To be printed in the Wesleyan Theological Journal 41.2 (2006): 242-51.  This rough draft is not for citation.

Looking for a Wesleyan Needle in a Cinematic Hay Stack:

Seeking a Wesleyan Doctrine of Sanctification in Contemporary Cinema

Thomas E. Phillips

            The medium of film has long been recognized as an excellent means of engaging in cultural critique.  The church, as a leading institution of Western culture, has never been immune to such cinematic critique.  Cinematic critique of the church reached previously unparalleled heights in 1960 when Stanley Kramer’s legal drama, Inherit the Wind, and Richard Brooks’s satire, Elmer Gantry, both scoured the church’s bigotry, hypocrisy and anti-intellectualism.  Both films garnered well-deserved Oscars for their achievements. 

            Of course, such critiques are not necessarily detrimental (or even hostile) to the church.  In fact, they often have the potential to serve as a prophetic voice to a complacent church.  Such cinematic voices are, however, often irreconcilable with a Wesleyan view of the church and soteriology, a view which is consistent both with Wesley’s insistence that post-conversion “repentance and faith are full as necessary, in order to our continuance and growth in grace, as the former faith and repentance were, in order to our entering into the kingdom of God”[1] and with his equally strong insistence that love “is essential to the child of God.”[2]

            In my understanding of Wesleyan soteriology, repentance—including particularly post-conversion repentance—opens one’s life to the possibility of human moral transformation.  Genuine repentance, a human act of response to the divine initiatives of grace, both frees the believer from the domination of sin and frees the believer to love God and neighbor—freely, sincerely and consistently.  As I understand the Wesleyan/holiness message, any critique of the church which does not hold high the possibility of genuine moral renewal as a result of repentance is inadequate.  Such critiques are inadequately Wesleyan.

             After several years of crass and swallow cinematic critiques of the church (e.g., Dogma, Stigmata), we are currently experiencing a wealth of sophisticated cinematic critiques of the church.  Over the last five years (1999-2004), several films have appeared which rival the 1960 masterpieces.   In this paper, I will examine three films which are representative of contemporary cinematic critiques of the church.  All three films are well-crafted and stingingly powerful in their critiques of the church—and, to be candid, I enjoy a healthy dose of theologically responsible self-criticism as much as anyone.  However, I still find the first two films wanting—not because they critique the church, but because they do so from a distinctly non-Wesleyan point of view. 

            As I examine the first two films, I will explain how the criticisms of the church in the very popular Saved! and Mystic River assume Lutheran and Reformed doctrines of sanctification respectively.  In contrast to these commercially successful films, the little known Big Kahuna offers a rare Wesleyan critique of the church. 

Saved!: A Lutheran Comedy

            Just after Mel Gibson’s sadistic Passion of the Christ (2004) wowed guilt-ridden Evangelical audiences en masse, Brian Dannelly’s Saved! (2004) offered a very different kind of guilty pleasure, a satirical look at the dysfunctional American Eagle Christian high school.  The plot revolves around the experiences of Mary (Jena Malone) and her failed attempt to “cure” her gay boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust).  With all the mixed motives of early adolescence, Mary sneaks into her beau’s bedroom and engages him in the delights of her feminine wiles.  To her horror, not only does this midafternoon tryst not cure Dean of his homosexual impulses, it leaves Mary with morning sickness.  To make matters worse, Dean’s parents discover some of his homoerotic pornography and send him to “Mercy House” where Christian counselors have the supposed ability to cure people with Dean’s “spiritually toxic affliction.”

            As Mary’s ill-fated scheme unravels and she progresses through the increasingly obvious signs of pregnancy, knowledge of her shame becomes the plot device which separates the sheep from the goats.  What unfolds is a sometimes hilarious critique of the church’s failures and foibles.  Some of the one liners are delightful—in a hilarious and impious sort of way. 

