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he French ecclesiastics delegated by the occupying English power to the thankless chore of determining whether Joan of Arc was an imposter or a heretic guided by Satan would love The Messenger. Director Luc Besson attempts to prove what even the best prosecuting clerics of her day could not: that Joan was a demented, misled, hysterical, confused, and guilt-ridden phony; but, even with the power and money of Sony and Gaumont behind him, he is no more convincing than the inquisitors of Rouen.

“Annie Get Your Sword”Perhaps this is a cartoon Joan, a comic-book heroine who can do anything the men can do, only better, a medieval “Annie Get Your Sword,” sans humor. Look, she can ride a horse, swing a sword, scream, threaten, taunt, and as the film irresponsibly suggests, even kill.But, cartoon characters have to be funny as well as fantastic. This Joan has the sense of humor of a stone. Even Ingrid Bergman’s Joan, in an otherwise mannered and dated film, retains a convincing charm, a disarming naiveté.Perhaps, this is a psychological film. After all, as any rational person knows, people who claim to hear voices are delusional or schizophrenic. At the very least, the sound of bells ringing in your ears can be diagnosed as tintinitus.These filmmakers obviously didn’t avail themselves of Julian Jayne’s fascinating treatise, “The Origin of Consciousness” in which he suggests the relationship of the brain’s left and right lobes as separate personalities in a lifelong dialogue. Such an exploration might have made for an interesting and worthwhile film, but this film tosses out the possibility of Joan as delusional maniac like a sensational grenade instead of as a valid idea for serious exploration. If you’re looking for a film that at least tangentially deals with these themes, see Breaking the Waves or The Anchorite or Therese.Perhaps this is a humanist film, showing the emptiness of faith and the corruption of religious institutions, in particular the Christian Church. But, even some secular humanists acknowledge the authenticity of the faith of others. Is the intention behind portraying Joan of Arc as a mistaken and misguided believer a parable on the mistakenness of all believers?Near the end of the film Dustin Hoffman appears as one of her voices, ostensibly her conscience, his mission being to debunk the mythology of Joan’s belief system. There follows a laborious sequence where the “miraculous” appearance of Joan’s sword in her youth is recalled and then explained by circ*mstantial evidence. So, we’ve endured two-and-a-half hours of gibberish only to have Mr. Besson set up an historical strawman so he can tear it down. In keeping with all the other historical infidelities of this film, there was no sword in the field, and the real Joan never claimed that her sword fell down to her from heaven. But, this is revealing of a more profound absence in this film: the total inability to comprehend and to express the miraculous.Undoubtedly much mythology and folklore have accrued to the Joan of Arc story. One need hardly add to them as this film has done. The point, however, is not that this or that miracle occurred or didn’t occur. The miracle is Joan herself. How did a 17-year-old girl, a peasant from the fringes of the kingdom, manage to enlist the trust and support of a nation and play a pivotal role in expelling a foreign invader? Not only does this film fail to pose this central question, it seeks to remove the authenticity of Joan’s faith and the faith of her countrymen as at least a factor in these complex events.Perhaps this is a film about repressed sexuality and what can happen if the hormones are not given their due? Also a valid area of inquiry with more than fertile entertainment values. Is the adolescent writhing in the tall grass supposed to be suggestive of sexual longing? Okay, and … ? Not exactly Nabokovian.Maybe the whole exercise is an excuse for the murder and mayhem scenes reminiscent of Braveheart: hacked off limbs, decapitations with blood gushing forth, maulings and maimings, and spilled entrails. There’s plenty of this superficial movie mucous. But, there is none of the dark beauty of equally violent films by Kurosawa such as Yojimbo or Sanjuro, with their existential undertones and potent sense of a character imbedded and connected to a specific time in a specific place. Ms. Jovovich’s Joan is a “thoroughly modern Milla” who struts and poses across the battlefields as if she’s doing a layout for Vogue.She is surrounded by a motley crew of armored buffoons and clowns who have as much to do with Dunois, Lahire and Giles de Rais as La Cirque du Soleil. Real jeopardy is replaced by theatrical bravado and cliché camaraderie, the kind of movie where every other stunt is supposed to be a joke. So much so that Joan’s wounding at Les Tourelles arouses neither sympathy nor apprehension. It is emotionally empty. When it comes to scenes of battle, this film has neither the character-based grittiness of Kenneth Branagh’s nor the sheer visual splendor of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V films, both set in precisely the same epoch.Perhaps this is an MTV Joan. After all, Milla Jovovich is fetching, and there’s lots of fast motion and slow motion and stop motion photography. But no, MTV films run about two and a half minutes, not two and a half hours, and there are lyrics besides the FX.What is this film anyway? Might it be Vanity Fair, or, to put it in its proper historical context, a bonfire of the vanities? Here are the vanities of arrogance, (thinking a film on Joan can be made with little regard to the research and the record), of self-adulation (believing that cleverness can substitute for a genuine search for truth), and of vanity itself (aside from being Mrs. Besson, what other qualifications did Ms. Jovovich have for this role?).One cannot and should not attempt a film on Joan of Arc without a sense of humility and a willingness to listen; perhaps not to the saints who visited Joan, but at least to the hundreds of real-life people who knew her and whose testimonies have been recorded for posterity, to the hundreds of scholars who have studied her over the centuries and to the artists who have written poems and plays and novels and made movies about her. If and when one can practice this kind of humility, to avail one’s self of this kind of knowledge, to take one’s valid place in the collective effort of generations seeking illumination and truth, then perhaps a filmmaker might make a lasting contribution to our understanding and our continuing fascination with this remarkable woman.Regrettably, The Messenger stands off by itself, disconnected from any authentic witness or tradition or community, whether religious, artistic, cinematic, historic, or scientific. It is the ultimate ego trip, the polar opposite of the historical Joan, who surrendered her ego to a higher calling. She came to be a liberator at the head of armies because she earned their trust, she was selfless, she was viscerally connected with her people, she was authentic, she was loyal, she was courageous, she was possessed of the inner strength and composure of absolute faith, and she was loving, immensely loving. That is partly an understanding of her power, the power to rally soldiers, inspire the common people, win over princes and prelates, and to endure in our hearts over the centuries. All else is mystery. The failure to distinguish between what is historical and what is mysterious is the failure of this motion picture.In 1899, the Melies brothers produced the very first film on Joan of Arc. There is more truth in any frame of that silent, awkward beginning than in this entire inflated state of the art megarelease. It’s not Joan of Arc who should be judged as a fraud. It’s this silly, heartless, mean-spirited, small-minded, and completely phony film.(Used by permission courtesy Assist Communications.)Related ElsewhereThe official site of “The Messenger” has wallpaper, a trailer, and a brief outline of Joan’s life.

