Thanks for waiting. It’s been quite the c couple of weeks but it’s good to be back. Here’s an essay on art for the Christians who read my work.
If that’s not you, maybe you’ll be surprised by the fact that we know the stuff we make is not all that great. We know you make fun of it, or worse, ignore it.
I think it’s high time we got honest…
Jesus Revolution is not a great film. It may not even be a good film.
Despite that fact, it is the ninth highest grossing film of 2023. It was released after several other movies in the top ten, produced by a niche and faith-based production company, and the plot is a microcosm of certain historical, religious and psychedelic movements, as well as the interaction of Christianity on the larger culture. The movie has been wildly successful, and one could opine about the prospective reasons for that. I could write an essay on the hypothetical silent majority that turns out for religious films. I could write another essay on how the culture is putting out morally bankrupt material for the sole purpose of corrupting the youth. Or I could talk about Covid, and the fact that in the last year families have been dying for reasons to get out of the house together while still maintaining the value system implemented at home.
All of these reasons are valid, and I think the reason for Jesus Revolution’s success is a combination of these factors and more.
I’m more interested in the fact that even though Jesus Revolution is not a great movie, it is, perhaps, emblematic of a trend of more palatable faith-based content.
It is no secret that Christians have given up cultural influence in recent decades. A lot of practicing Christians attribute this loss of ground to the wily maneuvers of elite Hollywood conglomerates pushing out anything redeemable for films, shows and music that promotes debauchery. This may be a factor, but I don’t think it’s the only one, nor the most prescient.
Christians (I count myself among them), have a bad habit of blaming culture for the lack of influence they have on that culture. They often, in the classic petulance of the ultra-religious, demand a seat at the table without actually producing anything of value for the meal.
This has not always been the case. Christianity, and those influenced by its symbols and simulacra, has been responsible for some of the great works of art throughout history. The Sistine Chapel, the recently maligned statue of David, Shakespeare’s catalog, many Victorian novels, several classic symphonies, much of modern American literature up to and including Harry Potter, and countless films based on Christological archetypes, to name only a few. These archetypes are the roots of the hero’s journey, and even the pre-Christian stories find their best interpretation when filtered through robust theology.
But the Christian art of today is largely devoid of the meaning and gravitas of its linear forbears. One need only listen to the lineup of songs played on Christian radio to see how fare music has fallen. The great and honest poetry that was once part of Christianity’s influence has given way to a robust series of trite and overused metaphors. The oft-mocked stereotype that modern Christian music uses only four chords to derive melody is not far off. God’s love is an ocean, and we are always children or friends. And these things are true, of God and his love. And of us.
But how many times can we sing these strange songs that do not show any real passion, or worse, any real artistry. (My personal favorite bad song lyric is actually a two-way tie between, “I come alive, a feel alive, I am alive, on God’s great dance floor,” and “feel a breeze cover me called Jehovah, and Daddy I’m on my way.”)
Our movies have become borderline unwatchable.
The God’s Not Dead franchise should ring bells to the astute observer of Christian subculture. These films feature students who go to battle against their atheist professor, seeking to prove God’s existence. Not only do they accomplish the goal of beating their professor in the argument, after the professor gives up weeks of valuable class time to have an ongoing debate with a freshman, but then the professor is struck by a car and comes to faith in Christ in his dying breath. The viewer then learns that the professor’s atheism is dependent upon his mother’s suffering, not on the rationality he hides behind.
I do not have time to mention Bible Man, the counterpart to those sinful superhero movies. Or the t-shirts bordering on copyright infringement.
My problem with these entries is not that they are unabashedly Christian, even evangelical.
My problem is that they are deeply, laughably, dishonest.
Jesus Revolution makes an attempt at honesty, though it ultimately falls short. I view this as a small step forward, a necsssry one.
The film details true story of the revival that coincided with the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s, and the way in which that culture collided with genuine Christian evangelism and vulnerability. The film’s three central characters are Lonnie Frisbee, Chuck Smith, and Greg Laurie. Three men from three different schools of thought, who spearheaded a giant movement of Christian influence.
