A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

One approach to infusing religion in a film is to utilize a secular lens to keep overt religious content hidden such that only its messages that can be stated in a secular way come through. The basic values of a religion can be transmitted without specific religious belief-claims possibly turning off some viewers. Given the mass audience that a typical film can reach, the medium is a good means for presenting people with values that come out of religion but have their own intrinsic worth apart from the related religious belief-claims. Film can play a role, therefore, in enabling the values of a religion to survive the religion’s downfall. From watching the film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), a viewer would not know that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. His wife says at one point in the film that Fred reads scripture and prays daily, but that is the only clue in the film that his religious faith is the source of his motivation for and messages on his show, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

To be sure, Fred had a masters degree in child development, but as a very religious man, he was motivated apply Jesus’ teachings to kids. As he said on "The Charlie Rose Show," “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Fred is quoting from the book, Le Petit Prince. Fred then elaborates: “What we see is rarely essential; what’s behind your face is what’s essential.” Charlie Rose then asks him, “What can’t we see about you that’s essential to you—to understanding you?” Fred replies, “Well, you can’t see my spiritual life unless you ask me about it.”  Rather than pushing his faith on others, he let its fruits speak for themselves. Fred would likely agree with the biblical passage, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”[1] Before Fred taped each episode of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood,” he would quietly recite this short prayer: “Let some word that is heard be thine.”[2] The thine refers to God. Rogers saw himself as a conduit rather than the source of his messages broadcasted on his long-running television show. He believed that the Holy Spirit would make up for his shortfalls in getting the messages out.[3]

Fred Rogers once said that his ministry was the “broadcasting of grace throughout the land.”[4] Grace is a vague word. It is what God gives to people without them meriting it. According to Shea Tuttle, author of Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers, “It’s not like he had a covert theological mission, but religion was so much a part of who he was that it was always there.”[5] Tuttle adds that the message that God loves us just the way we are was at the heart of Fred’s theology.[6] Rogers said the central message of his television show, that you are loved just the way you are, is based on God’s concern for all creation.[7] God’s concern issues out in the Gospels as Jesus’ preaching on love as universal benevolence—caritas seu benevolentia universalis. On Fred Roger’s television show, the resulting secularized message to the viewers is that they are fine just as they are, so they need not do anything to prove themselves. “You don’t need to speak overtly about religion in order to get a message across,” Rogers once said.[8]

Unconditional acceptance makes intimacy possible. Television can be an intimate medium, Fred tells Charlie Rose on “The Charlie Rose Show.” Fred tells Charlie, “Jesus said to the people around him, please let the little people come up here; I want to learn from them; I want to be with them—these innocent people who make up the kingdom of heaven.” The intimacy that Fred wanted to establish with the children also reminded him of the Incarnation, wherein God comes close to humanity by God becoming flesh in Jesus Christ.[9] As every episode of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” opens, Fred sings about wanting his viewers to be his neighbor, which means he is inviting them just as they are to be close to him. He does not mention Jesus’ view on children or the Incarnation. He is using his faith’s teachings rather than preaching about them explicitly.

In the film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the passage about Jesus and children is nowhere to be found, yet its meaning is one of the major themes of the movie: kids should be accepted as they are. At one point, Fred says that each person is precious. Precious to whom? Or what? The answer is left unstated. Generally speaking, the religious substratum of Fred’s spiritual life and its direct impact on his television show is hidden in the film under the language of secular psychology, though a few choice words from the religious lexicon present clues that Fred is motivated beyond being a therapist.

When Fred meets Lloyd, who has just had a physical fight with his father at his sister’s wedding, Fred’s message concerns forgiveness and anger management. The former is no stranger to Christian teachings. In the faith narratives, Jesus urges his followers to ask God to forgive their trespasses, as his followers have forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Jesus reminds his followers, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”[10] But in the film, Fred leaves Jesus’ teachings out and instead tells Lloyd that it is difficult to forgive those people whom we love. Fred is referring to Lloyd’s difficulty in forgiving his father for running out on himself, his sister, and his mother when she was dying. When his father does finally apologize just before he dies, Lloyd has a muted reaction, as if he were just taking it all in. The family’s happy ending may imply that Lloyd has forgiven his father, but the question remains as to whether he has forgiven himself. The family’s happy ending may mean that he has done so by the end of the film. My point is that forgiveness is a religious term, and yet in the film, Fred Rogers does not present it as such. The same can be said of his concern for Lloyd.

