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Aasia Bibi must be very special. She is only one out of an estimated 4.75 billion people who live in countries that have what the Pew Forum terms "high restrictions on religion." Yet in November, Pope Benedict XVI drew attention to her case and in January called on the government of Pakistan to repeal the blasphemy laws under which she was sentenced to die. The pope pointed to the assassination of Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, who had asked Pakistan's president to free Aasia Bibi. Blasphemy laws, the pope said, served primarily as a pretext for violence against religious minorities.

He was proved right this week as Shabaz Bhatti, the government's minister whose job it is to represent those religious minorities, was assassinated on his drive to work. Leaflets at the scene, reportedly left by Bhatti's killers, said he was targeted because he was "a Christian infidel" who was working to reform the blasphemy law.

In the West, 21st-century Christians find it hard to understand how Pakistan can have blasphemy laws. But blasphemy laws were long an integral part of Christendom's own legal framework.

James Nayler was England's most famous blasphemer. He led a splinter group within George Fox's rapidly growing Quaker movement at a time when it was, in the words of historian Meic Pearse, "fearlessly provocative." The Quakers' "madcap sectarianism" threatened "established order, hierarchy, and property" and provoked harsh responses.

In 1655, in an apparent reenactment of Jesus' triumphal entry, Nayler rode into Bristol, England, on horseback while his followers sang "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth." After a 13-day trial, prosecutors asked for the death penalty, but the Puritan Parliament voted it down 96 to 82. Instead, they sentenced Nayler to be whipped through the streets of London (310 lashes, one for every gutter he crossed), branded on the forehead with a blasphemer's B, have his tongue pierced with a hot iron, sent back to Bristol riding backward on a horse, whipped again, then imprisoned indefinitely at hard labor. Horrified at the severity of this punishment, 100 eminent citizens tried to intervene on Nayler's behalf, but he persisted in his outrageousness, and "they left him in wrath."

Although England abolished the death penalty for blasphemy in 1676, it did not repeal its blasphemy laws until 2008. As recently as 1921, a British court sentenced a blasphemer to a fatal nine months' hard labor, and in the 1970s evangelical activists bullied comedy troupe Monty Python with the law while they were producing The Life of Brian.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws are a holdover from British colonial government, which hoped to keep the peace by banning people from attacking each other's religions. But when military strongman Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq came to power in 1977, he supercharged the law to demonstrate his allegiance to Islam and bolster his authority. In 1986, Zia's government added the death penalty to the blasphemy law—not a sign of piety, but an instance of cynical demagoguery.

Pakistan has not yet executed anyone for blasphemy. Death sentences are usually commuted. But vigilante bullets have killed many who have escaped the government's noose. The laws are popular. Mobs have rallied to show support for Governor Taseer's assassin. And Pakistani Muslim leaders have offered only the most tepid of condemnations of Bhatti's murder, with several saying it was a U.S. government plot. One prominent newspaper assured its readers that his death "has nothing to do with the blasphemy law" and that Bhatti actually supported the execution of blasphemers.

Muslim scholars say that blasphemy laws have no basis in Islam, blaming colonial authorities for importing a Western concern into the Indian subcontinent. Other scholars say the laws are intended only for Muslims who badmouth their own religion, but never for Christians like Bibi (who credibly denies the charges against her).

Blasphemy laws were long an integral part of Christendom's own legal framework.

Why do blasphemy laws exist? In Pakistan, Zia co-opted religious sentiment for political purposes. In England, secular authorities believed blasphemy laws protected the state. If the head of the state is also the head of the church, some argued, nonconformity in religion is the same as sedition. In 1676, England's chief justice, stating that the Christian religion was part of England's common law, ruled that blasphemy dissolved citizens' sense of obligation to the government. To speak against Christianity was to subvert the law. Blasphemy laws, it seems, are really more about government power than about God.

In the West, public sentiment against the enforcement of blasphemy laws was not the fruit of clever arguments by Enlightenment deists. Rather, opposition rode a rising tide of individualized piety, especially among Quakers and Baptists. In addition, a dawning realization that Christ's kingdom is a spiritual one, not to be identified with any earthly political order, led people to believe that the state should tend its own garden while the churches tend theirs. Heart religion, so important to evangelicals, and the secularization of government paved the way for the disuse and eventual repeal of blasphemy laws.

The past few months have seen astonishing uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, and Libya. Weary of authoritarian regimes, crowds clamor for liberty. In Western history, individualized piety has fostered both religious freedom and democratic impulses. It can be so in the Muslim world. That world is increasingly ripe for democracy—and for the eradication of blasphemy laws.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

This week, militant Islamic extremists killed Shehbaz Bhatti, a Pakistani government minister who worked on Bibi's behalf and spoke out against the blasphemy law.

