Christian Movies Touch Virgin Territory
It actually released July 18.
Are more Christian movies at least moving away from what critics would call the usual altar-call-driven “inspirational” fare?
Last night I read a review of the new film Persecuted, which for some reason I assumed was a documentary (wrap that in scare quotes if you wish) based on the 2003 nonfiction book by David Limbaugh. Not a chance. Folks, this is a evangelical-flavored suspense thriller. And I didn’t even know that was a thing.
Sen. Donald Harrison has introduced a bill—the Faith and Fairness Act—that would make it a requirement for religious leaders to express their beliefs in a way that “permits equal time and respect to other systems of faith. […]
John Luther, though, isn’t evolving. John’s the leader of Truth, the largest Christian organization in the country, and a critic of the Faith and Fairness Act. […]
Clearly, the guy’s a serious troublemaker. So despite years of friendship, Don hatches a detailed plan to jettison John and squelch his salvation sermons.
Step 1: Have John pose for a couple of post-sermon selfies with an admiring 16-year-old girl.
Step 2: Kidnap John.
Step 3: Drug John.
Step 4: Stick John in a car with the girl.
Step 5: Take pictures of the girl getting physical with the passed-out John.
Step 6: Kill the girl.
It’s hard to have much spiritual authority or political clout when you’re in prison for rape and murder.1
A subversion of the usual “big red letters means it’s Funny™” comedy-movie cliche?
And then there’s The Virgins, a direct-to-streaming independent film that dares to be a Christian sex comedy2 And it works? And by laughing at the expense of the evangelical Sex Prosperity Gospel — that is, the meme that if single Christians simply Wait Patiently on God’s Chosen One For You then your future married sex life will be stigma-free and mind-blowingly perfect forever? Yes, according to Christ and Pop Culture writer Wade Bearden:
Mary is a graceful Christian girl with an overprotective father. Because the couple waited to have sex, they’re planning a wedding night for the ages. The stakes get even higher when the audience finds out that Nick is being shipped off to Afghanistan the following morning. After an ill-timed prank by Nick’s brother Toad (Conner Marx) creates a domino effect that leaves the couple running around town looking for a place to consummate their marriage, it seems like the universe (and maybe even God) just might be against them having sex. Nick’s perfect night, the night he dreamed about his entire life, is on the verge of unraveling right before his eyes.
All of these points converge to make The Virgins a very funny film. Though, given the religious nature of the story, it’s probably not the type of funny you’d expect. And that’s okay. The characters talk about sex. A lot. There are jokes about foreplay and intercourse—especially from Nick’s crass but deftly amusing grandpa. But the humor never comes across in a way that degrades or cheapens the meaning of intimacy. In turn, it actually serves to nudge at our ideas and sensibilities. This makes The Virgins very different from most traditionally defined faith-based films—though their characters never seem to be having sex, either.3
Other than end-times retreads, evangelicals don’t make thrillers. And other than a recent apparent “ha ha, silly husbands can’t manage households because the woman’s place alone is in the home”-themed film, we also don’t do comedies.
Persecuted and The Virgins appear at least to be worthy attempts to break those barriers.
Now if we can just do something about that whole dearth of decent, imaginative, groundbreaking fantasy and sci-fi films … or with all the fantastical films available these days, do Christians even need to try?
- From the Plugged In review of Persecuted by Paul Asay, July 18, 2014. ↩
- I’d ignorantly assumed this also was a documentary (wrap in another set of scare quotes if you wish). ↩
- Sex, Marriage, and the Prosperity Sex Gospel: A Review of The Virgins, Wade Bearden, Christ and Pop Culture, July 18, 2014. ↩
I hope they do well. It’s good to take chances, even mild ones.
Persecution? Nope. We do not need something else that feeds into the melodramatic evangelical persecution complex. I don’t need my dad getting any more paranoid about the libruls, thankyouverymuch. Having one movie based on a conspiracy-theoristic chain email is enough (God’s Not Dead), arigato gozaimasu.