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With this article, we begin a new weekly feature from the editor of our closest sister publication,: A Christian Review.Fifty years ago, George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-four, his prescient novel on the psychology of the totalitarian state. In 1949, it was not yet fashionable in the West to recognize the true nature of the Soviet Union, that monstrous experiment in human engineering. But Orwell saw the truth, and told it unforgettably in one the great books of the twentieth century.Last weekend a group of distinguished scholars met at the University of Chicago to mark the 50th anniversary of Orwell’s masterpiece. Before the conference began, Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ, devoted a segment of its program “Odyssey” to a discussion of Nineteen Eighty-four. The panelists included legal scholar Richard Epstein, historian Peter Novick, and novelist Margaret Drabble. During the conversation the host brought up the special attention to history—the control of history, the ongoing rewriting of history—that is a marked feature of the totalitarian state as portrayed by Orwell. Does this aspect of the novel ring true?Astonishingly, both Epstein and Novick declared without hesitation that on this point, Orwell had simply “got it wrong.” Of course the Soviet regime tried to manipulate history for its purposes, though it wasn’t such an obsession—so these scholars confidently said—as Orwell’s novel might suggest. And clearly he overestimated the effect of such tactics. Look at what happened when the Soviet empire crumbled: it became immediately apparent that most of the people didn’t believe the official line anyway.But Orwell didn’t get it wrong, as any one of a hundred memoirs and historical studies of the Soviet era will confirm. (A good starting place is Czeslaw Milosz’s classic book, The Captive Mind.) The need to control the past—to control public memory and thus control the minds and spirits of its subjects—was absolutely central to the Soviet project from the beginning, and its devastating consequences will be felt for generations.As Mark Noll has shown in “History Wars,” a four-part series in Books & Culture (see “Related Elsewhere” links below), the discourse of history—in scholarly monographs, textbooks, historical movies, and countless other forms—is always subject to such pressures, even though rarely is the power to govern that telling as ruthlessly concentrated as it was in the Soviet Union.We encounter competing efforts to “spin” history every time we pick up a newspaper. The history may be very recent—what happened in the president’s office a couple of scandals ago, for instance, or what’s happened in the three years since welfare reform began to be implemented—or decades past—what happened under a bridge in South Korea almost 50 years ago—or much, much further back: who first settled the Americas, and where did they come from? But whether the history is recent or distant, someone has a strong interest in getting you to see it in a particular way.The New York Times Magazine for Sunday, September 19, for example, featured a series of scenes from the last millennium as imagined by living artists. A caption for one of the scenes instructs us that “the Crusades defined Western civilization in terms of righteous warfare and conquest of foreign territories, and they also initiated Western suspicion of the inhabitants of the Middle East, who had to be viewed as forces of evil in order to justify European conquest.” In the accompanying commentary, Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, states that “Crusading … made Islam the ideological enemy of the West.”Unmentioned is an earlier wave of conquest, summarized thus by Peter Partner in God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (Princeton University Press):Following Muhammad’s death [in A.D. 632] there was a very long period of Islamic holy war that extended to much of western Asia, North Africa, and parts of Europe. These wars overturned the Persian Empire entirely, and robbed the Roman Byzantine Empire of something like half its lands.(Oh, that conquest! How did we miss that?) And among the territories conquered in that first wave of Islamic expansion were some of the earliest Christian communities.Christians, alas, have been guilty of heavy-duty spinning of their own. A good New Millennium’s resolution would be this: to commit ourselves to telling the truth, even when it makes “our side” look bad. By doing so we will honor the one who promised that “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”Related ElsewhereAll four parts of Mark Noll’s “History Wars” are available online at www.booksandculture.com:Some Recent Battles (May/June 1999)Intellectual Fallout (July/August 1999)Allies? (September/October 1999)A Peace of God? (November/December 1999)Listen to WBEZ’s “Odyssey” broadcast about Nineteen Eighty-four in RealAudio format.

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NCC celebrates 50 years of American ecumenismby Jerry L. VanMarter, Ecumenical News International, in Cleveland | November 12 (ENI)—Hard on the heels of its worst ever financial crisis, the US National Council of Churches (NCC) has been meeting here from 9 to 12 November to celebrate its 50th anniversary.A sign perhaps of the ebbing appeal of the venerable organization – still the biggest ecumenical body in the US, with 35 member churches representing 52 million Christians – was the fact that less than half the anticipated crowd of 2000 showed up for the celebration.The lower than expected turnout has exacerbated the NCC’s financial difficulties, adding several tens of thousands of dollars to a 1999 budget shortfall that now totals nearly US$4 million and has angered elected delegates who had been assured by NCC officials as recently as late October that the celebration would break even financially.”I’m not surprised, but I’m profoundly disappointed and angry,” said John Thomas, a member of the NCC Executive Board, who had insisted earlier that the costs of the celebration not add to the shortfall. NCC treasurer Margaret Thomas quietly replied: “Your feelings are widely shared.”But the celebration itself had positive moments. In a dramatic service on 10 November in Cleveland’s Old Stone Church, five survivors of a reported massacre of 400 civilians by the US Army during the early days of the Korean War met three US Army ex-servicemen who have said that they participated in the alleged slaughter.Hundreds attended the Service of Reconciliation that preceded a private meeting between the survivors and the US veterans from the massacre, which took place in Korea close to the time the NCC was founded in this city.”This meeting [between the Koreans the US veterans], the first step in a process of remembrance and healing, is exactly the kind of ‘truth and reconciliation’ work the church should be and is doing all over the world,” said Joan Brown Campbell, who will retire as NCC general secretary at the end of this year. She praised the survivors for their persistence in pursuing justice and the former soldiers for their courage in coming forward.”Going public with such admissions carries a heavy price for themselves and for their families,” she said.The NCC was instrumental in uncovering the No Gun Ri tragedy. Last December, at the request of its South Korean counterpart, the National Council of Churches in Korea, the NCC asked the US Defense Department for its response to detailed testimony from Korean survivors and eyewitnesses to the massacre.In March, the US Army replied that it had “found no information to substantiate the claim that US Army soldiers had perpetrated a massacre of South Korean civilians at No Gun Ri”.However, new documentation and evidence gathered by the Associated Press from survivors, eyewitnesses and the former US soldiers have apparently persuaded the Department of Defense to reopen its investigation.A group of conservative leaders from several NCC member churches have called for “a funeral, not a celebration” in Cleveland, arguing that the NCC has outlived its usefulness and is a hindrance to broader ecumenical cooperation in the US.Related ElsewhereThe National Council of Churches Web site has a large section on its fiftieth anniversary.More news on the ecumenical movement, especially NCC news, is available through Worldwide Faith News‘s site.