Previous Christianity Today articles on blasphemy law include:

Pakistani Governor Who Supported Christian Woman Killed | Salman Taseer had voiced support for a pardon for Asia Bibi, a woman who is sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy law. (January 4, 2011)

Christian Woman Sentenced to Hanging for Blasphemy | Asia Bibi, the first woman to get the death sentence under Pakistan's blasphemy law, was charged with insulting Muhammad. (Her.meneutics, November 19, 2010)

Indonesia Keeps Blasphemy on the Books | Court rules that 1965 blasphemy law is constitutional. (April 20, 2010)

Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws Strike Again–and May Get Worse | Christian sentenced to death, nursing school shut down. (June 7, 2007)

Cutting the deficit without sacrificing the needy is a moral imperative, several prominent evangelicals stressed Thursday in a push-back against debate over taking government budget cuts out of humanitarian aid.

“From a fiscal perspective, cuts in global health programs are insignificant; from a moral and humanitarian perspective, they would be tragic,” said Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George Bush and current Washington Post columnist.

Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Gideon Strauss, President of The Center for Public Justice, announced on a conference call March 3 that they, along with other faith leaders including Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter and Jim Wallis of Sojourners, have signed a document entitled “Christian Proposal on the American Debt Crisis.”

The proposal, available at EvangelicalsforSocialAction.org and The Center for Public Justice, is a response to the “double moral challenge,” in Strauss’ words, to both reduce the debt level and maintain programs that provide aid to the needy and vulnerable.

Gerson acknowledged that amongst evangelicals, there are many disagreements on where spending cuts can be made in the budget. However, he said, “There is broadly shared agreement that a focus on cutting effective discretionary programs is a seriously misplaced priority.” A spokesperson for USAID told CT that State and USAID comprise just 1 percent of of the federal budget.*

“We don’t have a debt crisis because America spends too much on AIDS funds and malaria nets,” Gerson said. “We have a long-term debt crisis primarily, in my view, because of entitlement commitments, health care inflation, and an aging population. … I think cuts in federal spending are possible and quite necessary, but the right priorities matter.”

Gerson criticized Congress for taking budget cuts out of AIDS programs, contributions to the Global Fund and child survival programs. He also said that educating new members of Congress on the effectiveness of programs such as PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003) and PMI (President’s Malaria Initiative, launched in 2005) would be “an up-hill climb” in any attempt to emphasize the necessity of funding these programs to lawmakers. “There are a whole lot of members that don’t know that history and don’t know the dramatic success that’s taken place,” he said.

Addressing the recent Pew Research Center survey finding that more than 50 percent of evangelicals surveyed favor cutting economic assistance to needy people around the world, Gerson said, “There is an educational task here to convince not just Christians but others that these commitments that we make, which are relatively inexpensive, in fact both serve our values and our interests.”

The same survey indicated that evangelicals tend to support increased spending on defense. “People think of those interests as just served by military power, but they’re also really served by helping to create stability and hope in unstable parts of the work,” Gerson said. “The case that needs to be made is that this aid is both a moral imperative but it’s also in the interests of the United States.”

Shane Claiborne, founder of social justice group The Simple Way, said he was “deeply troubled” by the results of the survey. “A country that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs that social uplift is approaching a spiritual death,” he said, also referring to the Sojourners’ campaign question, “What would Jesus cut?”

Strauss had an answer. “We must cut federal spending, we must control health care expenses, we must make social security sustainable, and we must reform the tax code,” Strauss said of their goals. “At the same time, government [must] ensure that appropriate steps are taken to address poverty.”

“As soon as we get substantial numbers of signers, we will be using that [to contact Congress],” Sider said. “The process of dealing with our ongoing deficit is not something that will end when Congress agrees on our 2012 budget.”

Jordan Ballor of the Acton Institute says that the proposal “consists of leaps in logic largely based on unstated assumptions about the role that government should have in administering that care.”

The language of the statement doesn’t seem to do justice to the principled positions that agree with the vague notion of the obligation to care for the poor, but disagree about the particular policy and budgetary implications at the federal level. Wallis and Chuck Colson recently agreed that Christians ought engage in principled and honest debate, and not demonize other positions, even implicitly. To cast the debate in the terms that budget hawks don’t care about the poor I think violates this kind of commitment.

Original signers of the call to action include the following:

Miriam Adeney

Paul Alexander

Stanley Carlson-Thies

Richard Cizik

Shane Claiborne

Luis Cortes

Andy Crouch

Richard Foster

Michael Gerson

David Gushee

Joel Hunter

Jonathan Merritt

Richard Mouw

Shirley Mullen

Kim Phipps

Soong-Chan Rah

Stephanie Summers

H. Dean Trulear

Jim Wallis

*The post has been updated to correct the percentage of international aid in the federal budget.

Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau: the story of feuding brothers is one of the oldest in the book. Now it’s time to add another chapter. In The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, Peter Hitchens challenges, head-on, the claims of his older brother, Christopher, and like-minded atheists. As the provocative title suggests, Peter shares his brother’s cheeky style. His approach is simple. He pulls back the curtain on post-Christian societies of the past and examines the wreckage.

Hitchens begins with an account of his atheist youth in Britain. He describes the church’s contribution to the “cult of noble death” that still flourished during his childhood, and how it lost credibility during the postwar era of disillusionment. This backdrop provides a timely reminder of the danger of mixing faith and patriotism. As a result, Britain replaced the elegant poetry of faith with the prosaic myth of certitude and eroded the foundation of its morality in the process. Hitchens sees the same trajectory in present-day America.

In adulthood, Peter and his brother’s paths diverged (the brothers have only recently been reconciled), with Peter becoming a Christian and Christopher becoming Christopher Hitchens. Fittingly, Peter devotes a section to addressing a few of his brother’s favorite arguments: blaming wars on religion, divorcing morality from religion, and distancing atheism from the destructive regimes it has fueled in the past. It is this third argument that gets the lion’s share of Peter’s attention.

The crux of Peter’s counter-argument is a case-study of Soviet Russia, woven throughout the narrative. Hitchens draws from his experiences in Moscow as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Express during the final years of the Soviet Union. Holding the door for other passengers entering the Metro station, he was mocked: “You’re obviously not a Russian.” Taxi drivers were forced to remove windshield wipers not in use because theft was the norm. The city was peppered with bars where patrons sat wordlessly sipping acrid beer dispensed from a vending machine into empty pickle jars. By contrast, the Russian homes he visited were places of warmth and hospitality. These qualities had simply been driven underground.

Hitchens ties this social collapse to the communist regime’s efforts to uproot religion. He stresses, “The regime’s institutional loathing for the teaching of religion, and its desire to eradicate it, survived every [Soviet] doctrinal detour and swerve. And the eradication campaign … was a success, perhaps because it required only destruction. Soviet power only failed when it tried to build, create, and construct.”

So too, he argues, when the new atheists call for a secular society free of the moral entanglements of religion, what they have in mind is “not just an opinion seeking its place in a plural society. It is a dogmatic tyranny in the making.” The notion that “those who win are also right,” he adds, “is and must be the core of all ad-hoc human-based moral codes.” It is false optimism at best that leads atheists to believe that they can remove the heart of a nation’s morality and replace it with a platitude like “common decency” without risking a moral collapse.

Lest his readers ignore his warning, a particularly poignant section of The Rage Against God shows how fragile civilizations are. Hitchens describes a white-knuckle trip through Mogadishu, Somalia, with two machine-gun-toting young boys as bodyguards. This anarchic, ravaged place (setting of the movie Blackhawk Down), where sunset is a harbinger of death and armed gangs rove the streets unchecked, had a few years prior been a thriving capital city. Although not a godless nation itself, Somalia reveals how quickly the tide can turn.

While his brother pens sprawling, larger-than-life memoirs (Hitch-22) and best-selling atheist screeds (God is Not Great), Peter has countered with a more restrained version of his own. At its core, The Rage Against God offers a simple practical argument for faith from a journalist’s perspective. The ground he cedes to his brother in rhetorical flourish, he makes up with gripping anecdotes from his time in the field. Wisely, he avoids rehashing theological arguments and sticks to what he knows: world events. The result is an engaging story of an atheist’s journey back to an informed, reasonable faith. He gives us a refreshing reminder that sometimes the best way to test an idea is to see how well it worked in the past.

Jonathan Sprowl is an online assistant editor for Christianity Today International.

Copyright © 2011 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

This semester, I’m teaching research writing and film to 67 undergraduates. When they turned in their final project topics, I was startled to discover how many wanted to focus on families in the movies: parents trying to escape responsibilities, the fatherless generation, the need for unity among family members, people creating families for themselves when their biological family fails them.

I think this hints at something that preoccupies young adults (and older ones, too): the intense desire to know they are loved, to trust that the love will not go away. It’s the kind of love that families are supposed to have for one another. And when traditional families fail them, they’re busy constructing new ones, trying to believe that relationships can work.

That’s also what lies at the heart of happythankyoumoreplease, and part of what undoubtedly accounts for its warm reception at Sundance last year. Written and directed by Josh Radnor (of CBS’s How I Met Your Mother), the film tells the story of a generation in a decidedly un-self-conscious way. It take the themes of the genre often called mumblecore (artistic urban twentysomethings looking for love and life direction) and makes them into something more universal, less self-involved—and, blessedly, less cynical, more full of hope.

