. Furthermore it is much more likely that those who do have religious commitment offer a cross-section of religious backgrounds. Groups studying Christian theology may therefore comprise a wide range of participants of whom only a minority brings Christian commitment. ‘Contact with religion’ may therefore take a variety of forms: through participation in religious practices associated with rites of passage, through friends of varying religious traditions in the context of education, or through media coverage of religion.

The aspect of media coverage is particularly significant for those with limited personal contact with religiously committed people.² Religion may appear reactionary, conservative, misguided or dangerous due to particular slants in the coverage. Attention to prominent religious leaders, often at times of state occasions or in crisis, may lend an air of authority, but figureheads may appear quaint and dated. In the UK, for example, Christian leaders can easily be made to look out of touch.

‘Religion’ and ‘terror’ have also often appeared closely allied across media coverage of religion in recent years as a result of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the July 2005 bombs on the London Underground and Western involvement in Iraq. This alliance is not lost on critics of religion per se.³ Western media coverage of religion is not uniform, but some of the more nuanced reporting on religion needs documentary rather than news time, and therefore shows outside of primetime. It is therefore not surprising to find students choosing religion and theology classes because religion is clearly important – it makes people do seemingly insane things, but there is puzzlement and suspicion as to how and why. Students then have the chance to examine what religions are, and begin to look at history, ideas, society and what it means to be human. But at the same time, it may all appear just plain baffling. Furthermore, if all religions are viewed ‘from the outside’ (adopting what it often called a ‘religious studies perspective’), then the existential dimension of religious faith and theology, which this present book seeks to address, may be missed altogether.

It is crucial that opportunity be given to students, as they begin their study of religion or theology, critically to assess their actual encounters with religion, either in their own experience or through their observations of people known to them and through media reports. My own experience in the classroom shows that students are wrestling with all sorts of hesitations, puzzlements and fears, as well as commitments past and present (mixed up with family stories) for and against religion.Without giving the impression that any class on religion or theology becomes a therapy session, some opening up of what theological study involves will be needed.⁴

But characterization of what students in the West face when preparing to study religion and theology needs more than acknowledgement of how they themselves have experienced religion. The chaotic climate in which we all find ourselves in the West needs further mapping. It is fashionable to speak of ‘fragmented culture’ or ‘postmodern times’. There is no need in this book to debate whether or not something major has or has not been lost from the past (be that Christendom, or a more unified culture based on some other foundation). Nor do we need to find a definitive label to describe our present situation. Our task is to characterize it accurately so that we see, by the book’s end, how theology is to work within it. What, then, does Western culture look like from within?⁵

Four features of contemporary Western cultural life

There is no single account of reality that receives wholesale support. Many accounts compete to offer the most plausible understanding of, or framework within which to live, human life (religions among them but also modern rationality too), but none has overall cultural dominance. The assumed dominance of Christianity (‘Christendom’) has gone in the West. Pluralism is a fact.Western pluralist culture is often termed ‘postmodern’. This means that the West has moved beyond a ‘modern’ (Enlightenment) phase in which it was assumed that a single form of rationality could be used by all, to reach a single truth, and a universal account of what it means to be human. Modernity constructed on such lines has proven to be a thinly veiled form of Western, colonialist, Christianity-driven imperialism. Christianity need not be assumed, as a result of this critique, to be fundamentally corrupt, misguided or untrue. But it has to ask questions of itself and be more open than it has often been to the questioning of others.

In a postmodern context, religions are part of what is often called a ‘market-place’ of belief systems and world-views which vie for people’s attention.Talk of a ‘market-place’ implies that people are free to choose. In practice, of course, the situation is more complex. People are ‘born into’ sets of cultural assumptions (through family, education, nation) which they adopt without realizing, and must then choose to stay within, or to opt out of. In the West, it could be argued that global capitalism, issuing in a consumerism that is more than just a way of shopping but also a way of life, is the dominant world-view. I am not so sure. Some of the critiques of global capitalism overlook the fact that people have to consume in order to live, and underplay the great variety of ways in which people discover and construct meaning. It is, however, true that the alliance between postmodernism, pluralism, capitalism and the demand for choice affects thinking about how people come by, and inhabit, religious traditions. In so far as people are invited to ‘shop around’ for a religion or a spirituality, as if religions are like shampoos, then consumerism has affected faith.⁶