But The Virgins sounds like something worth throwing money at. The conservative Christian attitude about sex could use some lightening up. And maybe they’ll debunk that abstinence-only myth that the first married time is magical-unicorns-bedframe-cracking perfection, unlike heathen unmarried first time, even though it might very well include the exact same people, genitals, emotional attachment, and awkward beginner skill level.
Agreed. I think. 🙂
I would remind you, though, that Christians have already been “lightening up” about sex, so much so that megachurch pastors can’t shut up about it. And it gets really annoying. If you disagree, I have two words that instantly prove my point: Mark. Driscoll.
However, if you don’t mean “lighten up about the topic” but rather “lighten up on the ‘rules’ about it,” well — it sounds like the makers of this film have a different take. It’s the “sex prosperity gospel” that deserves mockery, not the Biblical standards and expectations for purity that glorifies God no matter how much fun we personally get out of it.
More infamous example of that here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087652/Pastor-wife-cosy-roof-church-tell-worshippers-sex.html
Only thing worse than pastors not teaching people about sex is when they teach people about sex, it seems.
WAT?
Though it doesn’t seem like these peeps (or ol’ Marky Mark) are really talking about sex so much as telling people they need to have sex more. And IIRC ol’ Marky Mark said something dickheaded about how women should submit even if they really don’t wanna (HELLO MARITALRAPE). But besides Marky Mark, maybe the necessary babystep is to start off with “Yes, sex is not all dirtyawful, yes.” I really wish it wasn’t, but maybe it is.
Driscoll alone has done both. He recommends Moar Sex and then has gone on about it in public and in tasteless detail (including the freaky stuff — which is best reserved for marriage books). And he’s done it for exactly the reasons with which it sounds like you could sympathize: e.g., “We need to Lighten Up about this stuff, and if you believe differently then you’re a Legalist” (which is, of course, exactly a legalistic attitude on Driscoll’s part — as if legalism like any other sin is so easily diagnosed by Appearance alone).
My point is that simply “fixing the problem” or “correcting the bad guys (whether they are fundamentalists or Liberals)” is both a lame and an un-Biblical motivation for discussing the topic of sex. The central goal of the discussion ought to be Joy. And if we’re to talk about that, then we need to talk about the expressed purposes of the Joy-Giver, the Creator of sex and of us. Otherwise our “joy” is not only fake, but quickly becomes a real turn-off.
I’m not really advocating sex discussion from the pulpit. That’s several kinds of awkward. But it would be……I dunno what words I want to use, but I would like to see sex…humanized? by Christians. As in, express this as a thing that people do like eating or driving or snowball fighting and not like handling radioactive asbestos laced with LSD. That we can talk about it even among unmarried people of appropriate age (and appropriate age being, like, 18 and not 53).
Have you ever seen a comments-section discussion about sex or sexy things on the Internet? In the right communities it’s much less awkward/gross than you might think. (Marky Mark is not one of these communities.)
Update: By now I’ve watched ~2/3rds of The Virgins trailer…..and I’m not that optimistic anymore. The writing/acting doesn’t seem good enough or superbly awful enough to be funny. It looks pretty blah.
Good article. I must take issue with your “ha ha” comment, however. I do notice that you wrote “apparent” so I’ll cut you some slack. You “apparently” haven’t seen Mom’s Night Out, based on your comment. Then again, neither have I. But I do take issue with comments that embrace the bias of reviewers who went into the movie believing it was about a stupid Christian belief, and then wrote their reviews about that, regardless of the actual movie.
You see… my wife saw the movie. And loved it. (And she generally HATES “Christian” movies, like Fireproof, et al.) As a mom, she identified with the characters in the movie more than any other movie she’s seen in years. Sean Astin’s character, one of the dads, was shown as perfectly competent to take care of his kids, whereas one of the other dads was not. Wow. Just like real life. And each one of the moms were different, as well.
It’s almost like… it’s NOT what the biased reviewers claimed it was about…