Besides forgiveness, compassion is also salient in the film. Fred stresses the importance of empathy and kindness. It is no coincidence that Jesus of the Gospels says to his disciples, “I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with me know three days and have nothing to eat.”[11] Also, in seeing the people, “he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”[12] When Jesus went ashore, he “saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.”[13] Finally, “Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they regained their sight and followed him.”[14] Fred does not lecture Lloyd on Jesus’ view on the importance of compassion; instead, Fred follows Jesus’ lead by empathizing with Lloyd even just after the two men met. It is the compassion itself that is important, and it can be conveyed by the intimate medium of film by how concerned Fred is when Lloyd admits that his physical fight was with his father.

Fred’s emotional interest in Lloyd from when Lloyd discloses that he was in a fight closely resembles that of a pastor even though Fred does not discuss religion with Lloyd, but uses words familiar to psychology. Fred’s compassion goes beyond that of a therapist because his empathy is intense and sustained. As Fred’s manager, Bill, says to Lloyd, “You’re still here because Fred wants it.” It is no longer a matter of Lloyd’s interview with Fred; the story has become Lloyd’s family problems. Rather than standing back and being as objective as possible, Fred literally leans closer to Lloyd in a way that shows an emotional sensitivity that a spiritual person would have. That Fred’s wife, Joanne, tells Lloyd that Fred reads scripture and prays for people daily is a hint that the ordained minister rather than a child-development psychologist is at work.

To the extent that some viewers may not like explicit mention or visuals of a religious nature, translating such themes (e.g., teachings) into a secular language could extend the religion’s reception. Moreover, in a secular culture, this can result, in effect, in the religion being expanded and even extended temporally. For example, the value of not fighting back and helping nasty people (i.e., loving thy enemies) can be spread without mentioning that Jesus preaches love of neighbor and that Jesus is the Son of God. Some viewers may not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and yet be open to the value of helping those who insult and even attack them. Doing so can have intrinsic value that could survive even the demise of the religion. Should Jesus’ identity ever become a matter of myth, then Jesus’ message on how to treat other people could at least continue on, and even be woven into the fabric of a post-Christian society. By putting secular robes on religious content, films can demonstrate that such content be extracted from its religious moorings and thus have intrinsic value.  

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[1] Matthew 6:5-6.

[2] Daniel Burke, “Mr. Rogers Was a Televangelist to Toddlers,” CNN.com, November 19, 2019.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Matthew 6:15.

[11] Matthew 15:32.

[12] Matthew 9:36.

[13] Matthew 14:14.

[14] Matthew 20:34.

Boy Erased

The film, Boy Erased (2018), is a drama that deals in a serious  way with the question of whether homosexuality is a choice, and thus whether conversion therapy is effective or an ideological ruse under the subterfuge of psychology and religion. Directed and adapted to the screen by Joel Edgerton, he could have dived deeper in writing the screenplay by making explicit the contending assumptions and ideas. Surprisingly, nowhere in the film do any of the biblically-oriented religionists quote the applicable verses in the Old Testament or in Paul's letters, or engage in a theological debate. The film could have gone further intellectually than the relatively superficial emphasis on the dramatic narrative.

The story centers around the post coming-out tension between Jared Eamons and his parents Nancy and Rev. Marshall Eamons. They are biblically-oriented, socially conservative Christians. That Marshall is the pastor of a church tells us just how important religion is to that family. Nancy and Marshall send Jared to a conversion-therapy day-program run by Victor Sykes. Jared is under pressure to lie in order to avoid having to move into one of the bunk houses on the church premises for a year. This is not, however, to say that Victor is an ordained clergyman; neither is he educated or even trained in therapy or even counseling, as Nancy finds out when she finally comes to remove Jared from the program. She tells her son that he will be coming home with her in spite of Marshall’s decision that the boy could no longer live in the house as long as he is gay. The assumption here is that a gay person could become heterosexual.

