Saturday, June 20, 1998

Even R-rated films suggest redeeming messages to believers with eyes to see

By Christine Wicker / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS -- As Camilla Ballard waits in the darkness for a movie to begin, she asks herself one question. "Where am I going to find God in this film?"

In "L.A. Confidential" she had to look past profanity, sex and violence for a glimpse of the Almighty. But she did find it -- in the unconditional love of a prostitute played by Kim Basinger.

"When her policeman-lover beats her up, she just takes it. What a picture of God!" said the youth director at First Presbyterian Church of Dallas, referring to the Christlike compassion of the Basinger character. "And in the police officer" -- who misjudges her earlier actions -- "what a picture of ourselves. We just rail at God and beat him up, and he takes it because he understands the big picture.

"Oh my gosh, I was just so excited. I thought about it for days."

Ballard is among a growing number of religious people who advocate going to the movies for what Baptist layman Bruce Ruggles calls "an experience of worship." He doesn't often find the taste of eternity he seeks, said Ruggles, but when he does, the experience can bring tears to his eyes. Like other similarly minded Christians, Ruggles said he doesn't rate films by the movie codes for violence and sex. He rates them by his own code for their "ability to move me, to touch my humanity."

While these Christians apply lessons they learned at church to some of Hollywood's steamiest offerings, others bring movies into church itself. At Hope Community Church in North Dallas, film clips are part of every Sunday morning service. Willow Bend Church in Plano, Texas, just finished a series of messages that drew on films such as "Titanic," "Contact," "City Slickers" and "Forrest Gump."

"A lot of people are beginning to use movie clips as part of worship," said Michael Boomershine, a media consultant who recently helped teach a class on movies and television at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.

Christians who love movies despite -- and sometimes because of -- the films' often "unGodly" themes base their defense of Hollywood's art partly on the idea that God can be found in every situation.

"John Calvin said all of life is holy," said Brent Barry, director of adult ministries for Dallas' First Presbyterian Church. "If people can find God in movies, then they can begin to reflect in the same way in their lives."

He leads a group of adults who meet once a month for a movie night. Afterward they gather in a coffee shop to discuss the theological themes.

"I could give a lecture and people may not hear what I'm saying," said Barry, "but stories create meaning in our lives."

Looking for God outside his more holy hangouts can have big payoffs, said evangelical Presbyterian Kim Hutchins. "If people will squint, so to speak, to see God in movies where he may not be easily spotted, people's hope will be restored ... that God is present (in all of life) and he is revealing himself," he said.

People today go to movie theaters for the same reason pre-literate societies went to the temple: "That's where the good stories are being told," said Hutchins, publisher of Mars Hill Review, a journal that connects art and Christian faith.

"I think our soul was designed to respond to a good story. The use of story is God's way of basically drawing people to himself."

Films such as "Schindler's List" and "Titanic" are creative retellings of the gospel story without Christian or biblical labels, Hutchins said. He advocates using the movies as a bridge for talking to unbelievers about meaning and hope, which is what they are interested in and what the church ought to be about, he said.

"Movie makers by and large are doing a better a job (than preachers) of telling significant stories ... laced with biblical themes. We think that's why people are responding to the movies sometimes more than they are to the stories being told on Sunday morning at church," he said.

"One of the things we think our pastors ought to be doing is telling us how to watch a movie so that our hearts will be drawn to God," said Dan Allender, senior editor of Mars Hill Review.

"I'm not saying a pastor should say, 'Go see Blade Runner,' but they ought to teach us how to read the culture. We want people to be involved in culture because Christ has revealed himself in culture."

Christians who separate themselves from the culture because they don't like its unseemly side are behaving in an "unbiblical" way, said Hutchins, who cites Jesus' and Paul's examples.

"Film is about life," said the Rev. Edward McNulty, a Presbyterian minister from the Catskills in New York and editor of a magazine called Visual Parables, which deals with religious themes in secular movies. "Life has a lot of R- and X-rated factors in it, but we don't run away from it; we engage it."

Plenty of other religious people see the prurience and violence coming out of Hollywood as an evil, corrupting force, but to these movie-buff believers the graphic nature of movies is acceptable when it's a legitimate part of the story.

McNulty says only 10 percent of films qualify as the kind of movies he looks for: parables that point to God. About 80 percent of movies are harmless excuses to eat popcorn, he said, and 5 to 10 percent are truly "poisonous." For him, those are "Dirty Harry-type" movies that manipulate the viewer into being happy when the villain dies a terrible death.

Hutchins, on the other hand, doesn't have as much problem with the proliferation of mindless violence. "These movies are a natural consequence and reflection of the fragmentation of culture," he said. "If you read the book of Judges you see the same thing."

Disputes over the value of a movie don't always center on violence.

One Christian, for instance, targets "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" as an example of a totally meaningless movie. But Ruby Cochran, program director at Hope Community Church, used it for a service. "They take a day off and go to the city. They sing and dance."

"They ask significant questions," added Mayeux. "They enjoy creation, and that's exactly what the Sabbath is for. That is not an empty movie. That is a rich, wonderful movie."

This summer promises plenty of blockbuster offerings. Some have obvious religious or spiritual themes. Apocalypse themes dominate three: "Godzilla", "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact." Religious movie fans and critics alike are excited about "The Truman Show." The Jim Carrey film is about a man whose whole life has been televised 24 hours a day, unbeknownst to him.

His rebellion against this "perfect" life that has been created for him raises core questions of the human heart, said Allender. "We long to be famous, but to be famous is to ruined," he said.

The summer will also bring plenty of films that won't be worth watching. Hutchins' advice for Christians is go to the movies, anyway.

He said, "It's better to err on the side of too many movies than too little."

MAGAZINE INFORMATION: Mars Hill Review publishes three times a year. Subscriptions are $36. Call 1-800-990-MARS. Visual Parables, available monthly on a computer disk or in magazine form, costs $30 per year. Call 1-800-528-6522.

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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