            Some of the scenes reflect the kind of teen camp spirituality all too often found at Christian high schools (and colleges).  For example, when two of the students, Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and Cassandra (Eva Amurri) observe Mary entering the offices of Planned Parenthood, Cassandra snickers and insists the “good Christian girls” only visit Planned Parenthood for “one reason.”  Roland immediately looks alarmed and asks if Cassandra really thinks that Mary is going “to plan a pipe bomb.”  In another unforgettable sequence, Mary learns that any number of ailments, including cancer, could cause the present interruption of her monthly cycle; the next scene cuts to Mary on her way home from the drug store with a pregnancy kit in tow.  She is desperately praying, “Please let it be cancer!  Please let it be cancer! Please let it be cancer!”  And who could help but laugh when Mary’s mother finally wins “Christian Interior Decorator of the Year?”  Such moments of surreal humor abound; their cumulative effect is to provide the viewer of the satirical sensation of only slightly exaggerated reality.

            Although I could highlight many other prompts for out loud laughter, my concern is more overtly theological than strictly cinematic.  As a Wesleyan reared in the grand holiness tradition which spelled cinema with an “s” (SINema),[3] it would be easy to view this film as a hedonist attack upon righteousness.  And, admittedly, the film sometimes does go over the top and even I was a bit dismayed that none of the film’s truly benevolent characters identified with the church and its message.  My disappointment may have some roots in my inherited prudishness (perhaps we “holiness” folk are still a full generation away from truly guilt-free enjoyment of the SINema), but I suspect that my uneasiness has a deeper, more theological, origin. 

            To be clear, I do not believe that the film’s often biting critique of the church is anti-Christian—as some conservative reviewers have supposed.   I do, however, believe that the film’s soteriology is non-Wesleyan; it is Lutheran.  The film does not make me uncomfortable as a Christian; it makes me uncomfortable as a Wesleyan.

            As Mary’s life unravels in the wake of her teen pregnancy, only the film’s explicitly non-Christian characters offer her any help: Cassandra, a Jewish girl who exhibits hostility toward the shallow Christian spirituality around her, and Roland, who candidly admits “I’m not a Christian.”  For both Cassandra and Roland, all of their self-designations are non-Christian, yet all of their actions are compassionate—that is, Christian.  These two non-Christian characters embody the classic Lutheran formula “sinner and saint simultaneously.”  Let me explain.

            Cassandra is portrayed as the queen of vice.  From her first scene, she is a portrayed as a cigarette-sucking, sexually seductive and foul-mouthed unbeliever.  She explicitly identifies herself as “a sinner.”  After pretending to give her life to Jesus, she chides her would-be spiritual mentor “I’ve decided to devote my life to Satan instead [of Jesus].”  For his part, Roland is Cassandra’s cigarette-smoking sex partner.  Appropriately enough, they establish their initial relationship while skipping chapel.

            In contrast to this pair of self-designated “sinners” stand Hillary Faye (Mandy Moore) and Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan).  Pastor Skip admonishes the students with pep-session style homilies, while ignoring his own emotional (if not physical) unfaithfulness to his wife.  In one scene, Pastor Skip exhorts the students with powerful messages like: “Give it up; the Lord Jesus is in the house!  Let’s get our Christ on!...The ultimate CEO…the biggest celebrity of them all…who’s down with G-O-D?  Jesus rules!  Jesus rules!  Jesus rules!  Jesus rules….”  In the next scene, he is making excuses to meet with attractive young divorcees, who receive his supposedly innocent caresses and kisses on a regular basis. 

            Although Pastor Skip is entertaining—he even performs a flip at the beginning of one sermon, Hillary Faye is the saintly antagonist to the sinful Cassandra.   Hillary Faye interprets Cassandra’s rebellion as a “cry for help” and takes it upon herself to get Cassandra “saved.”  In fact, all of Hillary’s actions, from leading prayer meetings to sculpting a bigger than life Jesus, model righteousness.  In reflecting upon her life, without the slightest fear of rebuke, Hillary Faye insists: “the Christian thing, I’ve been doing the Christian thing my entire life.”  By standards of American Eagle Christian high school, Hillary Faye could pray for best senior year ever and confidently remind God that “I so deserve it.”  On closer examination, however, Hillary Faye’s sainthood is problematized.  For example, she may proclaim, “I am filled with Christ’s love,” but such claims are rendered absurd by the fact that even as she utters the words, she is flinging her Bible at the salvation-resistant Mary.