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“If we start tackling those big problems of our excessively work- and money-motivated culture, the subsequent issues of sex will make more sense and fall into place in the larger scheme of things.”—Sarah E. Hinlicky”There are many questions about sex in contemporary society to which “wait until marriage” is simply not a response. So we wind up talking past each other.”—Lauren F. Winner | This is the conclusion of a three-part dialogue. Read part one, which appeared November 11,hereand part two, from November 12,here.

From: Sarah E. HinlickyTo: Lauren WinnerDate: November 12, 1999, 12:38 PM EST

Lauren,I think we agree on two main points. One, that sex is public business, not private, and we have to have some idea of how society is to deal with it; and two, that Christians, as members of a wider society, need to exert their influence on it. So far, so good.Having said that, I suspect that our disagreements are basically strategic. The Bauer campaign is all the evidence I need that a community of repristination-minded Christians functioning in any kind of “set apart from the world” motif is going to fail. I see no reason to think that another campaign, or institute, or educational reform, or what have you, is going to be any different. That is the way of “places where Christians sought to be in this world but not of it” in this country. They work awhile, maybe a very little while, and then they fall apart. The very “stuntedness” that you lament in evangelical Christian dialogue is the heritage of these set-apart Christian impulses earlier in our nation’s history. (And, incidentally, that kind of doublespeak about sex was never a part of my religious upbringing, which, I think, has a good understanding of what it means to live in the church and in the world simultaneously.)Perhaps you misunderstood my desire to “infiltrate” the culture; I certainly don’t mean to become hom*ogenous with it. What I mean is that I am wary of grand projects of social reform, whether they come from liberals through their programs of governmental control or conservatives through their private Christian communities. I want to see us out there, as individual people who come out of Christian communities, in the world and bearing the burdens of the world. As long as we know in whom we believe and to what standard we are held accountable, I think we can safely go into every corner of this country and witness by the example of our lives, our friendships and our work. There is certainly a place for dialogue among ourselves, for mutual support and exploration of serious ideas. But our actions need to take us out into the world—and that is where we are most desperately needed.If we are to speak on this sex-in-the-workplace issue, I think we have to get away from talking about sex so much (as I mentioned in a previous message). Instead of talking about sex, let’s talk about work. What is work for? Why is it so important? Why are we spending hours and hours every evening at the office when we could’ve gone home at five? Why is work constitutive of our identity instead of our spouses or families? I think if we start tackling those big problems of our excessively work- and money-motivated culture, the subsequent issues of sex will make more sense and fall into place in the larger scheme of things.As for Gary Bauer, perhaps he should take the hint that there is something slightly fishy about a political campaign that claims to be purely and singlemindedly Christian.Sarah

From: Lauren WinnerTo: Sarah E. HinlickyDate: November 12, 1999, 1:29 PM EST

S,You are quite right that we—meaning you and I, but also Christians, and also the wider culture—have avoided this question of work. And I could not agree more that it is crucial. Our apotheosis of work in America is so thoroughgoing that we don’t even recognize it for the idolatry that it is (and I am guiltier of this than most … )As for sex, and the influences that Christians should exert in the larger American discussion of matters sexual—less interesting to me than our disagreement about means is another topic we haven’t fully fleshed out: content. What, exactly, is “a Christian teaching” or “a Christian understanding” of sex? To some, this may seem a facile question: surely a Christian teaching is that sex is great when it’s between two married people and sinful when it is elsewhere. But that response seems inadequate for two reasons. First, it’s not obvious that all Christians sign on to that. Second, imagine that we all concur about sex belonging in marriage: is that a sufficient contribution to the larger discussion? Certainly it is one valuable contribution. But it seems to be just a starting point. There are many questions about sex in contemporary society to which “wait until marriage” is simply not a response. So we wind up talking past each other—Christians talking past Christians, and Christians talking past non-Christians.But these questions—the meaning of work, and what exactly Christian understandings of sex are—are a conversation for another time.—L.Have a comment or question about the issues raised in this three-day conversation? Write tocteditor@christianitytoday.com. Our guests will respond to a selection of reader comments in a followup article at ChristianityToday.com

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Moviegoers got a double dose of Catholicism this weekend as Kevin Smith’s comedy Dogma and Luc Besson’s biopic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc hit theaters. Strangely enough, Christian critics found more value in the foul-mouthed indie flick than in the tale of the virgin saint. Meanwhile, Pokémon: The First Movie trounced the competition to take the box-office crown.

Pokémon: The First Movie ($32.4 million)

Kids love Pokémon. Kids are good at bugging parents until they give in. Pokémon: The First Movie makes gobs of money. Any questions? You’ll be hard-pressed to find a positive review of this movie, Christian or otherwise; presumably because no one’s hiring 6-year-old critics. The movie was chastised most often for presenting the hypocritical message that fighting is wrong, since “this frenzied film is filled with violent confrontations, battles, [and] threatening destructive forces” (Preview‘s John Evans).

The Bone Collector ($12 million)

A couple of new Christian reviews trickled in for The Bone Collector this week, taking up opposing viewpoints on the movie’s entertainment value. Christian Spotlight guest critic Gabe Rodriguez calls it “a heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat thriller that … is also one of the most original, cunning thrillers in years,” while the U.S. Catholic Conference says the movie “slides from engrossing to disappointing with its unsatisfying revelations and gory wrap-up.” Considering the film is about a paralyzed forensics specialist (Denzel Washington) who once again feels useful when his expertise is needed to track down a serial killer, it’s strange that reviews have avoided wrestling with questions about the nature of evil and the need for redemption—even to say if the movie ignores such questions.