However, though there may be no dominant account of reality, there are, second practices that are recognized to make up a human life. These include family, friendships, sexual activity, work, leisure, sport, charitable action and political commitment. Religious commitment overlaps with many of these human practices. At a time of considerable uncertainty as to whether there is, or can be, any overarching way of making sense of human life (i.e. there can be no ‘meta-narrative’ which enables people to make sense of it all), it is participation in such practices which are the meaning of life. Rather than trying to make sense of the complex and bewildering pluralism of Western society, it may be deemed better simply to launch oneself more intensely into the business of living. Coherence may not be possible. Actions one undertakes may not fit within a logical framework of living. Perhaps, indeed, the quest to find or create such meaning is itself misguided, assuming a hidden, prior meaning that simply does not exist.

At its most extreme, such a course of action may lead to selfish hedonism. But it need not. Many of the basic practices listed would inevitably take a person beyond themselves in a more altruistic direction. It is not possible to be a good family-member or friend without bearing the needs of others in mind. Political activity is rarely wholly selfish. My point is that a bewildering pluralism can actually contribute to a refusal to reflect, because it simply seems such a hard thing to do. This book recognizes this and picks one cultural practice out of list – from the ‘leisure’ section – and subjects it to sustained critique. The book acknowledges that whether people go to the cinema for intellectual stimulus or not, film-watching is the kind of activity which is a location in life in which critical reflection is often provoked.⁷ It is thus a practice that stimulates reflection without being intended as such. This, however, is how philosophical and theological reflection often occurs: in response to the practice of living.

Third, the bewilderment of pluralism is coped with in part through closer attention to local identity. Identities still need to be found and shaped. Human beings need to find some way of working out who they are, where they fit in to the society and culture of which they are a part and where they think they are heading. But in a postmodern context of multiple, sometimes conflicting, world-views, discerning and choosing from available value-systems is a hard task. Furthermore, the global reach of media means that borders seem to carry little meaning. Claims that we are all ‘citizens of the world’ can easily be made.

Of course, such claims are too grand. Passports are still needed for border-crossing. The world is at the feet only of the wealthy who have the money to travel. Globalization has, then, joined forces with the opposition to claims for universality and led people to place much greater emphasis upon the local and the particular.This emphasis takes many forms.

Awareness of one’s national identity is one form. In the UK, there has been considerable investigation of ‘citizenship’ and ‘Britishness’ as a result. The cultivation of a new pride in being British on the part of people of quite different backgrounds is a noteworthy feature of recent British culture. In contrast to an implicitly racist form of nationalism that looks nostalgically, and mistakenly, to a past (English) history of dominant white culture, this new sense of Britishness notes the diversity present in British culture. The attempt is being made to respect the particular within a new fashioning of national identity.⁸

A second aspect of the emphasis upon the local and the particular is thus the acceptance of ethnic and religious diversity inevitably present in any modern state. Respect for diversity can clearly not simply be a reluctant acceptance that ‘this is the way things are’ (as if the loss of Christendom is something to be bemoaned). Positive respect takes the form of seeking to value the particularity of different cultures. Respect for particular cultures (including religious cultures) thus becomes part of the effect of the opposition to universality.

Fourth, support for organized Christianity in much of the Western world is in steep decline. This is of especial importance to the subjectmatter of this present book. For why keep on trying to work with a tradition which fewer and fewer people seem to be supporting explicitly? Admittedly there are differences between Europe and North America here. Processes of secularization have taken different forms. In the USA, Christian affiliation remains a more standard cultural practice than throughout much of Europe, despite the stark separation of church and state. Conservative Christians, furthermore, exert a major influence in political life in the USA. That said, there is no need to doubt the evidence of secularization across the West. It is well documented over a long period.⁹ If conservative Christianity remains a cultural force in the USA, it can be argued that this merely highlights the particular form of American secularization: Christians are expected to be lobbying from the outside, however ‘mainstream’ they may appear to be. They are peculiar, countercultural voices, sounded from the private/privatized world of religion. As far as the understanding of theology espoused in this book is concerned, however, Christianity is to be looked towards as a critical, public voice in any context where discussions about meaning, value and purpose occur.

Here is not the place to examine fully the arguments about Christianity’s future in the West or further afield. This present book simply...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• How to Use this Book
• Part I Contextualizing Theology in a Media Age
• Part II A Systematic Theology Through Film
• Part III Christian Theology in Practice
• Notes