“Christian” films shouldn’t be aiming at category (a), but they should nail category (b). What typically keeps them from nailing that category is the poor theology that undergirds them. If your underlying theology is based in the notion that your film must convert the masses to Christianity to keep them from being tortured for eternity, that’s going to create a storyline as impoverished as its base assumptions. If your underlying theology is that no one but Christians share any part of truth or have any grasp on godly reality – and therefore only non-Christian characters can only be learners and Christian ones the teachers – that creates a film that does not engage with reality.

Really, though, there’s nothing to stop films informed by Christian faith from telling some of the very best stories, with the deepest, most nuanced plots and characterization, that meaningfully engage the fullest spectrum of life – the “good, the bad, and the ugly” so-to-speak. If the underlying theology of film makers looked more like the Phoenix Affirmations – a set of 12 principles created by “progressive” Christians in 2005 – I think we’d have some truly exciting films on our hands. And in fact, we already have – films like Robert Duvall’s The Apostle, for instance, which told an incredibly rich and nuanced story and sold like hotcakes. I suspect Blue Like Jazz may similarly reflect these values.

The web television program I help with, Darkwood Brew, uses the Phoenix Affirmations quite intentionally as its underlying core. These principles keep driving the program to go deeper, be more expansive in its search for meaning, be more appreciative of a diversity of viewpoints. And frankly, it’s just plain fun.

In case anyone’s interested, Darkwood Brew lists each of the 12 Phoenix Affirmations under its “core values” here: http://www.onfaithonline.tv/darkwoodbrew/about-dwb/

To your second, I think it speaks to the issue of how veterans ascribe value to (secondarily) our experiences and (primarily, and more fundamentally) our own selves. We internalize the ideal of warmaking-as-a-necessarry-and-heroic evil and assimilate it into our identities, so when people make statements about pacifism and hating war, we view it as an attack on our identities.

In response to the part about viewing people as subhuman, I do see it sometimes. Some veterans–not all, of course–get really pissed when you proclaim to be a pacifist. “I fought for your freedom! If you don’t like it, go to France!” I’m like, “Dude, I didn’t say I don’t respect you, as either a veteran or a human being. You’ve seen things that I’ll never see in my life. I said I hated war, that’s all.”

I have heard so many dismal versions of this song, I was scared to listen to it. But the version by the Lower Lights is so ethereal, so pretty…like I always thought the song should sound. Not “bleak” so much as “haunting”.

http://www.renovatingthemind.com/2011/12/06/one-thing-podcast-12411/

Peace,
Nathan

Thomas