MysteriousFaith

DVD Review: The God Who Wasn’t There

Most reviews of the recently released documentary The God Who Wasn’t There are going to emphasize the fact that the filmmaker, Brian Flemming, is a former fundamentalist Christian who is now a professing atheist. Flemming makes no point of hiding this, going so far as to end his film with an extended interview of the principal of the former Christian school he attended. Unfortunately for the audience and most importantly for Flemming himself, this part of his journey has left him angry, his anger spilling into the documentary in the form of contrived guilt-by-the-vaguest-of-associations, sketchy historical analysis, and a singular caricature of Christianity that assumes the only Christians are those from within fundamentalism. I say unfortunately for Flemming because I believe nested within his documentary are some critical points and serious flaws of even non-fundamentalist, main-line evangelical Christianity. But to the mind of a wounded former fundamentalist, seeing nuance within the breadth of Christian experience is no easier than finding forgiveness for those who taught you drivel during your most formative of years. Assuming fundamentalist Christianity is the only valid form of Christian religious experience is a quite common conclusion for wounded children of fundamentalism because we were taught our beliefs were the only true ones, and that even the slightest derivation from them risked eternal hell-fire. Flemming has every right to be angry, but he has a responsibility to seek truth for its own sake and in its own name, not to focus only on those truths that stand diametrically at odds with those he was taught to hold. When Flemming morphs from Charles Manson to Pat Robertson in one screen shot in an attempt to equate Manson’s schizoid belief in his identity as Jesus Christ to Robertson’s less pathological but perhaps just as dysfunctional belief he is God’s modern-day prophet, Flemming goes too far. It is these type of sleights of hand, faint echoes of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, that due Flemming’s more thoughtful points a disservice.

Flemming’s Questions Need Answers

Flemming’s response to fundamentalism is to adopt much of the same one-dimensional analysis so prevalent in fundamentalism. In the world he and I grew up in, the mere asking of questions was not only frowned upon, but was assumed to be a sign of deeper spiritual malaise, perhaps even a soul on its way to damnation. The result of such year-after-year, decade-after-decade incestuous intellectual climate is a world where healthy skepticism and pursuing truth with an open mind are sacrificed and, for some, are never to be found again. Flemming’s at times one-dimensional analysis of Christianity falls into the same pathologies of the fundamentalism he and I both loathe. I have found, over a decade after leaving the fundamentalist fold, that I can roughly gauge the accuracy of my insight with the anger I cloak my arguments within; the angrier I am the less likely I am thinking rationally or rightly. With these cautions in mind, I do fear that when people view Flemming’s documentary, they may miss the reasonable and important questions he asks because of the tone he adopts. Examples of the legitimate questions Flemming asks that need to be answered include explaining why the church can change positions over time without suffering a loss of belief from within its own ranks, questions about how Christianity developed its doctrines and hierarchies, exploring the many selective interpretations of Sacred Scripture, what controlled skeptics are to make of the similarities between the stories of Jesus and similar stories of then-contemporary Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods and finally, why we should believe that the church can be trusted to avoid its mistake of over-reaching into areas it does not belong.

Flemming’s film begins with a computer graphic of the sun revolving around the earth, a reminder of the now centuries old debate between the church and Copernicus where the church advocated such a model of the solar system. “Now hold on a minute” you might argue; that is an error from the church’s past, “can’t the church be forgiven of its own mistakes?” For Flemming the answer might be “no”, such forgiveness is not to be found when the church is in error. I do not hold to such a position for fear my own need of forgiveness will be as poorly dispensed to me as I dispense to others, including my need to forgive a church that wronged me. Rather, I believe Flemming’s question can be rightfully seen as challenging the church to explain its historical shift from position after position that have been rolled back as the advancing tide of modernity makes the church’s position increasingly incredulous. At the dawn of the 20th century, the church argued stridently that vaccinations should not be allowed because to get in the way of disease was to get in the way of God’s plan for the world. Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, the church would have us believe the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception, stem cell research can not be ethically accommodated, homosexuality is a choice and can never be a healthy lifestyle, and that women must function in some subservient means to men in any pastoral capacity. Flemming is right to use the example of Copernicus to ask that the church clearly answer why its positions on anything are to be trusted when its own history shows theology after theology withering under the intense light of mankind’s advancements.