Sam (Radnor) is 29, a writer who lives in Brooklyn. He writes stories with names like “The Die-Alones” and “The Other Great Thing About Vinyl” and has been shopping his first novel around. On his way to his big meeting with the publisher (Richard Jenkins), he sees a young boy apparently get separated from his family on the subway, and tries to drop him off at the police station. But the boy, Rasheen, won’t go, and tags along to Sam’s meeting, to which he is now late.

Predictably, the meeting doesn’t go well. That night at a party, Sam’s best friend Annie (a luminescent Malin Ackerman)—relentlessly upbeat, in spite of, or maybe because of, her alopecia, which has left her hairless—tries to cheer him up. “You’re the voice of our generation!” she declares.

Generation’s voice or not, Sam is discouraged. Besides his career troubles, he’s trying to attract the attention of a pretty waitress who goes by the moniker Mississippi (Kate Mara), but she’s less sure about him, burned by her bad choices in the past. And Rasheen keeps showing up, but Sam’s not sure what to do, once he discovers that the boy’s home life is likely less than nurturing.

Sam’s not alone in his ennui: malaise is settling on his friends, too. Annie’s relationship history is dismal and her loser ex-boyfriend has come knocking again. Making matters worse, she’s not attracted to the perfectly nice man from work who’s sweetly pursuing her, whom she’s dubbed Sam No. 2 (Tony Hale). Meanwhile, Sam’s childhood friend Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan) and her boyfriend Charlie (Pablo Schreiber) find their lengthy relationship turning a bit stormy as they debate a move from New York to Los Angeles in pursuit of Charlie’s career dreams and try to decide what their future looks like.

While the universal artist pursuits of Radnor’s characters may seem a bit forced—they’re all writers or painters or musicians—they’re also very real people, trying to learn to be adults in a world that is primed to let them live in a sort of perpetual adolescence. On the crest of their thirties, they’re worried that while they once dreamed of being extraordinary, they may turn out to just be very ordinary.

Unfortunately, the screenplay, while funny and sweet in the right places, does stumble a bit; the characters make too many over-earnest speeches to one another. But the strength of happythankyoumoreplease (named for a sort of life mantra of gratefulness that Annie’s adopted on advice of a cab driver) is its characters’ relationships, which—romantic or platonic—ring utterly true.

Movies that portray authentic relationships built on trust, friendship, and love—sustained by commitment that has the legs to last a lifetime—are rare, and that’s because those relationships are rare in real life, too. (Two unusually good models are in Sam Mendes’s Away We Go and Mike Leigh’s deeply moving Another Year.) Which brings us back to the generational pulse underneath the narrative, and to what I see in my both my undergraduates and my own twentysomething contemporaries. Our models, both in romance and friendship, have too often been found lacking, subsisting on convenience and mutual interests and disintegrating when those bases fade away.

ButRadnor’s characters want to believe that truly caring for another person isn’t just for the sake of having fun for the weekend or finding a friend who makes us feel better about our failings. No: deciding to love another person, to be part of their life, is what shapes us and builds us into full human beings. These young people, like many of their generation, are yearning for and grappling back toward the possibility of commitment, in its many shapes. In some cases it’s tiny and a tenuous few days, and sometimes it’s much longer—but they’re ready to insist on it, knowing instinctively, even when operating off a misguided moral compass, that a hookup is no way to build a life.

And, sometimes, just maybe, it can even work. As Mississippi tells Sam, he’s dwelling in a short story, but she’s ready for the novel.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What do you think of Sam’s choices regarding Rasheen? What purpose does Rasheen serve in Sam’s life? How does this purpose change?
2. Has a relationship changed you in a profound way?
3. Sam No. 2 pursues Annie despite her reluctance. Have you ever put your own happiness on the line to express love to another person? How does Christ’s love—pursuing us when we do not love him—give us a model for sacrificial love?
4. What makes for a strong friendship? A strong romantic relationship? Where do these overlap?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

happythankyoumoreplease is rated R for language. Most of the characters talk like urban twenty-somethings—which is to say, there are plenty of profanities, including f-bombs, though not unrealistically. Various unmarried characters live and sleep together (committed or not). A couple of characters get drunk together.

Photos © Anchor Bay Films.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

So, you know the time-honored fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast”—about the dashing prince who looks disgusting because a fairy put a curse on him to make his outsides match his ugly insides, and then gives him a year to find true love or he’ll stay a beast forever? Well, imagine that story rewritten by a pack of teen girls high on Twilight and Gossip Girl, and you get an idea of what you’re in for with Beastly.