That Victor has no credentials either in religion or psychology is something that Nancy suspects after looking over Jared’s materials from the program (Jared and his mother stay at a hotel during the day-program). The lack of credentials as a clergy or in Christian counseling or therapy is not made much of in the film. The matter of clergyless congregations, such as Quaker unprogrammed Meetings, is thus not attended to. Specifically, the assumption typically under the rubric of the priesthood of the people dismisses or otherwise ignores the theological and ministerial knowledge (and practice) gained at divinity schools and seminaries. To be sure, clergy atop a church hierarchy can exploit their esoteric knowledge by ignoring that of the laity. Hence, some congregations have clergy whereas others do not.

I visited a Bahai place of worship a few times in 2019 because I had not studied that religion in my formal education. Believing that anyone can have access to the knowledge contained in the scriptures, the members of the Bahai religion eschew a clergy in principle and practice. I detected a real bias against people who have advanced knowledge. In fact, some of the members and even an associated non-member displayed an instinctual-like aversion to me after I had informed them of my academic credentials, including a ministry degree. In a discussion group, for instance, when I was introducing myself, the group leader (not a Bahai member, though a regular) interrupted me with the false claim that the group was representative of the Bahai faith. I suspect he was trying to discredit me, perhaps from a fervent belief in ideological egalitarianism which denies the value of expertise. 

I returned to the group a few more times, as I was able to learn quite a bit from the Bahai members about their religion. The same man was presiding. After I had just spoken, a woman asked me a specialized question directed to me (i.e., related to the expert knowledge I had just imparted). The group's leader interrupted me as I was beginning to answer the woman, aggressively insisting, "The question is for the group!" I saw in this response a stubborn refusal to recognize my expertise in religion. That he thought some non-scholars could answer the question just because they were laity demonstrated to me the cognitive-warping impact of ideology, including prejudice. I left the group immediately; I had seen enough. I understood why the religion refused to have clergy.

A week later, a Bahai member who had been at the group called me to try to convince me to come back to the group. Enforcing my scholar-identity, I said I would be glad to come back and give a talk or lead a discussion group. The member bristled, as if I were claiming too much for myself. This told me that he (and others) were disinclined to recognize me as a scholar (i.e., having expert knowledge) to such an extent that they had ignored my stated reason for being there and instead thought I was there because I was interesting in becoming a member. In actuality, the members who eschewed my credentials impiously presumed too much for themselves.

In the late 1960's, students at some universities in the United States held teach-ins because those students presumed that a professor was not necessary for knowledge to be learned. I have run into (usually young) people who declared to me that they are self-educated, as if this were equivalent to a college education. Even students getting a doctorate entirely online (one of whom didn't know what a thesis statement is!) tend to believe that they are getting a doctorate without even having to go to seminars. 

A similar issue concerns nurse practitioners who are becoming interchangeable with physicians at some medical clinics. Such nurses who specialize in psychiatry represent themselves as psychiatrists, while counselors over-reach onto doing therapy with impunity. Although saving costs has no doubt been driving this trend, I have been stunned to hear more than one nurse tell me that the training of a nurse practioner is the same as a physician’s own. Once I made a check-up appointment with a physician only to find myself with the nurse-practitioner, who of course insisted that she had had the same training. In general terms, dismissing credentials--typically those that the person does not have--can be viewed as the democratization of a vocation. This is, I submit, a case of decadence particularly severe in American society. 

In the film, that Victor gets away with having no credentials in either religion or psychology is stunning; this implies that he arrogantly assumes that he does not need the requisite education and training. Furthermore, it shows how much an ideology can stretch religion beyond its domain, such that therapy can legitimately be done without education and training in psychology. A disrespect of the encroached-upon domains goes with the over-reach. This could have been made explicit in the film.