As the film continues, Flemming broaches another question that is worth exploring, a question frankly I feel strongly moderate Christian leaders diminish, namely, why the formation of early creedal statements, sacraments, hierarchies and sacred scripture is assumed to be any more free of the politics and ill-will that we see when similar forums are required today. In this point Flemming’s history is stretched too thin as he selectively introduces certain scholars (Robert M. Price of the Jesus Seminar as one example) who argue that we can not be certain Jesus was a real man or an amalgamation of myth and 1st century allegory. This is going too far for me. The deeper points Flemming could have drawn out are three fold: the first point he already does, which involves the development of the Gospels. Marcus Borg finds a more reasonable and moderate tone when discussing his view on the canonical status that should be afforded the Gospels and the stories within them, and I believe Flemming’s film would have been the better had it allowed someone such as Borg to present his case. The difficulty with Borg would have been that his position is still relatively orthodox when compared to the beliefs Flemming is predisposed to arguing for (that Jesus never existed being Flemming’s prerogative, that Jesus did exist but was not divine and whose resurrection was not of the form conventional Christian teaching holds being Borg’s argument). The second deeper point Flemming’s film would have been the better for would have been to touch on the historical development of the church’s creedal statements. Contemporary evangelical scholarship (including in my estimation even NT Wright’s brief comments about Constantine and his role in shaping the Nicene Creed) are poorly handled and I would propose wildly off-base. Wright’s argument (see his book co-authored with Marcus Borg, Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, for more information on this) is sloppy to the point of not only being unrealistic, but casting questions in my mind as to the sacrifices of objectivity Wright makes when interpreting history in other cases. The last point Flemming should have argued for is nested tightly within the previous two and has to do with whether or not we should interpret religious history in the same way as we do non-religious history. Historians such as Wright argue for a position that advocates testing religious and non-religious history in the same way and, in a limited fashion, this is acceptable; however, this does overlook the reality that the historical claims religion often makes are outside the realm of rationality and as such, must meet some higher burden of proof. To say that we should believe Jesus rose from the dead because we believe those close to the event believed it is to require the same logic be applied to other faith traditions, and other statements of competing historicity (to name just one the claims of Divine authorship of the Koran and the teachings within it that Jesus did not really die on the cross, but had his body replaced by a soul-less stand in).

One of the favorite techniques of skeptics, agnostics and atheists when in conversation with a Christian is to bring up the topic of selective interpretation. To my way of thinking this does remain one of the biggest stumbling blocks in fully embracing Christianity. I still feel that the Emergent Movement has done the best job in attempting to wrestle with this question but for me, in its attempt to do so, has only made that much more clear the dysfunctional and outdated components of the Bible and our need to be courageous enough to set aside what we know to be of man in what we are afraid to acknowledge is a work human in origins. Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me! fame has a new FX series out called 30 Days where he forces people to live in the world of someone they either dislike or have a misconceived stereotype concerning. In the last program Spurlock has a Christian young adult man move in with a gay roommate in San Francisco. During the process, this young man engages a lesbian Christian pastor and attempts to understand how she can both call herself a Christian at the same time she lives with her partner. Her response is couched within the challenge Flemming also puts out, which is how can Christians so selectively choose what parts of the Bible they emphasize, explain away, or just choose to not live by? Flemming is on to something when he says that, based on Leviticus 18:22, God does hate fags! And he is right. As funny, outrageous and scary as certain gay-bashing Christians can be (and it is important again to emphasize that not all Christians fit this stereotype), the reality is they live more consistently with the mandate of Sacred Scripture than do other Christians who hide behind hermeneutics, cultural interpretations or un-nourishing theologies to explain why executing homosexuals was the Divine mandate for the Jews, but can be overlooked now. This is a touchy subject and one people like myself can make fun of, but at times, humor can be a good remedy for sensitive subjects: do we really believe that God Himself came down from heaven and, in one of the rarest of rare moments in all of human history when the Divine actually sat with His creation, told Moses that His Law included stoning children who talked back, getting rid of shrimp cocktail and oyster shooters, eliminating BLT’s and Indiana’s famous pork tenderloin sandwiches, making sure no man with crushed balls got into temple, made menstruating women sleep in separate tents (wait, that just might have been of Divine origins – it was, after all, before the hormone regulating affects of “the pill”), established as a fair trade one slave for one accidentally gored ox, and forbade polyester/rayon fabrics (the fabric of two materials condemned in Leviticus and again, perhaps a real theophany – who needs more 70’s era bad polyester/rayon blazer’s anyway?)? Forgive me if I choose to believe that reeks of Orwellian religious controls being brought to bear in a particular culture. I am fully aware of the many dispensational, covenant and other such positions that Christians bring forward but find them all mind candy and unworthy of the profound truths they purport to be. At some time moderate Christianity, and I believe the Emergent Movement can do this, must stand up and acknowledge these parts of the Bible are not of God, can be discarded, and new methods of looking for truth must be established.

