Journal 10

Movies: Saved!

Week 4/1/07-4/7/07



Journal 10,

As a young Christian (having been one for a few years), I have had my fair share of odd Christian experiences. By invitation of my second girlfriend, I attended an Alpha and Omega retreat. I was presented with such bizarre events as every single youth (300+ in attendance) speaking/yelling out in tongues, and then the congregation trying to teach/force me to speak in tongues. This was all followed by a steroid engrossed individual who proceeded to break baseball bats, smash concrete blocks, rip phonebooks in half, and blow a whoopee cushion until it’s explosion. Mind you, this was all done in a church that had a sign outside that said “Respect the House of the Lord”. It didn’t end there. After the display of ‘divine’ strength (they’re called the Power Team), the youth began to run, kick, and scream their way in circles around the pews, tossing newspaper and whoopee cousin matter everywhere. The entire time, I’m dodging their attempts at forcing me to speak in tongues, and trying my hardest to meditate and pray to God. To end the retreat the youth pastor piled up 12 concrete bricks with different sins written on them, and to the cheer of the crowd, leaped off stage and broke them all with one hand-slash. The crowd, once again, roared and began running around, and would occasionally fall in large numbers to the floor at the touch of the pastor and his ‘Holy Spirit’. In short, I was rather scared, I mean who wouldn’t be? I had been a Christian no more than 2 months, and my first experience of worship and a retreat was this circus. In no ways do I mean to insult their believes and ways of worship, but were they the best means of me understanding Christianity?

On the bus ride back, the youth pastors asked us to leave comments or questions on pieces of paper, and then send them up to the front for the pastors to read and answer. I put some of those tough philosophical and theological questions (my faith and persona have always been inquisitive). Everything the other youths provided were general compliments about their experience. When my questions came to stage, the youth pastor was puzzled. The man obviously wasn’t seminary educated (not that I believe you have to be to serve God in his ministries), but my questions were merely unanswered and skipped through. It was on the bus ride back that I knew this church wasn’t me.

You’re probably wondering what this experience has to do with the movie Saved. The point I’m trying to make is that I cannot make a generalization about Christianity from this experience. Just because this particular church was a bit bizarre in their practices, doesn’t mean I can judge all sects of Christianity as bizarre. Further, I cannot even judge the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement merely by my retreat experience, for it would be an unfair and ignorant judgment. In this same way, we cannot judge Christianity merely by the critic’ on fundamentalism, as found in Saved.



I remember once going over to my good friend Caro’s house; who happened to be one of those Indy-Atheist girls. Her and three of her friends had constantly tried to discuss their atheism with me, and I would exchange my theist beliefs. As they continued to argue my Christian faith, they thought it would be an eye opening experience to sit me down and watch Saved (they had already tried showing me some anti-Christian documentaries). I sat down with them, and laughed throughout the entire movie. Did it change my opinion on my own faith? Of course not! Obviously this film does not represent the Christian faith, nor do I believe it represents every Fundamentalist.

Another general stereotype is that Fundamentalist are stupid, ignorant Christians. I personally don’t agree with everything a ‘Fundy’ believes in, but I can recognize that some of them are pure-hearted and intelligent. With this in mind, I cannot honestly allow Saved! To represent all of Christianity and all of the Fundamentalist movement. I believe it to be an unfair assessment.

The way people use fundamentalist as an insult or blanket-term to refer to Christians shows how unfairly the term is used. Me and all my Christian friends have been called Fundamentalist, and we range in faiths from Catholic, to Calvinist, to Baptist, to Methodist, etc.

With all this said, I believe in order to watch Saved!, and truly understand it’s critic on the Fundamentalist movement in America, we must remove these presumptions. Sadly I know some in the class went into the film with such a presumption, and were merely perceiving the film in a way to feed their presuppositions.

With all this pushed aside, and entering the film as an un-biased critic, we can began to evaluate it’s message. To summarize this message as simply as possible, I believe it’s not to stride into self-beneficial legalism, but to stick to the true message of Christ’ teaching. The film tries to expose a commercialized, politicized, and rather ‘unloving’ interpretation of the Christian faith.

The problem with the Christian’s in the film is that they extract biblical morals and rules that fit their perspectives and apply them to their society. They stray from that message of grace and love, and instead favor a message that’s in line with their southern conservative social values and society-functions. In their quest to sew biblical morality into the fabric of their society and political opinion, they’re left in a legalistic position that reminds me heavily of certain Teachers of the Law (as found in the New Testament). It’s interesting, because sometimes mainstream Christians tend to overlook our beloved 2nd Commandment of loving our neighbors, and instead adopt ourselves as morality inspectors.



Now I’m not saying Christians shouldn’t be moral (on the contrary, they should be morally in line), but to overlook that message of love is to fall into the same trap as the legalistic teachers of the law. To supplement law for love is the un-Christian thing to do.

Morality is something that cannot be imposed, but rather something that’s an individual communication through conviction and understanding with God. You cannot love someone by imposing your morality upon them, and that’s the mistake the Christians make in the film.

The antagonist in this film is a perfect example of this. Throughout the film, she’s seeking a level of moral purity, yet her search is extremely selfish. On her way up to purity, she's trampling over others, which is overtly not Christ-like. Christ taught humility and love (remember the feet washing?), and Macfey instead seeks selfish moral purification. Where she needs to humble herself, she puffs up her chest in Christian pride.

To be a Christian merely isn’t a walk. It’s an internal change. It’s the elevated position of everyone above yourself. Christ taught us that the least among us will be the first, and in this he was teaching us to humble ourselves. In the quest for self-righteousness’ and holiness, we forget that humbling ourselves before others and loving them completely is what truly makes us righteous and humbled.



Although I clearly don’t agree with the moral actions of the Jewish female, and the boy in the wheelchair, it’s interesting to notice their love and humbling before Mary when they find out she’s pregnant. The two, ironically, display this true love as they serve and take care of Mary (although I wouldn’t agree with the whole credit-card stealing thing).

Their love for her is obviously honest. In it’s irony, the most ‘immoral’ characters of the film end up displaying that most righteous and holy practices Christ taught us: Love. These two characters are containing that key quality that the other character’s miss. In the societies quest for ‘Christian Nation’, they’ve lost sight of this love. The love of acceptance is extremely powerful. Christ taught this over and over again (Parable of the good Samaritan, Parable of the Lost Son).

It’s this love, this acceptance, and this humbling that make the pinnacle of Christ message. It’s interesting to note, that even through the societies quest at cleansing itself, it completely misses the mark. To add to it, the ‘least among’ them, are the ones who display Christs message.

For this reason, I don’t say it’s a general critic on Christianity, but on those very Christians who forget about the message of acceptance. We’ll discuss this more on ReligionAndFilm.com, as well how it's related to the films ‘The Last Year’ and ‘Black Robe’.

-Leonard O