            In juxtaposition to Hillary Faye stands Cassandra who says all the wrong things, but does all the right things.  Cassandra, who mockingly described herself as a “stripper,” “Satanist,” and “sinner” in turn, is the first person to come to Mary’s aid during her pregnancy, is the first person in the movie to express sorrow (pointedly telling her boyfriend, Roland, “I’m really sorry”), and is the first person to befriend the desperate Hillary Faye in the final scene after Hillary’s former admirers have abandoned her as “a big fake.”  Roland, although a minor character who resides in Cassandra’s shadow, participates in most of Cassandra’s acts of kindness.  Cassandra and Roland, the self-described sinners, become simultaneously the real saints.

            Still, Hillary Faye finds a true salvation of her own.  In the final sequence, her brother Roland proves that Hillary Faye has vandalized the school and framed Cassandra for the crime.  When confronted with undeniable evidence of her guilt, Hillary Faye attempts to flee in her van only to crash into the bigger-than-life cardboard Jesus that she has previously constructed on the school’s front lawn.  The crash knocks off Jesus’ head, which providentially lands on the windshield of her vehicle, leaving her face to face with Jesus.  With Jesus staring through the windshield at her, Hillary Faye experiences a spiritual awakening.  Coming to see her true condition, she bursts out, “I crashed my van into Jesus.  I have a pimple the size of Jupiter.  I am not OK….I’m so sorry…” 

            In the world of Saved!, soteriology begins and ends with the simple recognition that “I am not OK.”  The saint who emerges from this confession also remains—in typical Lutheran fashion—a sinner.  This movie criticizes the church’s hypocrisy, but replaces that hypocrisy with no genuine righteousness.  Thus Mary’s final words to Pastor Skip summarize the film’s Lutheran soteriology.  Mary insists: “It’s just all too much to live up to.  No one fits in 100% of the time..  not even you.”   One admits one’s sin and failure and then just lives in that sin and failure—not very Wesleyan.

            As a Wesleyan, I recognize that the Christian life must always be characterized by genuine repentance, but I also believe that God’s grace is able to transform lives and to produce hearts that can—by the grace of God—“live up to” the claims of the gospel.  As a Wesleyan, I desire a greater optimism of grace and more positive doctrine of sanctification than I find in Saved!.

Mystic River: A Calvinist Drama

            Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winning Mystic River (2003) offers another powerful critique of the church as the central characters struggle to live a good life in spite of the lasting wounds inflicted upon them by the church during their youth.  The three main characters, Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins) and Sean (Kevin Bacon), are boyhood friends in the Catholic neighborhoods of south Boston.  While playing in the street, Dave is spirited away in a car by two men claiming to be police officers.  The men wear rings and necklaces emboldened with a cross; these abductors are symbols of the church—and remember that this movie is set in Boston where church-related sex abuse scandals were once common.

            The film, therefore, develops a powerful subplot around how the church has scarred these three young men for life.  In spite of the group’s scars, the central character, Sean, is portrayed as a guy who wants to share in the church’s communion and to do what is right.  For example, in the key scene just before he learns that his 19 year old daughter has been murdered, Sean is busy preparing for his youngest daughter’s first communion.  He becomes aware of his oldest daughter’s murder as he is leaving the church.  In understandable outrage, Sean proceeds with an investigation into his daughter’s death, finding the evidence to increasingly point toward his childhood buddy, Dave. 

            Sean learns Dave had been in the same bar with his murdered daughter on the night of the murder—and even more ominous, Dave had returned home that night covered in blood.  Upon reflection, even Dave’s wife comes to disbelieve her husband’s cover story about an attempted mugging.  In spite of this evidence—and the unstated assumption that Dave’s childhood molestation has turned him into a predator, Sean demonstrates amazing restrain through his willingness to grant Dave even the smallest benefit of the doubt.  Sean refuses to assume Dave’s guilt even after Dave’s wife has warned Sean of Dave’s probable guilt. 