Although Nancy objects to Victor's lack of credentials, she does not call him out on having encroached on another domain. "Being a biblical Christian does not enable you to do therapy," she could have said as she is shouting at him in the parking lot (and she is not the first to do so). Viewers could have received the idea that religion may have the proclivity to encroach excessively onto other domains, even without the need to undergo entrance exams at the borders.

Fortunately, the viewers do get to learn about and even assess the therapy program from seeing it from the perspective of the boys and girls in it. To be sure, more could be grasped with access to Victor and his staff away from the kids! Why does the staffer become so aggressive toward Jared when he grabs his phone in the office? Does Victor and his staff realize on some level that they are mistreating the kids, as when Victor invites one boy's family to spank the boy with a bible to rid him of the demon? That boy goes on to commit suicide. 

Nevertheless, some viewers may pick up on the fallacious logic that claims that because a person is not born a physician, it must therefore be a choice to become one. That is, Victor conflates vocations with instinctual urges. A participant objecting would mean that more viewers would grasp the fallaciousness of the argument. Also, as Victor accuses Jared of lying about having stayed over at a friend’s house without doing more than holding hands in bed, Jared could be made to say something like, “Hey, you didn’t believe me when I told you I’m not angry at my dad, and now you want me to lie about what I’ve done. I bet you’ve never studied psychology! You’re a fraud!” If saying this is unrealistic because Jared fears being sent to one of the facility's bunk houses for a year, the lines could come from another boy. 

In short, I’m suggesting that film is better as a medium when it is written like a music composition of more than a few levels that the mere dramatic can provide. In terms of homosexuality, more of a theological basis could have been in the script. Is being gay a sin? Is it caused by a demon inside the gay person? What is the religious basis for the claim that homosexuality is a choice? Quoting the relevant Old Testament passages as well as Paul would have brought this perspective out at a deeper level than is in the film and helped to distinguish this basis from a basis in psychology. This does not mean that the latter has necessarily viewed homosexuality in positive terms. The APA considered homosexuality to be a mental illness until 1973. Interestingly, Victor pushes the religious (demon) explanation rather than the mental-illness angle even though he is claiming to do therapy. 

The relationship between religion and psychology is difficult to discern, in large part because of how different the two underlying paradigms are. Pointing to a demon as a cause is much different than pointing to a medical cause. Relating the two seems almost impossible, yet this was not always the case. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, regarded the medically ill as sinful. Sin involves the absence of God. To Aquinas and Leibniz, this meant something less than from full being. It makes no sense to say that a person with a mental illness has a deficiency of being. Whether mental illness results in an absence of, rather than relationship with God is a difficult question. In his text, People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck theorizes that malignant narcissism is actually a defense mechanism surrounding a sense of emptiness inside. Such emptiness might resonate with a feeling of being apart from God. Does evil lie in the felt-emptiness inside or in the narcissistic attitude and conduct? Felt-emptiness inside is not necessarily the same thing of the lack of being that Aquinas and Leibniz associated with sin. Relating two very different paradigms, including basic assumptions and tenets, is fraught with difficulty even if the two overlap a bit. 

Unfortunately, the film does not go much into theology, including on whether homosexuality should be taken as a sin (and as distinct to a mental illness). Instead, homosexuality is likened to, or categorized with) alcoholism, violence in the home, and mental illnesses. Looking at the Biblical text itself, homosexuality is a sin. However, some Christians argue that the biblical claim is culturally and time-specific, meaning that the view of homosexuality in Israel millentia ago is reflected in the text. But does it even make sense to invalidate something that is part of Scripture? I submit that good arguments exist on both sides. Unfortunately, the film does not make this tension explicit. When Jared's father has two other ministers come over to discuss Jared, a discussion involving Nancy could have delved into the theological level. Nancy's first misgivings would be evident so her confrontation with Victor in the church parking-lot would be more believable.

