An Experiment in Using Film for a Religious Program

 

I asked myself what I would like a church service to be. I determined to start from scratch. Well, I guess that is not truly possible, since there seem to be antecedents to everything we do. But I created a church service without regard to what is typically done in any church service I have ever been to. I did have three categories I felt had to be covered. I had studied Harvey Cox book, Secular City, with Professor Frank Pack during my Master s in Religion at Pepperdine University. Cox identified three areas of church mission: kerygma, diakonia, and koinonia (message, service, fellowship). I wanted something in this service that represented each of these areas.

I also had several other concerns that influenced my choices in what I included in this program.

1) I was influenced by Paul Tillich s contention that there is a powerful relationship between Art and Religion when the Church is thriving.

I also believe that movies are the most powerful contemporary art form.

2) I was concerned that pictorial representations of Christian themes should present the universal themes that apply (and thus are represented by) to all cultures.

3) I decided to conduct this program on the night of Easter Sunday, so I wanted to highlight the resurrection theme, and thus also baptism.

4) I was influenced by T.S. Eliot s essay on a Definition of Culture, in which he argues for the pervasiveness of Christianity throughout culture.

5) I wanted to take examples from culture that specifically reference Christianity, and place them in a Christian context. (I believe that it is the Christian who makes the program Christian.)

6) I wanted the program to be parabolic. That is, I wanted the audience to have to do their own work in terms of figuring out what it meant. For those with ears, let them hear.

7) I wanted the choices of materials I included in the service to have a huge possibility of making an impact on audience members, and for their to be a lot going on to choose from, a different way of making the audience active.

8) With Theodore Roethke, I believe the cardinal sin of an educator is to be boring.

9) I wanted to keep the service under an hour.

10) I wanted to be authentic in all my choices.

The following is the description of the program that I assembled:

    Although I personally think any of the components of this program could suitably be used in a worship service, I adapted the program for a college convocation program. (The main distinction that I would make is that I did not, would not have communion in this program that was open to all comers.

    With exceptions, the main thrust of the program was video clips from films projected on a screen in the middle of the front of the auditorium. These clips were put in the perspective and context of a screen on the left and a screen on the right that were running independent pictures. The screen on the left showed, without sound, Zeferelli s Jesus of Nazareth.

    The screen on the right showed slides of famous paintings of the life of Jesus. The slides emphasized classic paintings by such masters as Titian and Rembrandt, but also were punctuated by visions of Jesus painted by artists from non-Western cultures. My thinking in playing the life of Jesus on the left screen was that any meaning found on the center screen was only meaningful in the context of the life and history of Jesus. My thinking on the use of the paintings of the right screen was that great times in the history of the Church are accompanied by great art, and that the impact of Jesus goes well beyond Western Civilization. And I felt that anyone who felt lost in the myriad of images being shown on the center screen could find focus by meditating on the soundless images of the left and right screens.

    The center screen was the source of the most activity although I did not start there. Before any of this began I did my diads. This is something of my own invention, in fact one that I successfully submitted to Learning Magazine. By matching two lines of participants and then having each of them move to the right I was able to have each person in attendance greet each and every other person. This only took about three or four minutes. This was my gesture towards the importance of fellowship as a primary responsibility of the Church. This tended to personalize the program and students were also given the opportunity to participate in our own film making, a videotape of each person s prayer requests that we used later in the program. During the diads I had two Stevie Wonder songs playing in the background that included these lyrics:

                Don t let no body bring you down

                God is gonna show you higher ground

                He s the only friend you have around

and then in the second song,

                Hello Jesus

                Jesus loves you

                Are you hearing

                What he s saying?

                Jesus died on Cross for you

                I need you Jesus

    My recollection is that this album, Innervisions, won the Grammy for best album. The lyrics are very straightforward testimony on what is ordinarily perceived as a strictly secular album.

