Enjoy this great article about American Civil Religion and Thanksgiving and have a great day with your family and friends everyone! :)
The Sacramental American Day of Thanks
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Vicaarana: Oh My God. Questioning Religion in the Movies.
You may recall (or perhaps you don't) that I had a good discussion on Bill Maher's Religulous film in my Vicaarana section about Atheism. Well, about a week ago I saw a preview for this movie called "Oh My God" which seemed to be a different attempt to do what Bill Maher was also doing: grapple with a belief in God. Now, I normally like to go for the socio-cultural side of religion because who am I to say whether or not you should believe in God...its not my place. Buuuut all of these movies keep coming out asking that question: What is God? Why do we believe? I'm not going to weigh in on the question but rather address why I think this film Oh My God was more successful than Religulous in achieving the same intended goal: to put the question out there as to why we as human's believe and God and, more importantly in my eyes, why do we practice religion?
I've gone on the oh so popular religious studies rant about how religion is undefinable, so I will not get into it again. Instead I want to focus on the scope of these two films. In the beginning of his film, Maher says that he is not an atheist, but rather the best thing he can do is say that he does not know. Then he continues the film to pick out the craziest seeming Islamo-Judeo-Christian peoples he can find in the US (mostly), a bit of the UK, and Israel / Palestine and badger them to account for their belief in God and their religious practices. He ends this string of interviews with a plea to the world to give up religion (which is definitely crazy, by his count) and belief in God (which is what religion directly is) and to give in to science or we will destroy ourselves. So much for not being an atheist... My problems, besides the definition of religion itself, are many. Namely Maher's lack of consideration of all aspects of religious life and people, his focus on only the Abrahamic sphere of religious life, and of course his kind of hypocrisy for claiming he is not looking to make a case for atheism and yet being incredibly militant at the end of the movie complete with doomsday pictures and music.
I now want to turn to Oh My God! Oh My God was a documentary made by Peter Rodger that is in the process of being released in select theatres in big cities throughout the US (it was just release in NYC this weekend). The project was the filmmaker's attempt to wrestle with his own belief in God by traveling to 23 countries and interviewing countless people. He also enters with a similar intended mindset as Maher, which is one of neither atheism or theism, however, in my humble opinion, Rodger succeeded where Maher failed. Although Rodger's film is not perfect (for example, there is a huge focus on the celebrities over the common people, but as a small filmmaker when you can get a Beatle, a princess, and Wolverine to speak in your movie, I guess you take it), I really do think he created an interesting film. Rodger managed to a) cover a multitude of religions and worldviews from all different countries and b) to leave the answers to his questions about religion and God ambiguous in the end. Where Maher ended with judgement, Rodger ended with more questions and I think that more closely relates to what we are looking at here: there are no answers. There is no definition for religion. And that's ok. Perhaps that's why we study it and why its fascinating. Rodger's manages to capture the full spectrum of religious life and expression: the positive, the negative, and the multiple view points. These are all the areas of Maher's movie I found wholly unsatisfying, and they were found in this movie. Rodger's main question may have been about the ontological existence of God, but he also addressed why we practice religion as a people, how we do it, and what it means in our relations with one another. Sure he had director's OCD, used weird Moby-like music (according to the reviewer from Time Out New York), and seemed to jump around while moving between topics, but overall I do wish this was the movie that was wide released and Religulous was limited release. Overall, I thought that this movie better (not best, of course) addressed this enigma of our socio-cultural lives that is religion for a mainstream audience. Well, and it was just a goshdarn pretty looking movie, and that always helps!
Religion Dispatches Review of Oh My God
PS- If you happen to see this movie, respond back and let me know if you also noticed the strikingly interesting focus on Islam over all the other religions mentioned. I left the movie wondering what that was all about. Addressing Islamophobia?? haha.
I've gone on the oh so popular religious studies rant about how religion is undefinable, so I will not get into it again. Instead I want to focus on the scope of these two films. In the beginning of his film, Maher says that he is not an atheist, but rather the best thing he can do is say that he does not know. Then he continues the film to pick out the craziest seeming Islamo-Judeo-Christian peoples he can find in the US (mostly), a bit of the UK, and Israel / Palestine and badger them to account for their belief in God and their religious practices. He ends this string of interviews with a plea to the world to give up religion (which is definitely crazy, by his count) and belief in God (which is what religion directly is) and to give in to science or we will destroy ourselves. So much for not being an atheist... My problems, besides the definition of religion itself, are many. Namely Maher's lack of consideration of all aspects of religious life and people, his focus on only the Abrahamic sphere of religious life, and of course his kind of hypocrisy for claiming he is not looking to make a case for atheism and yet being incredibly militant at the end of the movie complete with doomsday pictures and music.
I now want to turn to Oh My God! Oh My God was a documentary made by Peter Rodger that is in the process of being released in select theatres in big cities throughout the US (it was just release in NYC this weekend). The project was the filmmaker's attempt to wrestle with his own belief in God by traveling to 23 countries and interviewing countless people. He also enters with a similar intended mindset as Maher, which is one of neither atheism or theism, however, in my humble opinion, Rodger succeeded where Maher failed. Although Rodger's film is not perfect (for example, there is a huge focus on the celebrities over the common people, but as a small filmmaker when you can get a Beatle, a princess, and Wolverine to speak in your movie, I guess you take it), I really do think he created an interesting film. Rodger managed to a) cover a multitude of religions and worldviews from all different countries and b) to leave the answers to his questions about religion and God ambiguous in the end. Where Maher ended with judgement, Rodger ended with more questions and I think that more closely relates to what we are looking at here: there are no answers. There is no definition for religion. And that's ok. Perhaps that's why we study it and why its fascinating. Rodger's manages to capture the full spectrum of religious life and expression: the positive, the negative, and the multiple view points. These are all the areas of Maher's movie I found wholly unsatisfying, and they were found in this movie. Rodger's main question may have been about the ontological existence of God, but he also addressed why we practice religion as a people, how we do it, and what it means in our relations with one another. Sure he had director's OCD, used weird Moby-like music (according to the reviewer from Time Out New York), and seemed to jump around while moving between topics, but overall I do wish this was the movie that was wide released and Religulous was limited release. Overall, I thought that this movie better (not best, of course) addressed this enigma of our socio-cultural lives that is religion for a mainstream audience. Well, and it was just a goshdarn pretty looking movie, and that always helps!
Religion Dispatches Review of Oh My God
PS- If you happen to see this movie, respond back and let me know if you also noticed the strikingly interesting focus on Islam over all the other religions mentioned. I left the movie wondering what that was all about. Addressing Islamophobia?? haha.
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