The film does best with the dramatic levels centered on Jared’s inner struggles and that which exists between him and his father. The ending of the film is on those two trying to reconcile; that Jared would remain gay is almost treated as an aside. Nancy’s turnabout in coming to the aid of her son after he calls for her to pick him up is also salient toward the end of the film, but another opportunity to go deeper is missed because she does not tell Jared (and the viewer) what she found so objectionable about the therapy. Was it just Victor’s lack of credentials, or the basic assumption of gays being able to rid themselves of the instinctual urges?

The medium of film, even with its confining duration of a few hours, can go beyond the emotional levels of the dramatic or comedic to evince ideational tensions and even the underlying assumptions tussling for supremacy. Just as an antagonist tries to conquer a protagonist, ideas and principles, whether philosophical or theological, jest with each other. In fact, Nietzsche claims that an instinctual urge is the content of an idea. Ideas tussle for supremacy in the unconscious; the idea that comes to the conscious surface is the most powerful. Film can reflect this multi-level structure even to the point of including less powerful ideas that the viewers are not aware of, yet are influenced by. This should not be used, however, to shirk the ideational level of a film, especially when the story contains a salient controversial theme or aspect.  

The Seminarian

A closeted gay student at an evangelical seminary is a contrast with a rather obvious clashing point, with the predicted ending being that the student is kicked out and must find or come into his own identity free of exterior constraints. Yet The Seminarian (2010) smartly avoids that road well-traveled. Instead, the screenwriter risks giving theology a prominent, and perhaps even central place in the film. The venture is at odds with the bottom-feeder mentality of Hollywood represented in the film, De-Lovely (2004), in which Cole Porter’s bisexuality occupies center-stage. Comparing these two films, irony drips off the screen as De-Lovely, which is patterned after a theatrical musical, looks down on Hollywood and yet has a common theme, while The Seminarian is a film through and through and yet takes the high road by supposing that the viewers can and will stay through some substantive theology, which transcends social issues and even the dramatic.

Theologically, The Seminarian, through its protagonist Ryan, wrestles with the relation of God as love and the love that is in human relationships. Specifically, if God made us capable of feeling love for another person so to demonstrate that God is love, then why do we suffer in relationships in which there is love? Ryan, who is suffering because he is falling for a guy he met online but keeps postponing a second date, runs the risk of using theological analysis to work out a personal problem. He supposes that we suffer in matters of love here below because God suffers for want of love from us. The unmentioned implication is that Jesus suffers on the Cross because we have fallen short from loving God. We have hurt God and so stand in need of being redeemed in order to be able to love God such that it will not suffer from want of our love. The suffering servant on the Cross is not just a human suffering, but also the divine suffering. Yet doesn’t this imply that God is incomplete in some way? God may have created humans so to be loved by us—hence the hurt from having love denied—but God itself is the fullness of love. As Augustine and Calvin emphasize in their respective writings, God is love. This is the subtitle of the film!

So, as in most theological problems worth their salt, an internal problem can be found and begs to be solved. Although Ryan attempts a solution in his thesis, the problem of God being complete unto itself is not addressed in the film. Perhaps God voluntarily created a vulnerability within the divine when he created humans to love, and thus glorify, it. The second person of the trinity, the Logos, is a part or manifestation of God since before the beginning, and we can perhaps find the vulnerability—even if still when the suffering of God is potential—meaning before the Incarnation of Jesus as a god-man, fully human and fully divine, and even so fully able to suffer. In other words, the divine in Jesus suffers too; it is not just his human nature that suffers. Interestingly, the Gnostic text, The Gospel of Philip, has the divine leave, or abandon, Jesus on the cross just before he dies, and thus after he suffers. The question is perhaps whether love that is by its very divine-nature complete or whole yet suffer. If so, the pain would be from humans not loving God as we were meant (by God) to; the pain suffered by God would not be from a want of divine love.

It is significant, I submit, that a Hollywood film would give viewers such ideas to ponder rather than focus on the gay-guy-meets-conservative-religionists element of the narrative—a theme which had already enjoyed pride of place in many films that tease the tension that is in a society in motion. To be sure, Hollywood is indeed still capable of dishing out banal sugar to a superficial public, but this makes the choice made in the screenwriting of The Seminarian all the more noteworthy and deserving of emulation.