Dogma ($8.8 million)

A year of controversy over Dogma prepared most Christian critics to be shocked at the movie. What turned out to be shocking, however, was the vulgar film’s very clear support of God as sovereign, and of Jesus as savior. Dogma is a kind of comic fable that centers around a lapsed Catholic (Linda Fiorentino) whose faith is gradually restored when God calls her to stop two fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from trying to reenter heaven, thereby negating all existence. “What we find is that Mr. Smith has not pointed his judgmental finger at God,” writes Michael Elliott of Movie Parables, “but rather at how men have chosen to worship God via the frameworks they have constructed for that purpose.” Hollywood Jesus agrees, saying the movie “dares to explore and question the Christian faith without restraints of any kind. Martin Luther would be proud. The bottom line is: God cares about you and will stand on her head to prove it.” For others, it wasn’t enough that the film had some solid theology, because it also presented some shaky theology. “Although the film is not anti-God,” say Preview‘s John Adair and John Evans, “it explicitly promotes religious pluralism—many ways to God. An overall theme surfaces, as well, of God dealing with humanity unfairly.” MovieGuide catalogs both the theological truths and inaccuracies of the film, and ultimately is concerned that “the spiritually immature or biblically ignorant may not be able to tell the wheat from the chaff.” A lack of clear answers, however, didn’t stop the film from provoking several mainstream critics to examine their spiritual nature. “I personally haven’t thought this deeply about the religion of my birth since being confirmed,” writes USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna, and Charles Taylor of Salon.com says, “if Dogma can move an old agnostic like me, it can move anybody.”

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc ($6.3 million)

Critics were less moved by The Messenger, action director Luc Besson’s biography of Joan of Arc, the teenage peasant girl who helped free France from English control, only to be forsaken by her king and burned as a witch. The twist to this retelling is that the script questions whether Joan truly heard God or if she was just crazy. “Luc Besson attempts to prove what even the best prosecuting clerics of her day could not: that Joan was a demented, misled, hysterical, confused and guilt-ridden phony,” argues Ronald Maxwell, whose essay is running at Christian Spotlight and ChristianityToday.com. (For the record, writer/director Maxwell is preparing the competing Joan of Arc: Virgin Warrior with Mira Sorvino in the title role.) He says the rape and murder of Joan’s sister in the film (which lets you question if Joan’s quest was motivated by revenge) never happened, and the film’s debate on whether Joan’s sword came to her by supernatural means is irrelevant because she never claimed it did. Hollywood Jesus likewise found it sad that our “hero had been discredited,” but noted that the film nevertheless “makes a forceful statement about the uncertainty of faith. What about Joan’s faith? Was is real or delusional? Which, of course, brings into question our own belief. Is it real? On what grounds can we be certain?” However, Doug Cummings of Movies & Ministry Resources says he can’t be sure what conclusions Besson was trying to draw, one way or another: “Though Besson seems to be passionate about this story as a comment on spirituality, he fails to communicate a clear message.” Ultimately, the film “is so bereft of character development on any level that it fails to be very emotionally compelling.” On the other end of the spectrum was Preview‘s Cliff McNeely, who found Joan’s dedication to God readily apparent: “Joan’s unwavering determination to accomplish her mission is nothing short of awe-inspiring, especially since she gives all glory to God.” He also notes, like all these reviewers did, that the “gory scenes of slaughter, battles, and beheadings will be hard for many to watch.”

Anywhere but Here ($5.7 million)

Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon garnered excellent reviews for their performances in Anywhere but Here, the story of a flighty mother and confused daughter who move suddenly from Wisconsin to Beverly Hills. While the reviews all leaned toward complimentary, they differed on whether the film was a positive or negative example of family life. Cliff McNeely of Preview says it “has some wonderful and realistic moments between a mother and daughter who can’t live with or without each other. It reveals the strength of family and the importance of working through hurts and disappointments together.” MovieGuide agrees the movie stressed “that communication, love and patience are so important in child-rearing,” but says it reinforces those principles “by negative example.” Interestingly, none of the reviews contained the story of Portman’s acceptance of the role last year, which was contingent on a sex scene for her character being deleted from the script. Sarandon said in Entertainment Weekly that the change made the story better. “Natalie’s integrity actually forced the writer to be a tad more inventive.”

Rounding Out the Top Ten

Business for The Insider remained strong this week as audiences took notice of the stellar reviews. Based on a real-life battle that a 60 Minutes producer and a whistle-blowing scientist fought against tobacco companies and CBS to get their story out, this film has drawn praise within Christian circles for upholding integrity, truth, and selflessness while never ignoring the human toll on those involved in complex ethical issues. Jeffrey Overstreet of Green Lake Reflections calls The Insider a war movie. “The big strikes are lawsuits. The battlefields are men’s consciences. And the heroes are putting themselves on the front lines for the sake of telling the truth. The casualties? Integrity and reputation. Family. Lifestyle. Futures and dreams.”Landing in seventh and eighth place, respectively, were The Bachelor and House on Haunted Hill, which both brought in lackluster reviews in the mainstream press and a lack of reviews in the Christian press. The Bachelor was criticized for devaluing marriage and lacking laughs, while House on Haunted Hill was blasted for its needless gore and lacking chills. See last week’s article here for more details.Crowdpleasers Double Jeopardy and The Sixth Sense hung around in the top ten for the eighth and fifteenth weeks, respectively. Christian reviews have faulted Double Jeopardy for its immoral revenge theme and The Sixth Sense for depicting communication with the dead, although giving both high marks for entertainment. For deeper coverage on these films, click here.Steve Lansingh is editor of thefilmforum.com, a weekly Internet magazine devoted to Christianity and the cinema.

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The profundity of director Kevin Smith’s movies can be charted in the evolution of his recurring drug-dealer character, Silent Bob (a part Smith himself plays). In Smith’s first two and most juvenile films, Clerks and Mallrats, Silent Bob’s quietude was a mix of Zen detachment and stoned disinterest. Then Bob broke his silence in Smith’s more intelligent third film, Chasing Amy, to deliver a monologue driving home the movie’s point; at last he had something important to say. If that’s the case, then Silent Bob’s transformation in Dogma from zoned-out observer to full-fledged participator—he still doesn’t talk but he communicates frantically in mine-like pantomimes—gives us an indication that now Smith has something really important to say. In fact, Christians would agree it’s really the most important thing anyone can say: God is sovereign and Jesus is Savior.

Cleanliness is less than godliness

Dogma is a kind of comic fable that centers around a lapsed Catholic (Linda Fiorentino) whose faith is gradually restored when God calls her to stop two fallen angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from trying to reenter heaven, thereby negating all existence. Along the way she trades humorous theological banter with those who gradually join her party: messenger angel Metatron (Alan Rickman), a thirteenth apostle named Rufus (Chris Rock), who was left out of the Bible because he was black, former muse Serendipity (Salma Hayek), and Smith mainstays Silent Bob and Jay (Jason Mewes), who are raised to the status of prophets in this film. If it sounds like a jumbled mess, that’s because to some degree it is. From a pure filmmaking standard, Smith’s story is overlong and disjointed, he’s drawn uneven performances out of his cast, many of his punchlines fall flat, and his special effects are horribly cheesy. Really, only a glimpse of who God is gets through the bluster.But again, consider his audience is one that would more likely pick up a comic book than a novel about the Tribulation, or tune in to South Park instead of a TV movie about Mary. A glimpse of God coming from a peer’s honest wrestling with religion might wake a spiritual hunger more effectively than a lecture of a thousand pat answers could. Smith’s complex depiction of God—powerful, patient, righteous, joyful, wise, merciful, and utterly beyond our comprehension—tells audiences that perhaps they haven’t thought enough about who God is to dismiss him so casually. And by all reports it’s working: USA Today‘s Susan Wloszczyna writes in her review, “I personally haven’t thought this deeply about the religion of my birth since being confirmed,” and Charles Taylor of Salon.com says, “if Dogma can move an old agnostic like me, it can move anybody.”