Flemming’s next legitimate question is one I do not base my own beliefs on, simply because I do not feel they necessarily prove anything, but only that they further add to people’s suspicion that the Gospel accounts of Jesus have more than a little hagiography taking place within. In this portion of Flemming’s documentary he interviews Alan Dundes, author of Holy Writ as Oral Lit whose analysis of the Jesus story Dundes analyzes through the “hero of tradition” model developed by Lord Raglan, author of The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama. This model is based on a review of common multi-ethnic folklore specific to claims of divinity for a character in the story. These tests include the mother being a royal virgin, the father is a king, the circumstances of his conception are unusual, he is reputed to be the son of a god, at birth at attempt is made to kill him (usually by the father), the child is spirited away, he is reared by foster parents in a foreign land, we are told nothing about his childhood but upon reaching manhood he returns to his homeland, after victory over the foe (father, opposing king, dragon, etc.) marries princess, becomes king himself, reigns eventually proscribes laws, loses favor with his subjects, is driven from his throne, meets with a mysterious death, that death is often on the top of a hill, his children, if any, do not secede him his body is not buried, and he has one or more holy sceplicures. By Flemming’s count, Jesus fits nineteen (19) of the twenty-two (22) characteristics of common folklore. I think some of the points given to the story of Jesus by Flemming are tenuous; however, I do think his deeper question is based on a suspicion that much within the Gospel accounts of Jesus follow vaguely similar lines from then-contemporary stories and mythology. Making Flemming’s point more powerfully is a quote he presents from Justin Martyr (a church father, born A.D. 100, died A.D. 165):

“When we say that Jesus Christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different for what you believe regarding these whom you call the sons of Jupiter.”

These are the moments when a bit more candor from Flemming would aid his case. This quote from Martyr is misleading to the uneducated. Martyr’s point here is to equate the beliefs of the early Christian church with those of then modern-day Romans in the hopes that he could win for the church breathing room over the accusation that Christians were atheists, who denied Roman deities (including by relation the supposed deity of the emperor). Much like how Augustine in his City of God feels compelled to defend Christians from the accusation that their denial of Roman gods led to the downfall of the empire, Martyr is attempting to find common ground with fellow Romans in the hopes that similarities in beliefs will overshadow different aims and allegiances. Having said this, Flemming is not without a point in presenting similarities between the story of Jesus and other religious beliefs of the day. It is not fair here to say the similarities are only vague; they are more specific than Christians care to acknowledge.

The last legitimate question Flemming poses is one he uses the calming intelligence of Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason to present. Harris takes ethics and spirituality very seriously, as his dedicated study of Buddhism illustrates. But Harris is unapologetic in arguing that religious moderates are too little protection against the objectives and techniques of their more extreme brothers. Because I hold to a view of the world that sees increasing conflict (for a number of reasons) over the next twenty to thirty years, I recognize that in these moments of intense conflict, religion can be a damaging part of the human experience. As we read about the German people and their role in the Jewish Holocaust, we must agree with Hannah Arnedt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil and say that the worst evils are often times perpetrated by those who we would never suspect harbor such pathological tendencies. Rather than attempt and explain here why these pathologies give way to violence, we rather have to acknowledge that religious words and concepts have implications; the words of Augustine have consequences when he green-lit the torture of the Inquisition by saying who are we to torture heretics and unbelievers in this life if God is to do it for all of eternity in the next. As a more modern example, today’s evangelical church and its broad infatuation with the end of days is, in the words of Harris, “perfectly maladapted to global conflict.” And he is right. Based on any number of statistical surveys, over 40% of the American populace would see it as fulfilled prophecy if a mushroom cloud appeared over Jerusalem during tomorrow’s CNN broadcast. I know because I was once one of these 40%! This worldview sees conflict as vindicating your theology, your worldview, and as affirmation of your eternal destiny (if I got this right, boy wait till that old trumpet sounds, I got me a space reserved next to Jesus!). For people like Flemming and myself, who have seen the dark underbelly of fundamentalism evidenced in those closest to us who, while we wish to see them as healthy individuals, have to acknowledge a certain amount of anger and hate hiding beneath their motivation for staying in such an extremist environment, it is disquieting to put our faith in religion when we know based on our own life’s experience and the lessons of history that in times of duress, religious moderates are rarely able to stand down the vitriol of their fundamentalist brothers.

Conclusion

What is to be made of Flemming’s work? On balance, I find it lacking an ability to elevate the discussion between religion and secularism and in addition, I believe it actually contributes to the anger and animosity building between these two camps. Flemming has a number of really good questions and piercing insights folded within his analysis; however, he needs to make an effort to extend his sources and go deeper. My suspicion is that if he were to do this he would find the end result would actually be that much more insightful and place that much more of the onus on Christianity. Like him, I am a wounded former fundamentalist. Unlike him, I choose to ask questions in a way that can hopefully build consensus without compromising intellectual curiosity or healthy skepticism.

previous post: God’s Politics or Man’s Dilemmas?
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• Posted in Theology
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• July 11, 2005

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One Response to “DVD Review: The God Who Wasn’t There”

1. Harlequin Says:
   May 5th, 2006 at 4:57 pm

   Do we know Borg wasn’t invited?

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