It seems fitting, however, to return to this topic of power now as we look at the Christian glurge movie/book The Shack and observe its main teaching: that independence is to be distrusted and rejected.
The Shack, the latest popular Christian glurge to get made into a movie, pretends to be a serious answer for the age-old question plaguing Christians: why does their god, who is supposed to be omni-everything as well as loving and gracious, allow terrible things to happen in his created world?
The Shack, the latest in a long line of Christian glurge movies and books, lives in that weird middle ground where Christians think they’re being progressive and yet turn out to be as locked in systemic racism as any of their peers.
The Shack is one of a very long line of Christian glurge media that recreates reality for believers, giving them the thrill of “seeing” their beliefs mesh at last with the real world. But for everyone else, stories like this one simply make the religion sound worse.
Last time we met up, we were talking about Christian Mingle: The Movie. It’s a rom-com about a young Christian woman who pretends to be very fervent on the dating site Christian Mingle in order to catfish herself a very fervent Christian man who is not what he seems either. Hilarity ensues. Today, having gotten some rest and plenty of water, I’ll show you how this movie backfired on its makers by showing us a side of Christianity that Christians really should not want non-believers to know exists.
I noticed this movie Christian Mingle: The Movie show up on Netflix the other day and was intrigued–and commenters have mentioned it off and on as particularly cringeworthy. So why not spend a glorious day watching it?
If we really want to help people, then we need to do something that the Christians of God’s Club simply can’t do.
Last time we talked about the Oncoming Bus Gambit–that popular Christian thought experiment–because the movie God’s Club is built around this trope. The story centers around the efforts of protagonist schoolteacher Michael Evans to proselytize kids at his public school, the pushback he receives as a result of his “help,” and how he overcomes this persecution.
The central idea in the Christian movie God’s Club, which we reviewed recently and have been discussing off and on, is a very common talking point believed by right-wing Christians all over America: that they are facing unprecedented levels of persecution in this country, and thus are in great danger of losing their religious liberty–and from there getting imprisoned and even executed for their beliefs. Non-Christians may well feel baffled about why so many Christians cling to this idea as hard as they do–and why they seem to genuinely think that they are in real danger.
I’d be hard-pressed to point to a more glaring illustration of that discrepancy than the disgraceful spectacle of Christians making movies presenting themselves as they really truly believe they are–while remaining completely (and, one increasingly suspects, willfully) oblivious to how others see them.