Our God is an awesome God

Does the movie have anything to say to the community of believers? I believe so, although the message arrives more like an indictment than encouragement. For example, Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) unveils a promotional campaign called “Catholicism Wow!” in order to attract parishioners, which includes retiring the crucifix and replacing it with “buddy Jesus”—a cartoonish Jesus giving a big wink and a thumbs-up sign. Nothing in the film made me laugh harder than the absurd buddy Jesus, and nothing convicted me so forcefully. I know that I struggle, in an affluent America where I rarely feel need, to rely on Jesus as the bread of life, to see him as the awesome savior and majestic king instead of a ticket toward well-being. I forget sometimes that the Christian life isn’t about my needs but others’. There’s a scene later in the movie where Metatron tells Bethany about the time he had to tell the 12-year-old Jesus who he really was. Smith humanizes Christ here, letting us see him as a person instead of just an icon.If Smith is criticizing the church at all (he characterizes it as “ribbing”), he’s saying that icons of God, church dogmas (plenary indulgences take a big hit in the film), and ritualized practices of faith are not the complete picture of God and our relationship to him. Any time we think we understand who God is and know his will, Smith argues, we are shortchanging God’s immensity, his sovereignty over all creation. Now, I could make pointed rebuttal arguments championing creeds and dogmas as sustainers of faith and boundaries of community; the film ignores that side of church doctrine. But I would rather take his overarching assertion to heart: Let God out of the box I keep him in.

Watch where you step

Probably no one would dispute that there’s some truth in Dogma; the controversy is focused instead on the mixture of that truth with theological inaccuracies and just plain surreal components. (The gang fights off a monster made out of feces, for instance.) Some of the inaccuracies are obviously—and probably intentionally—wrong, such as the inclusion of muses, who are part of Greek mythology. Some are incorrect but probably due to sloppy writing more than anything: One character says it doesn’t matter what you have faith in as long as you have faith (pluralism alert!), but little else in this pro-God film would support that idea. Some are incorrect only according to Catholic beliefs, such as Mary having more children after Jesus, but do not run against Protestant beliefs. Still others are statements which Christians still disagree on, such as the assertion that the Bible was supposed to be written gender-inclusively, but not necessarily wrong. And then there are some that are only barely inaccurate, like Rufus’ background. A black man named Rufus does appear in Mark 15:21. He was probably a disciple, since Mark’s mention of him by name only implies the early church’s familiarity with him, although chances are he wasn’t one of Jesus’ inner circle, as the film suggests.Now, to some people’s way of thinking, this mixture of truth and falsity makes the movie dangerous, since viewers could have a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff. But my guess is that Kevin Smith never intended for the audience to swallow the movie whole; he’s trusting viewers to understand that much of the film is tongue-in-cheek. (Casting himself as a prophet is clue number one.) I think his intention is to prod audiences to think and search and seek instead of looking to be spoonfed easy answers. And despite his ribbing of Catholicism, I think he points viewers toward the church at the end of the film by depicting the building as the dominion of God. As far as primers for modern American Catholicism go, this one is raucous, naughty, and somewhat scrambled, but it’s the only one that has dared to reach out to the Beavis and Butthead set. In front of an audience that’s cynical about everything, Smith questions his own faith with no restraints and finds that when the dust settles his God still stands.Steve Lansingh, who writes the weekly Film Forum department for ChristianityToday.com, is editor ofthefilmforum.com, a weekly Internet magazine devoted to Christianity and the cinema.Related ElsewhereIn yesterday’s Film Forum, Lansingh looks at what Christian critics are saying about Dogma, as well as The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Pokemon: The First Movie, and other top films.The official Dogma site includes a “Hate Letter of the Week,” still photos Kevin Smith shot while filming news about the film’s reception, a diary from the set, message boards, and other stuff.Ted Olsen, online editor for ChristianityToday.com, had a preview article (click here, then scroll down) of Dogma in the November/December 1998 issue of our sister publication, Books & Culture. (After seeing the film, he has changed his mind on a couple of points.)