Our “beast” du jour is Kyle (Alex Pettyfer), a hot, pompous high schooler who’s running for the position of Green Committee president, not because he’s so committed to the environment but because he thinks it’ll look good on his transcript—a fact he states quite smarmily at the podium right before declaring that he and all the rest of the beautiful people simply get it better in life.

This skin-deep paradigm is fostered by his dad, a news anchor who’s all about looks and image. Their relationship is “Cat’s in the Cradle” for the new millennium—with Kyle texting his dad from across the room just to get his attention.

Despite the fact Kyle is a total jerk, he’s caught the eye of Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), the gorgeous and supposedly nerdy good girl who’s running for Green Committee treasurer. Even though Kyle has an online profile that lists his likes as “anything bangable” and his dislikes as “fattycakes,” Lindy knows there’s something deep and special inside Kyle.

Unfortunately for Kyle, he picks on the wrong co-ed one day, humiliating Kendra (Mary-Kate Olsen), the campus witch, at a school dance. She gets back at him by hexing him with hideousness. Obviously Kendra has read the Fairy Tale Handbook, because she gives Kyle a year to get someone to tell him she loves him. If he doesn’t, he’ll stay ugly forever.

One of my main problems with the movie is that Kendra doesn’t just make Kyle ugly, she makes him tattooed and covered with odd metallic designs. He’s like Tron meets Beast meets LA Ink. He’s not a beast so much as he’s the casualty of an overzealous makeup department.

But that’s just the beginning of the problems here. The plot twists are contrived—especially how Kyle and Lindy wind up living in the same house. The characters are one-dimensional—dad makes fun of “dumb, ugly” people, Lindy feeds the homeless on the weekends. The dialogue is an odd syncopation of one-liners: “I’m here for everyone who just missed the beauty boat,” “she’s a self-tatted Frankenskan*.” The parental fill-ins for Kyle when his dad abandons him (mom’s been gone a long time) are a housekeeper with a bad Jamaican accent (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a wisecracking blind tutor (Neil Patrick Harris).

But thank God for that wisecracking blind tutor, because he’s one of the best parts of Beastly. I have no idea what bet Harris lost in order to wind up in this film, but I’m grateful he did. He delivers his cheesy lines with enough snark to make them enjoyable—instead of eyeroll-worthy, as a lot of the other dialogue is. Mary-Kate Olsen is deliciously weird and wicked as the teenage witch.

Pettyfer and Hudgens do an okay job. Pettyfer relies too heavily on his six-pack abs in the beginning of the film, but actually shows us some character development during his Beast year. Hudgens is sweet and pretty and seems fairly genuine. She’s a likable heroine and does pretty decent work with the lame material she’s given.

I recognize that I’m more than twice the age of the intended audience. But as a woman, I worry about the message movies like Beastly are giving to impressionable teen girls. There’s a heart of gold lurking inside each jerk just waiting to be liberated by your love? Be your good-girl self and some hunky oaf will notice you, love you, be transformed by you? Ack.

Granted, these are the some of the same messages accessorizing most chick flicks. But when those messages get marketed to the teen and pre-teen market, it’s cause for concern. Beastly certainly isn’t the worst offender in the damaging-messages-to-young-girls genre, but certainly our teens deserve more—both in the caliber of the message and in the quality of the overall film.

On some levels, Beastly succeeds in giving young viewers a flawed reminder that what resides inside each person is way more important than the packaging—an admirable message, to be sure. It’s just hidden amidst too many one-dimensional characters, clunky dialogue, and implausible plot turns. If they’d just dialed it all down a bit, it could have been a cute film.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What does Lindy see in Kyle? Do you think there really is something good lurking inside him?
2. What does Kyle see in Lindy? Why is he drawn to her?
3. What does Kyle learn from his dad? What does he learn from Zola, his housekeeper, and Will, his tutor?
4. Overall, how does Kyle grow and change over the year that he’s a beast?
5. Where do you see Kyle and Lindy in a year?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Beastly is rated PG-13 for language, including crude comments, brief violence, and some thematic material. The teen leads swear and are mean to each other, though, sadly, most teens probably see as much and more at school. Kendra the teenage witch has amazing powers over Kyle, but we don’t see her do any other witchcraft or mention where her powers are coming from. She feels more like a black-clad, uber-eyelinered “fairy” from a Disney fairy tale. Though Lindy is a good role model for young viewers, her dad is a drug addict and she has a brief altercation with him and his dealer. There’s a scuffle but we don’t see any real violence, and no one is seriously hurt. We see some other teen characters making out, but clothes are on and it’s fairly tame.