Chuck Smith pastored a small, conservative church in California, which was more like a museum for the dead and dying. He labored there, doing his best to build up a brutally stagnant congregation.
Lonnie Frisbee was a hippie with ties to the Haight-Ashbury school of the psychedelic movement, with a radically new set of ideas about the way the Church should reach people like him. Among these radical ideas was a principle of actually letting them come into the church, bare feet and tattered clothes and all. He relied on what evangelicals call contextualization; playing the music, wearing the clothes, using the metaphors, of those you are trying to reach.
Greg Laurie, currently a pastor in California, was reached in this movement, emerging from a drug-fueled haze to a genuine faith.
This part of the film’s message is true and relevant; that the promises of psychedelics, the expansion of consciousness, and of the hippie movement, real community, unconditional love and freedom from material possessions and past sins, are fulfilled in genuine faith.
The psychedelic movement is not over. There is no shortage of influencers claiming that the promises remain secure. The film argues that these promises, while not totally devoid of impact, are completed in faith. Christ, the true and better DMT, the ultimate expander of consciousness.
And the film is even somewhat honest about the men who spearheaded the revival. Greg Laurie is a recovered addict and admittedly flawed, having wrestled with the trauma of his home life toward influential pastoral ministry.
Chuck Smith also admitted his own rigidity at accepting the hippies he would come to know and love. The sin of rejecting God’s own coming to be the driving force for his participation in revival.
Frisbee’s arrogance, his view of himself as essential to the movement, even a prophet. The disagreement between the two elder statesman of the revival on both humility and theology, leading to their separation.
This should be viewed as an asset to Christian storytelling. Depicting Christians as human, as real images of a saint and sinner dichotomy, is honest, and God-honoring. Depicting Christians as perfect, never relating to one another in the complexities of life, as freshman college students capable of arguing a tenured philosophy professor out of long-held atheism after just three short weeks before riding off to a Newsboys concert, does not drive people to faith or to art.
This is what makes Jesus Revolution different. It depicts the key characters as real people with flaws and quirks, Bible Man be damned. For this, the film deserves applause.
But it is not entirely honest, and it does not try to be. Despite this half-measure, which I believe to be a good step, it does not tell the whole story. It does not tell of Lonnie Frisbee’s lifelong struggle to reconcile his secret homosexual lifestyle with his faith, his starting and then being subsequently removed from charismatic denominations based in faith-healing, his death from AIDS.
It does not tell of Chuck Smith’s congregation gathered together on New Year’s Eve in 1981, waiting for the world to end based on Chuck Smith’s declaration that he had discovered the final day and hour of Christ’s return. Of the church split that followed his incorrect notion.
It gives you the Christianized version of the story, even of the sins of the two men. It does not, cannot, give a complete accounting.
You dear reader, may object. You want clean entertainment, a film for you and yours. You want away from all the excesses of Hollywood, and a story with a happy ending, a wholesome and truly good outcome.
I hear you. To be clear, I am not writing about children’s entertainment. Our children should be protected from such stories. But for how long? Maybe the reason why it is so hard to fathom a Christian freshman beating a professor is because that freshman was probably shielded from the realities of the human experiment, and therefore rendered inept at meeting the world on its terms.
Can we truly know what it means for King David to be called a man after God’s own heart, if we do not know of his adulterous affair and possible rape of Bathsheba? Of his murder by proxy of her husband following her illegitimate pregnancy? Can we see how radical it is that Peter becomes the rock of God’s church without knowing he denied Christ three times on the very night he should have stayed with him?
If we never confront the human notions of betrayal and violence and injustice, we do not ever really understand how radical it is that God uses people. And we confront these themes in art before we imitate the confrontation in our lives.
And what is all this talk amongst Christians about needing wholesome stories? Are the biblical stories of tragedy not enough? Has every part of your life been without loss and messiness?