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Joan of Arc is one of the most famous women in the history of Christendom. Her heroism was celebrated during her lifetime, and her ongoing popularity compelled the church, which had condemned her as a heretic in 1431, to take a second look at her trial and rescind its verdict only 25 years later. Joan the woman quickly became Joan the icon, a beloved subject of paintings and sculptures and, beginning in 1899, films.In 1920, the church that had once condemned her now declared her a saint. During World War II, both sides used images of Joan in their propaganda. The Nazi collaborators compared the Allied planes bombing France to the English invaders who had executed Joan centuries before, while the resistance saw in Joan a freedom fighter who could throw off the German yoke. And Joan’s legacy lives on: in the hit song “She’s So High,” pop singer Tal Bachman groups the virgin warrior with sex symbols Cleopatra and Aphrodite as paragons of femininity; Leelee Sobieski starred in a TV movie about the maid from Lorraine last spring; and now Luc Besson has released his medieval epic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.Besson, whose last film was the hyperchaotic sci-fi adventure The Fifth Element, traces the basic outline of Joan’s life well enough. Joan (Milla Jovovich) first begins to hear voices when she is 13 years old. At 17, she enters the court of the Dauphin, Charles (John Malkovich), a French royal on the verge of losing a war against the English. The future Charles VII claims the French throne for himself; the English claim it for their infant king Henry VI. Joan mysteriously secures the Dauphin’s confidence and wins over his generals, leading his troops to victory at Orleans and paving the way for his coronation in Rheims.But then things turn sour. Joan is captured, and possibly betrayed, at Compiegne; she is then brought to trial for heresy at Rouen. A year and a day after her capture, she recants, repudiating her voices and her male dress alike (that Joan wore men’s clothes, to blend in with the other soldiers, was taken very seriously by the ecclesiastical court). However, she changes her mind a few days later and, wearing male dress again, Joan withdraws her recantation. The court condemns her as a heretic, and the secular authorities burn her at the stake.Besson connects all the right dots, taking the audience from one famous incident to the next. But the color with which he fills this portrait is a curious one, since Besson does not set out to romanticize Joan, or even to humanize her, necessarily, but to deconstruct her. This is a potentially brave move, especially in an era when audiences have shown a taste for the unbridled romanticism of such epics as Braveheart.Besson also goes out of his way to make Joan a victim—of the English, the French, the Church and, ultimately, her own deliriously uneven mind. This is a far cry from the strong female protagonists currently in vogue, as evidenced by such mediocre yet popular films as Double Jeopardy and The Bone Collector; it would also seem to be at odds with the “girl power” extolled in so many teen-oriented films.Ultimately, to paraphrase Monty Python and the Holy Grail‘s famous description of Sir Lancelot, Besson is brave but not dangerous. His courage, like that of his Joan, turns out to be mere foolhardiness in the end.There is nothing wrong with deconstructing Joan, per se. There is much about her life story that should give us pause. For example, what are we to do with the voices Joan claimed to hear, which she identified with the Catholic saints Margaret, Catherine and Michael? Are we to believe that God told Joan and her fellow French Catholics to take up arms against English Catholics, rather than turn the other cheek? Why would God vest so much interest in whether Henry VI or Charles VII became the king of France?These questions are overlooked too quickly by some Christians, who are eager to see in Joan a sort of persecuted Christ figure, or a personification of the perfection of faith. Joan had her darker side; like other Christians of her day, she spoke of conquering the Holy Land, perhaps with the help of the English, once the situation in Europe was sorted out. And she was a fierce opponent of those who attempted to reform the church before the Reformation; she was as bitterly opposed to the followers of Jan Hus as she was to the English, perhaps moreso.It is also possible to find perfectly natural explanations for some of the phenomena that impressed Joan’s contemporaries. For example, it was well known that Joan was a virgin, and it was even said that she never menstruated, which some took to be a sign that God had bestowed a sort of perpetually prepubescent innocence upon her. But it is just as likely that, due to the stress of the battlefield and her tendency to eat sparingly, Joan suffered from amenorrhea. (Besson’s film mentions Joan’s virginity once, in passing, and gives it no real significance.)In order to analyze Joan’s life properly, one must deal with Joan’s life itself. And, fortunately, Joan’s life is one of the best-documented of any figure in medieval history, due to the trials, teeming with the testimonies of Joan and her contemporaries, that were concluded in 1431 and 1456. The problem with Besson’s film is that he pays so little attention to the historical record, opting instead to fabricate many of the details on his own.For example, the saints who spoke to the historical Joan are never seen or heard in the film; instead, Joan has visions of a robed boy, followed by a man who seems to resemble Christ. (After one of Joan’s military victories, she sees this man writhing in pain, blood streaming down his face as he screams, “What are you doing to me, Jeanne? What are you doing to meeeee?”) When Joan is imprisoned, she has visions of an altogether different sort: Dustin Hoffman, playing her “Conscience,” appears and convinces her that all her efforts were based on a huge misunderstanding.Such scenes, if they had taken Joan’s testimony into account, could be bracketed as a suitably cinematic device that enables us to speculate about the inner workings of Joan’s mind. But Besson goes further; he makes objective claims about Joan’s life that contradict the historical record. In Besson’s film, Joan first becomes convinced that God has a plan for her life when, as a young girl, she discovers a sword in a field and assumes it came from heaven. “That was a sign,” she declares, to which her Conscience replies, dismissively, “No, that was a sword in a field.”The historical Joan never made such a claim. She did, however, have a sword she inherited, in a manner of speaking, from Saint Catherine of Fierbois, one of the voices Joan claimed to hear. Joan visited the saint’s shrine three times in one day during her journey to meet the Dauphin. Subsequently, while she was in another town, she sent for a sword that, it turned out, happened to lie behind the shrine’s altar. Joan claimed her voices told her where the weapon could be found.It would not take much effort to come up with a natural explanation for this story, either, but consider the difference in character between the historical and fictitious events. The Joan of history is a woman of action who has a flair for the symbolic, while the Joan of the film is a passive, superstitious child who ultimately lets her imagination run away with her. The historical incident retains an impressive element of mystery, while the film’s incident seems a flimsy pretext on which to build, let alone dismantle, an entire legend. Yet that is precisely what Besson does.In the words of Ron Maxwell, a filmmaker currently developing his own project about Joan, by the end of The Messenger, the audience has “endured two and a half hours of gibberish only to have Mr. Besson set up an historical straw man so he can tear it down.”The Joan of history was a far more fascinating figure, and she has found her way onto the big screen before (despite the pious gloss that nearly smothers her in such spectacles as Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc, a 1948 film starring Ingrid Bergman). Directors such as Carl Theodore Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928) and Robert Bresson (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962) have crafted works of great spiritual strength by converting Joan’s own testimony into dialogue. Hundreds of years after her death, Joan has continued to mesmerize even skeptics such as Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw (whose play, Saint Joan, was adapted for the big screen by Otto Preminger in 1957). There is much to admire in Joan, including her tenacity, her faith, and her courage in the face of death.But there is much to be cautious about, too. Evangelicals needn’t accept Joan’s belief in her voices at face value; for one thing, there is precious little of the gospel in what they had to say, and much of earthly politics. In Besson’s film, Joan achieves her victories by whipping her fellow soldiers into a violent frenzy; historically, there was more to it than that, but there wasn’t less. It is difficult to believe that the same Jesus who told his followers to love their enemies and to do good to those who hate them would have told Joan, through the saints, that he was willing to sacrifice the lives of both French and English troops in order to see a particular earthly king enthroned in France.Before we can discern the spirits that guided Joan, we need to grapple with her testimony and, in some sense, be faithful to it. Besson does not do this. In a rather condescending manner, he casually dismisses the very possibility of the miraculous, smirks at the gullibility of “simple people” (in the words of the Dauphin’s mother-in-law, played by Faye Dunaway), and removes from Joan most of the qualities that have made her such an endearing, and enduring, figure. This is a messenger who simply has no message to give.Peter Chattaway is a regular writer for Christianity Today and Books & Culture, as well as other publications in Canada and the U.S.Related ElsewhereRon Maxwell, director of Gettysburg, and an upcoming Joan of Arc film (tentatively titled The Virgin Warrior) attackedThe Messenger Monday on ChristianityToday.comEarlier Peter Chattaway articles from Christianity Today and Books & Culture include: Amistad Gives African Americans Their Due (B&C, March/April 1998) Amnesiacs Anonymous (B&C, July/August 1998) The Great Escape (CT, Nov. 16, 1998) The Last Good War (CT, April 5, 1999)