Photos © CBS Films.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

There remains a misconception in America that animated movies are made for children and thus completely wholesome. Perhaps that comes from nearly 75 years of family-friendly animated features from Disney, including 15 years of Pixar excellence. But generations of people raised on Looney Toons, The Simpsons, and Family Guy ought to know better: sometimes animation has an older, broader audience in mind.

Case in point: Rango, the first fully-animated feature from the special effects wizards at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). The film is heavily influenced by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, with cinematic references to Chinatown and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Its sense of humor owes less to Disney or Nickelodeon (who helped produce Rango) and more to Mel Brooks and Monty Python. Sure, most kid-friendly features include inside jokes for the parents, but there’s a big difference between a kid-oriented movie for families to enjoy together and a PG feature that could be appropriate for older kids.

Johnny Depp voices the title character, a pet lizard obsessed with acting—he’s a chameleon, after all—who literally finds his world shattered after his aquarium falls out of his owner’s car traveling across the Mojave Desert. Unsure where to go, he’s encouraged by an armadillo appropriately named Roadkill (Alfred Molina) to take a spiritual quest of self-discovery to the “other side” (of the road, that is). A series of misadventures leads our protagonist to a small Old West-styled town called Dirt, where the residents include all manner of desert critters and water is the valued currency.

Trying to impress the dangerous-looking locals at the saloon, Rango begins to spin some tall tales of his life as a gunslinger (improvising his name from the Mexican state of Durango). A lucky encounter with a hawk wins enough approval from the locals to back up his story, so Rango is appointed sheriff by the Mayor (Ned Beatty), a tortoise. Of course, Rango has no experience enforcing law, and he soon finds himself in over his head trying to solve the mystery of the town’s dwindling water supply and helping Beans (Isla Fisher), the local lady lizard, protect her ranch from villains. Only by learning to live the part of a hero will Rango be able to save the citizens of Dirt.

It’s a very silly film that occasionally strays into the strange and surreal. A key battle involves a horde of assorted rodents riding bats while playing Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” on their banjos. Even weirder is the scene where the citizens of Dirt line up for their weekly water ration and begin some jerky choreography to Bob Nolan’s country classic “Cool Water,” followed by some hallelujah-smattered liturgy with the Mayor that borders on sacrilege. (In contrast, I found one critter’s heartfelt prayer of thankfulness to the “Spirit of the West” strangely touching, reminiscent of characters in the fiction of C. S. Lewis praying to their own god.)

Lots of craziness, though most of it is fun, and it’s also refreshing that Rango runs on such dramatically different fuel. The dialogue (screenplay by John Logan of The Aviator and Gladiator) has zip and brains, packed with big words and heady references more befitting of a Coen brothers film; indeed, Depp’s delivery as Rango is occasionally reminiscent of George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou? As funny and entertaining as it all is, it won’t appeal to all tastes—too mature for many kids, too immature for many adults.

The animation is spectacular. The visuals of Rango’s misadventures on the highway are astounding in detail. Later, he returns to the same highway at night, his face beautifully lit by flashes of white and red as the cars pass. I also love the imagination in design, using the Mayor’s tortoise shell as a motorized wheelchair or an old Pepto-Bismol bottle as the town outhouse. Even the sound design is impressive with the acoustics changing when characters find themselves stuck in a glass bottle or a plastic water tank.

It’s a solid first animated feature from director Gore Verbinski. Most of Rango moves at a brisk pace, always offering something interesting to look at. As evidenced by his Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Verbinski knows how to stage insane action sequences (and his previous work should give some indication of the humor as well). Expect some great chases and twists in this one as well.

The pacing meanders in the middle act and the film feels about 15 minutes too long. I also wish that the story touched the heart as much as it tickled the funnybone. There are some good bits about the nature of heroism, but not enough to elevate Rango to the ranks of Pixar. Still, when viewed as a silly comedy-adventure, it works in enjoyably unexpected ways.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Why is it important to the story that Rango is a chameleon and not just any lizard? How does his “lack of character” help him discover who he is and embrace his destiny?
2. Is Rango born to be a hero or do circ*mstances cause him to become one? Does Rango’s inexperience or reluctance to become a hero make him any less heroic? How is this similar to “following a calling” in our lives and what does it say about opportunities and challenges that we may face?
3. What does “The Spirit of the West” mean when he says that no man can walk out on his story? Do you agree with this notion?
4. In what ways does a single hero galvanize others and restore hope that things can get better? How does this relate to The Spirit’s words about “It’s not about you, it’s about them”?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Rango is rated PG for rude humor, language, action, and smoking. There are some burp and fart gags, as well as scraps of quickly delivered adult innuendo (prostate exams, references to private parts, etc.) sprinkled throughout, thought they don’t necessarily set the tone of the film. Characters occasionally use mild profanity like “damn” and “hell.” The action is plentiful, accentuated by widespread use of firearms and a lot of scary images, including some hallucinations and a fearsome rattlesnake, and some characters do die. The film isn’t overly crude or offensive, and is appropriately rated PG, but it’s nevertheless clear that the content wasn’t written with younger kids in mind as the target audience.