            Finally, however, Sean takes Dave to the Charles River and coerces a confession out of the mentally unstable Dave.  In the wake of Dave’s confession, Sean thrust a knife into Dave’s belly and dispatches him with bullet to the head.  The body is dumped in the river.  Even as this violence unfolds, the audience learns that Sean had murdered another man years earlier.  However, Sean seems to recognize the horror of his previous sin.  Over the decades which have passed since his crime, Sean has anonymously provided financial support for the murdered man’s family. 

            As a repeated tragedy, shortly after murdering Dave, Sean learns that Dave was not guilty of his daughter’s murder.  In fact, Dave had attacked a child molester on the night in question, thus accounting for his bloodied appearance.  Sean, the tragic hero, must bear the guilty of yet another senseless murder.

            The key scene for understanding the doctrine of sanctification in this movie appears after Sean has learned of Dave’s innocence.  Sean’s wife walks into his bedroom where his back is literally covered by a large tattoo of the cross.  In hushed and loving tones, she then begins assuring Sean of his basic goodness—in spite of his tearful admission: “I killed Dave.”  As she caresses his muscular frame, Sean’s wife explained that she told his remaining daughters that their daddy “could never be wrong, no matter what their daddy had to do.”  She whispers, “Their daddy is a king and a king knows what to do and does it.”

            As a Wesleyan, I have no problem acknowledging that the church sometime scars us and even forces us to engage in evils that God finds morally reprehensible.  As a Wesleyan, I don’t mind the critique of the church in Mystic River, but I remain uncomfortable with the righteousness imputed to Sean in the wake of Dave’s murder.  Sean can—and did!—do wrong.  He is not a “king;” he is a killer.  As a Wesleyan, I am dissatisfied with any righteousness which is merely imputed in spite of all evidence to the contrary.  I want genuine righteousness, created and sustained by the transforming grace of God through Christ.

The Big Kahuna: A Wesleyan Chatroom

            A few months ago, I was asked to list my five favorite films for a university publication.  At the top of the list stood John Swanbeck’s barely noticed The Big Kahuna (1999).   This film stands out from the typical Hollywood fare for several reasons.  First, it has no violence, nudity, sex or slow motion explosions.  Second, it focuses upon only three characters: Phil Cooper (Danny Devito), Bob Walker (Peter Facinelli), and Larry Mann (Kevin Spacey)—and their largely cerebral conversations in a cheesy hotel room.  The film is almost devoid of action.  In these ways, this film is decidedly unHollywood.  In another significant way, however, the film is equally unHollywood.  The film offers a Wesleyan critique of the church and a Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification.  Let me explain.

            Throughout the film Bob is the self-identified, but entirely unreflective, Christian.  He promotes his Baptist faith and seeks to live up to its ideals through zealous evangelism.  Bob plausibly claims that he has never smoked a cigarette or touched hard liquor in his life (although he “drinks a beer every now and then”).  Consistent with his sincere faith, Bob sits caressing a Bible while talking to Larry about Phil’s divorce.  (Bob has earlier reminded Phil that his wife was given to him for a “helpmate.”)   In keeping with Bob’s piety, when Larry teases Bob about going into a strip club, Bob insists he has “never even been near a place like that.”  Larry eventually even teases Bob that he should become a saint because he “wouldn’t think about lusting after a woman.” 

            At first glance, Bob’s colleagues, his partners in the business of selling industrial lubricants, are less noble.  When Phil is introduced, he is lying on the couch “expanding his mind” with a copy of Penthouse magazine and chain smoking.  (Bob honestly notes, “I don’t read magazines like that.”)   For his part, Larry’s first actions are to drop a wad of slobbery gum in his competitor’s shrimp cocktail and then to fill the air with profanity over the inadequacy of the suite which Phil has secured.  On the surface, these guys are not the exemplars of moral rectitude that Bob is.