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Feed the Children, the Oklahoma City-based ministry of Larry Jones is battling to regain its credibility after a series of reports in the Daily Oklahoman.Jones is an evangelist and former basketball star. The daily newspaper questioned the 20-year-old charity’s financial procedures, employment of Jones family members, and other practices. Feed the Children’s trustworthiness was already bruised after some Nashville employees were caught on videotape stealing donated supplies from a warehouse in Tennessee.Jones closed the warehouse, inventoried donations, and reopened the facility with a new staff once everything was accounted for. Feed the Children also complied with an investigation by Tennessee state authorities and plans to help if the district attorney’s office brings criminal charges against the former employees.The Daily Oklahoman also recommended changes at Feeding the Children, including that Jones hire a chief of operations, create stricter board policies, and join a fiscal accrediting association such as the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.Feed the Children, which received about $200 million in private support in 1998, may join the Better Business Bureau. It already belongs to the Association of Evangelical Relief and Development Organizations, which has established accountability criteria for gift-in-kind donations.Feed the Children received an F rating in the latest charity-watchdog report by the American Institute of Philanthropy (aip), which said: “in our opinion [Feed the Children] spends only about 14 percent of its cash budget on programs that are not conducted in conjunction with fund-raising.”Consumers Digest ran a feature-length correction after publishing the findings and subsequently studying the aip’s methodology.”The methodology upon which we relied in our original article produced mistaken results, and I am personally embarrassed that we presented inaccurate conclusions,” Consumers Digest Editor-in-Chief John K. Manos wrote in a letter of apology to Jones in April. Manos called the magazine’s original conclusions “either unduly harsh or simply wrong.””Our purpose is to feed hungry children in the name of the gospel and to work with churches and mission groups,” Jones told ct.”These false allegations have not hurt the money our ministry receives, because the people of Oklahoma know us and they know we are doing a good thing here.” Jones has also met with pastors to address their concerns.Jody Veenker is editorial resident for Christianity Today.Related ElsewhereThough you have to pay for most of The Daily Oklahoman‘s past articles online, their Web site has a special free area for its coverage of Feed the Children.Find out what relief efforts Feed the Children is involved in at their Web site.

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In case you haven’t heard, the movies found religion this week this month. Dogma, a primer in Roman Catholic theology for 20-somethings raised on Scooby Doo, and The Messenger, the second of three Joan of Arc films due out in a 12-month span, premiered this week. Bringing Out the Dead, hailed by critics and rejected by audiences, explicitly deals with spiritual exhaustion and redemption. Add to that the success of Trinity Broadcasting Network’s film The Omega Code. Even the latest effluent Saturday Night Live-based film focuses on a Catholic student.As Hollywood goes, so goes the magazine industry (Quick, name three magazines that didn’t put either Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman on their cover this summer). And so, when religion is big at the box office, you can bet it’ll make its way to the newsstand too.

Books & Culture vs. New York Times Magazine on Paul Schrader

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. We’re a magazine, too, and our eyes turn to Hollywood about as much as anyone else’s for its role as cultural barometer. In July, our sister magazine Books & Culture took a look at former Calvin College student Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Bringing Out the Dead. “Has any other artist of Schrader’s generation rendered so uncompromisingly the somber Calvinist vision of human depravity?” asked Calvin College professor Roy Anker in the article.Turns out that Schrader doesn’t see himself that way. “[My characters] aren’t dark,” he tells The New York Times Magazine in its October 24 issue. “I’ve always been interested in people, perfectly intelligent people, who seem to have some sort of grasp on life but go around acting in a self-defeating way because they are expressing some neurosis—either sexual or spiritual.” What Schrader got from his Calvinist upbringing, he says, wasn’t an acute sense of man’s total depravity, but the sense “that somewhere there is a place where things actually make sense.” Go figure. Also of note, Schrader argues with other critics who say he’s expressing a modern bleakness. “There’s nothing particularly 1999 about this,” he says of his work. “The Bible is full of dark characters.” (The New York Times Magazine article is no longer free online, but can be purchased inexpensively by searching for “The Art of Darkness” at http://archives.nytimes.com/archives)

The New Yorker loves Joan, but not the movie

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, is, by all accounts, a rotten movie. (See today’s review by Peter Chattaway, or our Monday article by Ron Maxwell.) The November 15 issue of The New Yorker takes its own shots at the film (“The actress-model Milla Jovanovich, [director Luc] Besson’s ex-wife, plays Joan with bug-eyed frenzy. ‘She’s nuts,’ one of her comrades-at-arms says. Amen”). But writer Joan Acocella, the magazine’s dance critic, is more concerned with why we’ve been obsessing over Joan for the last five hundred years, and why our fascination with her has only increased since the nineteenth century.There’s no single reason, it turns out, except that her story is so amazing, so dramatic, so full of noble questions, that various factions have been able to use her as a rallying figure ever since her martyrdom. She is not just a martyr for the French, but for the Protestants, for those pushing the United States to enter World War 1, for Fascists, for feminists, for cross-dressers, etc. In the article, titled “Burned Again,” Acocella gives a history of Joan’s cult and an extensive (for a five-and-a-half page article) rundown of her pop-culture portraits. Her favorite? “Joan the Maid,” a two-part 1994 French film directed by Jacques Rivette. (The New Yorker doesn’t put its articles online. You’ll have to go the library to read it.)