Photos © Paramount Pictures.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Is the course of your life solely a result of your choice, or are there other, larger forces at work? These are questions theologians and philosophers have been debating for centuries. And these are the questions at the heart of this romantic thriller.

The main life in question here is that of David Norris (Matt Damon), a young New York politician. Just moments before giving an important speech, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt), a free-spirited ballet dancer to whom he’s instantly drawn. She inspires him to give a speech that boosts his political career, then she disappears. But, as luck—or perhaps fate—would have it, David runs into her on a bus soon after.

However, when David arrives at work that morning, he sees something he shouldn’t—a bunch of guys in suits and fedoras reprogramming the brain of his business partner. They explain that they’re part of the Adjustment Bureau, the people who make sure things happen according to The Chairman’s plan.

And while they’re at it, they inform him he’s not supposed to be with Elise either—it’ll ruin The Plan for his life and hers. Richardson (John Slattery), the main adjuster, wrestles her number from him and then warns David that if he tells anyone about what he’s seen, they’ll wipe out his mind.

But David isn’t that easily daunted, pursuing his own wishes and plans at the apparent peril of his political career. Throughout, he’s alternately hindered and helped by the main agent assigned to his case, Harry (Anthony Mackie), the conflicted adjuster. Both men wrestle with issues of free will and fate and what their role is in both.

We viewers are brought along for the ride, weighing these heavy matters in a world where God is a corporate boss-type who has a personal and good plan for each life but who’s also impersonal and manipulative. His agents—or angels—are 1950s mafia types who rough up the natural order of things and then disappear behind secret doors. They show up to perpetrate good—or at least what’s deemed good to The Chairman. And while The Chairman is largely absent, pay close attention for his involvement in small, subtle ways.

As a Christian, it’s easy to draw these parallels to our faith paradigm—God and angels, his plan, and our free will. However, director and screenwriter George Nolfi is loathe to assign a specific religion or worldview to the story, preferring that moviegoers make their own associations and draw their own conclusions. Nolfi, who has degrees in philosophy and political science and was raised with Christian beliefs, based The Adjustment Bureau on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the self-described “fictionalizing philosopher.” This film certainly reflects Dick’s recurring themes of authoritarian governments, metaphysical questions, and monopolistic corporations.

While The Adjustment Bureau touches on these heavy matters, at its heart it’s a love story. In the choice between love and power, which wins? What sacrifices will our protagonist make for the woman he loves? Will these two fate-crossed lovers get a chance to be together?

As a love story, Adjustment offers fresh hurdles to the couple in question. Instead of an interloping ex, cultural taboo, or family feud getting in their way, David and Elise are up against agents of fate trying to keep them apart. That’s an interesting new rom-dram spin. But sadly the film contains a common love story flaw—not establishing the couple well enough. Why do these two people love each other so quickly and completely that they’re willing to test fate for it? We’re only given a couple scenes of dialogue to set up this strong bond, and it’s simply not enough—though the film almost gets away with this gaffe simply on the skill, attractiveness, and likeability of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

Both actors turn in fine performances here. Damon is on familiar turf as a clean-cut everyman trying to rise above and dodge the bad guys. He previously worked with Nolfi in The Bourne Ultimatum, and you can see shades of that here as he runs through the streets of New York from agents in suits. Blunt’s character is less developed—we don’t know any of her back-story—but she delivers well on what she’s given. Most impressively she pulls off the role of a contemporary ballet dancer quite convincingly, with no prior dance training. Together they offer convincing and compelling chemistry.

Anthony Mackie also turns in an impressive performance, perhaps the most nuanced of them all, as a member of the Bureau who starts to question his role, The Chairman’s wisdom, and the point of it all.