    After we had met each other, participants returned to their seats. I started the video part of the program by showing a scene from the movie, The Mission. I showed the scene of the priest being tied to a cross and sent down the river and down the waterfall. With this I played music from later in the film, a section of the opera, Carmina Burana. While the left screen was showing the history of Jesus going inexorably to the cross, the center screen renewed the theme of sacrifice in a more contemporary setting (and modern movie). Thus the story in center screen only makes true sense in the context of the story on the left screen. Further, I wanted to play the music from Carl Orff s Carmina Burana because it suggests the many ironies of the relationship of the Church with popular culture. Orff based his opera on a collection of Latin, Middle High German, and Old French works written by travelling scholars, clerics, and students at the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern around 1300. This collection was not particularly religious, yet they suvived only because they were preserved by this religious organization. The originals Orff worked with tended to extoll worldly pleasures, which would not seem particularly religious, yet at the same time satirized the clergy for their decline in morals and education. It is ironic that these secular verses are in some ways a challenge to greater morality, and at the same time it is the religious organization that preserves the verses that have such hedonistic themes. I played the Fortuna. This song praised the goddess of fortune who moves in unpredictable ways. The movie used these dramatic verses in the battle scenes. But since this is the best remembered music in the film, I chose to use them to accompany the plight of the priest who is being sent to his death on a cross. In the context of the paintings of Jesus on the right screen and the life of Jesus on the left screen, the death of the priest has a meaning in the center of a song about fortune.

    I followed the segment from The Mission with a clip from U2 s concert film, Rattle and Hum. I wonder how many listeners have noted that the lyrics include,

                I was there when they crucified my Lord

                I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword

                I threw the dice when they pierced his side

                But I ve seen live conquer the great divide.

    This was the one time when I did not project the slides of the paintings on the right screen, but, rather, projected the lyrics to the song as U2 sang it on the center screen.

    I followed Rattle and Hum with a segment from Robert Townsend s The Five Heartbeats. While the film is ostensibly about the rise to success and break-up of this singing group, the pivotal scene in the movie is an atonement scene between two of the former members, and this scene, natually enough, takes place in a Church. The Robert Townsend character, the most alienated by the group s break-up, attends Church because of the invitation of the member who went on to become a minister. At Church Townsend is reconciled with the member who had become a drug addict, but now sings in the Church choir, and this, then leads to the atonement among all the Five Heartbeats.

    I played our video tape of our participants prayer requests next. I followed that segment with the only other non-video segment of the program. I wanted some sort of service component to the evening. At any given time about one hundred-forty Pepperdine students are away studying in Europe. Having been the resident faculty member in European programs three different times, I realize virtually all of those students need to hear from home as often as possible. I had our participants write post cards to anyone they knew over seas. I had the list of students projected on the front screen and I read their names aloud. In the background I played music from two different sources. I played a section from Handel s Messiah, in recognition that the German Handel wrote this work in England, two of the three countries of our European programs. However, also recognizing that popularity of the European programs in not entirely due to their participation in the high culture of Europe, I also played the only selection that did not have any obvious religious content, I played Bobby McFerrin s Be Happy.

    This was followed with a period of meditation. I chose a piece from Vivaldi. This added a reference to our third European program, Italy, and is the center piece of a video featuring flowers. Since Jesus is often thought of a the Rose of Sharon mentioned in the Song of Solomon, since Vivaldi was a priest who also wrote music, I chose this piece. I also lit a stick of rose incense. Psalms 141:2 says Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense. Revelation 5:8 says, The bowl is full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Revelation 8:3 says, He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God...

    With regard for the Easter theme and my own heritage in the churches of Christ and our practice of baptism by immersion, I next screened three consecutive baptism scenes taken from the films, Tender Mercies, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, and Slingblade.

    I wanted to end the program with a very upbeat film clip. I chose the gospel scene from the film Blues Brothers. Of all my selections I felt this one was the most difficult. It is very difficult to imagine that this film celebrated anything but the music. However, it was an authentic gospel choir and my belief that it is the Christian who makes something religious made me feel that the energy of this segment was valuable and tranformable.

    The entire program was over in less than one hour. What participants took from this service seemed to have much to do with what expectations they brought. Personally I was very excited by the results. I would like to see the same program several times because I felt that the individual could take the experience in many different worthwhile, and religious, ways. I felt it was a rich and stimulating experience. Certainly I did not expect any one individual to recognize the many considerations I have mentioned in this description. But I do think that the program worked enormously well as a parable leaving students with much to think about, pray about, revisit, and that this description is a tool to further advance the religious ideas of the program.

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