Apostle

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Apostleposter

I was teaching in a seminary when Robert Duvall’s The Apostle came out. Seeing the favorable reviews, I put it on my wish-list and somehow it never managed to rise to the top. Perhaps it was because I worked at a religious institution 24/7. Seeing a movie about church felt almost superfluous. Many years on now, my wife bought me the DVD (yes, we’re old-fashioned) and we finally sat down to watch it. I realized, as the preaching started, that I didn’t know what to expect. I assumed that Sonny would be a typical Elmer Gantry-type character, cynical and self-centered, but as I kept waiting for the sneering commentary to come, it never did. The movie didn’t valorize Sonny either—he is a flawed preacher who commits murder out of jealousy and flees the state to start a life elsewhere. Landing in rural Louisiana, he begins building a life doing what he does best—preaching. The local people benefit from his presence, so I was waiting for the cracks to appear, but they never did. The movie is amazingly respectful of Holiness, or Pentecostal religion. It left me quite thoughtful.

Having grown up in a non-denominational setting, the scene of the altar call was one that was familiar to me. Fiery sermons were also something I’d seen before. Theological education, of course, causes one to question much of this, which is why many Fundamentalist churches do not hire seminary graduates to be their clergy. Study tends to refine that ability to let go and have emotion become the substance of the service. Recalling my own childhood, steeped in the Bible and fervent fear of Hell, church was primarily an emotional catharsis for me, not an intellectual enterprise. The problem for me was that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s where it often starts to crumble for those who want to understand emotion-driven religion. It doesn’t mix well with rationality.

The Apostle is made all the more powerful for its use of actual Holiness preachers in the movie. When they’re preaching, they’re not acting. They’re preaching on film. Part of the draw, I suppose, for many viewers is that this is a foreign world. Mainstream church services are often subdued, perhaps even dour, by comparison. They are, however, more rationally driven. The substance of any mainstream liturgy derives in some form from Catholicism. Pentecostalism dismisses all of that, retaining the music and the sermon and the Bible. Otherwise, they are practically different species. The storyline of the movie isn’t anything grand. Preacher commits crime, repents, gets caught. Still, there’s an authenticity to it that makes it compelling. No Jim Jones here. No David Koresh. Just a man, in many ways typical, trying to make his way in the world in the only way he knows how. And that can be inspirational.

Addam’s Evve

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MaddAddamDystopias can be optimistic. I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, and came away from it strangely at peace. The third of its eponymous trilogy, the story takes place in a future that is simply a continuation of where we are at the moment. Things have gotten pretty bad—most of humanity has been wiped out, genetic engineering has taken dreadful liberties with creatures human and non, and corporations have fulfilled their dreams and have taken over at last. The few good people left are tormented by those society has made into sociopaths. Global warming has proven the naysayers false, and yet, despite all this, there is room for hope. Tying together the various strands from the previous two books, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam is probably the most eco-conscious trilogy on the planet.

Apart from the many obvious biblical allusions (I often wonder what it must be like to miss so much, for want of familiarity with holy writ), the book also introduces a fully functional faux church. Atwood can be at her best when taking on the charlatans of piety. Cynical and calculating, “the Rev,” father of two of the ensemble cast, is everything a televangelist is, and more. Indulging in all that he denies his flock, even Elmer Gantry would have trouble keeping up. The Church of PetrOleum represents the most damaging of industries in a world already suffering the consequences of the greenhouse effect. Corporations make it rich while the Rev takes out his personal issues on his wives and children. Instead of being on the side of paradise, the church introduces chaos.

Through the gloomy scenario she’s foreseen, Atwood is able to see glimmers of a future that has possibilities. The protagonists are the members of a commune of a green religion, earth-centered and bearing a resemblance to both Wicca and monastic Christianity. That spiritual tradition, an offshoot of more established churches, is seen as dangerous by the corporations. And with good reason. Despite what televangelists tell us, spiritual truth is not on the side of big business. Jesus was no trickle-down economist. Reagan was no messiah. Corporate greed leads to blocking laws to clean up our world. We do not have control over what geneticists are doing, and, in fact, most of us have no idea what we’re eating or wearing any longer. Or what it is they’re packaging our food in. We are the consumers. Taught always to consume more. And the more that we are told to consume is the very planet that gave us life. My hat is off to Atwood, who still seems some possible cause for hope.

Elmer Gantry

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ElmerGantryIn recent years a renewed interest has arisen concerning how powerful entities are perceived by others. Academics are asking how the United States is seen by other nations. Corporations are trying to improve their public images because, well, let’s face it, it effects the bottom line. The same thing applies, but with a difficult kind of finessing, to churches. Part of the difficulty is that churches declare that they have the truth. Backing down from this in the face of public opinion more or less scuttles any claims being made. Thus I’d been curious about Elmer Gantry for some time. Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the self-absorbed, arrogant clergyman who believes in no god other than his own desires, is considered a modern classic. Written during the height of the follies of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Prohibition, as the Fundamentalist movement was just getting started, Lewis used dark satire to try to put the self-righteous in their place. I’d known the name Elmer Gantry from many other media references, so I figured it was time to see who he was.

Going into the novel I had few preconceived notions. Gantry, I knew, would be a hypocrite from the start, but beyond that, cultural references don’t give many hints. Although Lewis’s well-known wit shines through from time to time, on a whole the novel is a distressing read. I suppose it’s the mark of a great writer that you can despise a character so, but really, Elmer is led on his path, indeed, encouraged, by those who know him and whose only zeal is conversion for conversion’s sake. A womanizing, athletic, hard-drinking student, Gantry is where many young men want to be. The campus ministries, however, keep after him until he realizes what all clergy know at some level—there is power in being able to manipulate people by religion. As portrayed by Lewis, Gantry does try, once or twice, really to believe. His cynical and selfish nature, however, are too difficult for him to overcome and he therefore employs them in all his relationships as he climbs the corporate, ecclesiastical ladder.

There is really no triumphalism here, with the society discovering and ousting the charlatan. Indeed, as the book ends, the Reverend Doctor Elmer Gantry dodges a serious threat to his career only to be appointed to one of the most influential churches in New York, poised to go on to even greater things. Trying to find the blame in the novel, however, is not a simple task. Gantry is all too easily led. He follows his base desires deftly and confidently. He knows a mark when he sees one. Throughout his ministerial life, however, he is encouraged and prodded onward to success. Most ministers, in my experience, are burdened with conscience. I’m sure a few slip through with their own agendas, but the working clergy are nothing like the protagonist to this tale. Lewis focuses on the worst offenders. Those who are in it for the power, should they read Elmer Gantry, would find a model who is, like many in the era of early psychology and sociology, too easily excused because of circumstance. More than that, however, they might learn how they look to a larger society for which the church has become a mere historical curiosity. Elmer Gantry is by no means the worst type of figure we can imagine in a secular society.