While not a “Christian” film, it does serve as a great springboard for faith-oriented conversations. It’s one of those movies that’s fun to unpack with friends, and would be a great one to discuss with people of other faiths, opening the door to conversations about free will, fate, and the role of a higher power in our lives. Of course, if you simply want a fun action-romance, you won’t be disappointed either.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Why do you think Harry falls asleep in the park toward the beginning of the film?
2. In what ways is The Chairman similar and dissimilar to your understanding of God? In what ways are the agents similar and dissimilar to your understanding of angels?
3. At what points in the film do you see The Chairman possibly at work? To what ends?
4. What would you have done if you were David?
5. At one point a character discusses the turn of events being a test. Who do you think is being tested? Why?
6. What role is chance given in the film? How does this compare to your thoughts about chance?
7. What sacrifices have you made for love and/or your vocation? Were those sacrifices worthwhile?
8. Where do you see David and Elise in five years? Do you think they’re each happy?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Adjustment Bureau is rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some sexuality, and a violent image. The violent image is a sudden car crash. The drivers are hurt, though we assume not fatally. David and Elise have sex after their first real date, though there’s no nudity and the scene is mostly from the shoulders up—fairly mild by current sex-scene standards. Overall, it’s a pretty clean film, and would be a good one to discuss with older teens, especially those interested in issues of philosophy.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The wonderful news is that Most, an acclaimed 2003 short film from Czechoslovakia that was nominated for an Academy Award, is at last going to get a bigger audience, thanks to the efforts of Provident Films. It’s a soul-stirring film (its titled means “The Bridge” in English), with a lot of story packed into its 33 minutes. It just came out on DVD this week, and I highly recommend it.

The not-so-good news is the way Provident is promoting it; I applaud them for marketing it to Christians – with a ringing endorsem*nt from Luis Palau, no less – because it’s a film with themes that will resonate with believers. But their synopsis and descriptions give so much away that the viewer can guess the outcome long before it happens. I had not seen the film until Provident sent me a screener, and looked forward to viewing it. But I knew within 10 minutes how it was going to end, thanks to Provident’s descriptions.

You could learn more about the film at Provident’s site here, but if you’re serious about watching it, I’d avoid reading much about it there. I’d even avoid the trailer there, which also gives too much away. The best advice is to go into this film “cold” – or, as our critic Ron Reed put it in his review eight years ago, “To reveal much at all of a story this concise and beautifully constructed would be to rob the viewer of some of the film’s greatest power.”

The trivia section on Kat Dennings’ IMDb webpage says that “most of the characters she plays tend to be ‘rebellious daughters’ around 15 or 16.” Dennings, 24, will tackle that role yet again in the upcoming Renee, a film about the troubled teenage girl who sparked the ministry To Write Love on Her Arms.

According to a press release from TWLOHA, the movie, which began filming on February 23, “is inspired by the true story of Renee Yohe (at right), a young Florida woman whose commitment to cease her cycle of chaos from drug addiction, alcohol abuse and self-injury motivates many teenagers and young adults today.” The film follows Renee’s spiral into addiction, depression and self-injury. In a creative blend of artistic fantasy balanced with harsh reality, the movie follows Renee on her courageous journey toward recovery.”

TWLOHA founder Jamie Tworkowski is a friend of the real-life Renee. He and others came to her side during her troubles in early 2006; Tworkowski wrote an essay about the situation titled, “To Write Love on Her Arms,” which ultimately became the name of his organization. TWLOHA is a non-profit movement “dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. [It] exists to encourage, inform, inspire and to invest directly into treatment and recovery.”

CT did a brief profile on Tworkowski several months ago.

The New York City Council passed a bill yesterday requiring centers to disclose whether they provide abortions or emergency contraception, make referrals to organizations that do, and if they have a licensed medical provider on site.

Last year, a Maryland county approved a regulation requiring pregnancy centers that do not have licensed medical staff to post a sign in the waiting room. A federal judge struck down the regulation, writing that the requirement violated the centers’ right to free speech.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to sign the New York City measure. Here are more details on the law from the Wall Street Journal:

Opponents cited a federal judge’s ruling that struck down a similar bill in Baltimore as proof that this type of legislation violates the centers’ constitutional rights to free speech. The opponents of the bill pledged to file a lawsuit immediately after Bloomberg signs it into law.

The legislation would require all pregnancy-service centers to disclose whether they provide abortions, emergency contraception and prenatal care, or make referrals to organizations that do. Centers would also be required to disclose if they have a licensed medical provider on site.

Under the legislation, the information would have to be posted in English and Spanish at the centers and in advertisem*nts. A center employee might have to make the disclosure orally if, for example, a client asked for an abortion.

The advertising company that put up a billboard sponsored by Life Always removed it last week. The billboard, located a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood center, showed a black girl in a pink dress that said, “the most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

In other abortion-related news, prosecutors intend to pursue the death penalty against Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing a patient and seven babies at his abortion clinic.

David Gibson reported earlier this week that the FBI in New York arrested Theodore Shulman, a radical pro-choice advocate who threatened pro-life activists.

Ohio is considering a law that would ban abortion if a heartbeat can be medically detected. Members of Ohio’s state House watched ultrasounds given to two pregnant women yesterday.