            It is Bob’s character which introduces what is the movie’s most important theme for our purposes.  In conversation with Phil, Bob muses: “I wonder how a person attains character.  You know, whether it’s something that you’re born with and it kind of reveals itself over time or whether you have to go through certain things.”  After introducing this weighty theme, however, the film shifts focus toward its primary plot device—this trio’s need to meet the “Big Kahuna,” the president of a major company whose business is essential to their own financial well-being.  Their plan is simple.  They will host a cocktail party and Bob will tend bar while Larry and Phil search the crowd for the “Big Kahuna.”  After they identify their target, the two will get him to commit to buying their lubricants and all will be well.

            Their plan initially appears to fail when the entire evening has passed without either Larry or Phil ever identifying their intended target.  As they commiserate, however, Bob is amazed to discover that the “Big Kahuna” is Dick Fuller, the very man with whom Bob has spent much of the evening talking “about religion.”  Bob, ever the evangelist, reminds Larry and Phil that “it’s important to let people know what you believe.”  As Larry and Phil are mourning the loss of their big account, Bob informs them that Mr. Fuller invited him to another party just down the street.  Suddenly, all their prospects again rise.  After a brief coaching session, Larry and Phil send Bob to meet Fuller and to set up a business meeting for the next morning.

            While Bob is gone, Larry and Phil begin theologizing.  Phil notes: “I’ve been thinking about God lately.”  After some typically sarcastic remarks from Larry (“What you too?”), Phil relates his childhood dream about God:

            I dreamed that I found him hiding in a closet in the middle of a burnt-out city.     This city was destroyed by a fire or some kind of explosion and there in the             middle of it was a coat closet standing there all by itself and I walked up to the        closet and opened the door and inside was God, hiding. I remember that he had a          big lion head, but I knew it wasn’t a lion.  It was God and he was afraid. And I       reached out my hand to lead him out of the closet and I said, “Don’t be afraid,          God. I’m on your side.”  We stood there, the two of us, holding hands, looking out over the destruction.

            After their moments of theological reflection, Larry and Phil are again joined by Bob, who has met and talked with the “Big Kahuna,” Dick Fuller.  Yet, much to their chagrin, Phil and Larry learn that Bob didn’t talk to Fuller about industrial lubricants, he talked “about Christ.”  Bob insists: “The nature of the conversation steered itself away from that [lubricants].”  After all, according to Bob, “It’s very important to me that people hear about Jesus.”  Larry is outraged!  He and Bob engage in a shouting match and eventually a brief brawl.

            As Phil pulls the combatants apart, Larry opines: “Forgive me, Bob” and leaves the room.  Phil then preaches a holiness sermon to Bob:

            There’s something I want to say to you and I want you to listen very closely,      because it’s very important…somewhere down deep inside of you is something   that strives to be honest.  The question that you have to ask yourself is “has it           touched the whole of my life?”… That means that you preaching Jesus is no       different than Larry or anybody else preaching lubricants.  It doesn’t matter             whether you’re selling Jesus, or Buddha, or civil rights, or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn’t make you a human being.  It makes        you a marketing rep….As soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer         it, it’s not a conversation.  It’s a pitch…the question is “do you have any character at all?”  If you want my honest opinion, Bob, you do not for the simple reason    that you don’t regret anything yet.

            Upon hearing these words, Bob is initially defensive.  He protests: “You’re saying I won’t have any character unless I do something that I regret.”  Phil quietly responds: “No, Bob, I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret.”  Bob leaves the room and the phone rings.  Phil answers and the viewer hears one side of a conversation: “Hello…no, you just missed him.  What’s that? I love you, too.”

            Finally, a Wesleyan critique of the church, a critique that chastises the church for replacing genuine love with manipulation, for failing to participate in the broken heartedness of God, and for reducing the gospel to a mere “pitch.”  Finally, in this extraordinary film, we find a Wesleyan understanding of sanctification, an understanding in which genuine repentance (regret) brings genuine moral transformation (love).  Rather than having confession as an end unto itself (as in the Lutheran Saved!) or confession as a prelude to the fiction of imputed righteousness (as in the Reformed Mystic River), The Big Kahuna gives us a theology in which confession is followed by genuine moral transformation and a life of love.

            It may be rare to find a film with a Wesleyan theological orientation, but in The Big Kahuna we have found that rare Wesleyan needle in the cinematic haystack.