What of Jael’s murder of a king via tent spike? Of Samuel’s dismemberment of his enemies long before Christ preached to pray for them? Of them who died by fire or earthquake? Of Saul’s insanity despite being chosen by the prophet? Of Israel’s constant rebellion? Of the concubine who is raped to death outside of a home where her lover cowers, her body then dismembered and mailed out as a testament to the sin of Israel? (I dream of writing an HBO series on the Old Testament, because that’s the only place you could actually be honest about the violence, the humanity, of it.)
But the New Testament will not be outdone. What of the men who rejected Jesus despite their calling, for money or fame or power? Of Judas, who hangs himself after his betrayal, despite having spent years with Jesus? Of the rulers who violently tortured and brutalized Christ? Of how the Lord was naked when he died, to humiliate him, rather than covered in cloth?
But Christian art is taking a step toward radical honesty. I admit I cried when I watched The Chosen, a series about Jesus and his disciples, also featuring Jonathan Roumie, when the writers extrapolated on the famous scene of Jesus meeting a woman at a well. Beyond the biblical text, the writers depict Jesus telling the woman about the nature of her relationships with her five husbands, of the regret and pain she experiences. It was beautiful, and true, in some real sense that often happens in fiction. A great piece of artwork.
I remember hearing the song “So Will I” for the first time and thinking how amazing it is to hear theology displayed in such beautiful poetry. I remember the song became unavoidable to the point of trivialization, before becoming the subject of controversy among Christians surrounding the use of the word “evolving.” I remember wondering at its dismissal.
Even those who do not count themselves as religious have begun to recognize the value in genuine honesty surrounding faith. The Scorsese contribution, “Silence,” about Jesuit missionaries who are forced to confront apostasy in the face of the torture of others. Complex, true to the doctrine, honest.
The truth is that if a Christian had tried to make “Silence” it would have been controversial. We have given away the rights to our own stories, and we let those who do not like us, much less understand us, tell them instead.
I am not at all advocating that Christians begin to put graphic sex or cursing or violence in their artwork. Only reminding those that do make art that such things exist, and God, while calling us to holiness, is not surprised by such facets of the human experience.
Christian writer and commentator Rod Dreher, in his book The Benedict Option, argues that Christians should form their own communities and sequester themselves away from the predations of culture, to protect ourselves and our children.
If our goal is lifelong protection, then I agree. Leave the world outside, and come in from the cold make art that neither offends nor moves, and feel good in the palm of the hand of God.
But if our goal is to make impact, to reach others, to gain some ground back from the culture, then we must make art that is true as our God is true. Just as the disciples had to leave the upper room, so too do we have to leave our prison cell of what we think the world should be like.
If we actually hope to make the world more like the image in our head, then we have to get honest about what it looks like now.
Broken. Painful. Unfulfilling.
Perhaps our image of ourselves as good, as holders of the key morality, should be sacrificed to a God who is big enough to wade through the realities of our culture and speak through our honest depictions of it. In honesty, we could make great art again, and reclaim the place we once had in the pantheon of cultural influence.
Jesus Revolution is honest about the bankruptcy of life built on drugs and free love, and not so honest about the men who revealed that bankruptcy.
It’s not a great movie, but it’s a step in the right direction.
great article, thanks for writing.
as a Christian artist myself, I share many of your complaints. in my opinion, the problem with Christian art and entertainment these days is that the entire process seems to be an imitation of secular culture instead of the other way around.
for well over a thousand years, Christianity produced most of the greatest art in the western canon. there was no dichotomy between sacred and secular art. it was all sacred.
it was the modern world that created the secular art that was an imitation and abstraction of the sacred.
now Christians have put the cart before the horse.
we need to be courageous enough to make real art with all the pain and rough edges exposed.
you mentioned a few good examples (Silence, the Passion of the Christ etc), but those are too rare.
The Chosen is a hopeful sign as well...