Silent Bob speaks to the Chicago Tribune—and everyone else

The big religion movie of the month, of course, is Kevin Smith’s’ Dogma. Surely you’ve heard by now of all the controversy: how the Catholic League and others have staged protests, how Smith has been receiving hate mail for months before its opening. In an attempt to drum up more publicity (in addition to all the free publicity he gets from the protests), and in an attempt to assure potential audiences that the movie isn’t as bad as some critics are indicating, Smith has been making the media rounds for weeks. One of the more interesting interviews appeared in the November 7 Chicago Tribune. Right off the bat, Smith makes trouble for himself, answering the question “What would you say is the best movie about religion?” by naming The Last Temptation of Christ and Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. Both films were heavily picketed and protested. I wonder if he was joking. But Smith denies the suggestion that he’s milking the protests for publicity value: “You would think that with the [stuff] we’ve gone through that it’s something we court: We sit around a table and go, ‘Okay, how do we milk the press for this one.’ But you’ll never meet a guy who’s less interested in stirring up a storm than myself.”Then there’s this gem from the man who plays the mostly mute sage Silent Bob in his own films: “There’s no better story of redemption than a guy who was a sinner who suddenly finds Christ or faith and is no longer a sinner.”Smith also says he’s “boggled” that more blatantly anti-Christian films, like Stigmata, went by unmentioned by church watchdogs. “Here’s a movie that flat out attacks the Catholic church and says the church is lying, that they’re sitting on a secret gospel … in which Christ says, ‘Don’t build a church. Split a tree and there I am. Lift a rock and there I am.’ And they’ll go to such great lengths to keep this quiet that they’ll kill people over it. The cardinal is there strangling Patricia Arquette, and I’m the bad guy?”Smith suggests that the reason his film has received more attention is because it’s a comedy, so Christians “will immediately assume that [I’m] mocking them, which isn’t really the case.” He also suggests that part of the brouhaha occurred because the film was originally to be tied to Disney. I have another idea: Smith allowed an early draft of the script to float around the Internet. It was extremely easy to get. So for more than a year before the film came out, Christian media critics could arm themselves with direct quotes from the film. Then the film was delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again. What could have been flash-in-the-pan criticism was drawn out for months. How do I know this? Because I was one of those critics. More than a year ago I wrote an early preview of the film for Books & Culture using that Internet draft. By the way, the movie is a lot better than the script. (You’ll pay $2.50 to read “A Practicing Catholic on The Religious Storm of ‘Dogma’ ” at the Chicago Tribune archives.)

Kevin Smith vs. Bob Larson on Politically Incorrect

If the Catholic League was loud in its criticism of Dogma, Christian publicity hound Bob Larson was downright intolerable in his November 10 appearance with Kevin Smith on ABC late-night talk show Politically Incorrect. “This is Satan meets South Park,” he said of the film.Smith, however, turned the other cheek, calling his film “a ribbing,” not an attack on the church. In his defense, he offered, “Anything that’s going to speak about faith to an audience that doesn’t really think about faith or go to church anymore, even if you’re doing it in a potty-mouth fashion, isn’t the end result what matters the most?”Larson disagreed, and even suggested that Smith may know some evil spirits personally. “You know what? There’s a real demon named Loki,” said the self-proclaimed expert on demons, cults, and the paranormal “I’m interested in knowing, how did you come up with that name, because there is a demon named that.””Contrary to what you may believe,” Smith replied, “I read sometimes.”And indeed, he proved it. After a long-winded rant by Larson, Smith turned the tables, showing he did his homework. “You have to know the benefit of letting people see something for themselves before making a judgment call. Plenty of people know, like, that you perform exorcisms and they don’t see it, and they’re like, ‘He must be a kook.’ But if they saw you in action, you would like them to see you in action ’cause they’d see the power of healing, of faith.” Not even host Bill Maher had known about Larson’s exorcism claims, recently called into question by various Christian media sources.

George uses Dogma to attack the church for real

Bob Larson’s words on Politically Incorrect are far from the stupidest comments made about the Dogma controversy. That honor falls to the current issue of George magazine, which, in its attempts to write a timely article about the Catholic League, ends up downright anti-Christian. In “Mr. Smith in Hell,” writer Sharon Waxman implies that Christians have such a stranglehold on Hollywood that a film like The Last Temptation of Christ (in the words of one exec) “would probably not get made today.” Apparently she and the exec missed Stigmata. She also apparently missed The Red Violin, but she has no qualms incorporating it into her rant:”These days, there is such a growing hypersensitivity, kind of weird conservatism, [Lions Gate copresident Mark Urman] says, recalling an incident when a newspaper in the South refused an ad for the film The Red Violin because it included the image of a woman’s bare back (ironically, the film had no sexual content). The comment is strange on so many levels. For one, Waxman indicates that it would be strange for a paper to reject the image of a woman’s bare backside if the film itself contained no sexual content. But actually, the film had quite a bit of sexual content—one major section of the film revolved around a violinist who played best during intercourse.Still, the article does offer at least one insight into Smith’s theology. In Catholic grade school, Smith was taught by a nun that when Jesus called Simon Peter Rock, “he was ribbing him. He knew Peter would deny him. That’s when Christ came alive for me—when I discovered he had a sense of humor.”Ted Olsen is Online Editor of Christianity Today and ChristianityToday.comRelated ElsewherePrevious Amassed Media articles:There Be Gold in Them Thar Fills, Claims Charisma (Nov. 10)Amy Speaks, but Doesn’t Have Much to Say (Nov. 8)Why The New Republic Likes Millennialism (Nov. 3)

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LONDON, November 15 (Compass)—Turkmen Baptist pastor Rahim Tashov, from the eastern town of Turkmenabad (formerly Chardjou), was freed on November 12 and is now home with his wife and child, sources close to the case told Compass over the weekend.Tashov, who had spent 12 days in the investigation prison in Turkmenabad, was taken to the regional governor’s office before being freed. There he was given an administrative fine of 200,000 manats, one month’s minimum wage, under the law on unsanctioned meetings.Tashov was warned that if he continues to hold meetings of his unregistered congregation, he would face charges under the criminal code and much heavier penalties. It has been Tashov’s consistent position that the Turkmenistan Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and religion and that he is merely exercising this right.The officers who were holding him also threatened to take away any of his property that they consider illegal. This implies that Christian literature and a computer confiscated from his home at the time of his arrest on October 31 will not be returned. It also means the National Security Committee (KNB) might make further raids on his home to confiscate any remaining Christian literature.Although Pastor Tashov is not hopeful of success, he is reportedly contemplating bringing a legal action against the law enforcement agencies over the fine and the confiscations.It is not known if Tashov was maltreated in prison this time. One friend who called him after his release reported that the conversation was clearly being intercepted; the sound was cut when conversation turned from general subjects to the pastor’s arrest, resuming only when Tashov had finished speaking.Tashov, 28, was arrested October 31 by Khojaev (first name unknown), the local chief of the KNB in Turkmenabad. This was Tashov’s second arrest—he had first been detained on October 24 after KNB officers raided his church during the Sunday service. He was freed the following evening after being severely beaten.In the interval between the two arrests, Tashov had once again tried to register his independent Baptist church with the authorities. He received no written response to his application, but was told verbally that the authorities would never allow a Protestant church to be registered in Turkmenistan.Only the officially sanctioned Muslims and the Russian Orthodox Church have registration in Turkmenistan, and the government treats all activity by any other religious groups as illegal and subject to administrative or criminal penalty.Copyright © 1999 Compass DirectRelated ElsewhereSee our earlier coverage of this story, “Pastor Faces Thursday Trial In Turkmenistan“The U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom examines Turkmenistan religious freedom from political and societal perspectives, and remarks on what the U.S. government has done in response to human rights infringements in the country.

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