Reviews
Rough hands gripped mine. I stared down, uncomfortable, at the yellow and silver Formica table. "Tat nupal," the voices began, "tey tinemi tic ne ylhuicatl." In a run-down tract house in the weedy suburbs of Washington, D.C., five Salvadoran refugees began their evening blessing over our meal. "Our Creator in heaven," they pray in Nahuat, one of the indigenous languages of El Salvador. As a poet in a time when languages are being lost at a rate equivalent to the rain forest, I clung to the edges of the words, the narrowness of their sound, their rhythm like wind in high trees, never expecting to hear them again.
John Sayles’ newest film, Men With Guns, not only includes dialogue in Nahuat, but in Tzotzil, Maya, and Kuna, as well as Spanish and English. "Language is one of the main gaps between people," Sayles says about his characters. "If everyone was speaking English, the story wouldn’t make as much sense." (The subtitles, by the way, are clear and excellent.)
In his understated way, Sayles’ movie mission is about making sense. He does so not in a rational, superficial, or always socially recognizable way, but on a very human and spiritual level, digging at the question of how to shore up faith and uncover meaning in daily life.
Sayles characteristically uses a guide, an outsider, someone who leads the viewer through self-discovery in the story. In The Brother From Another Planet (1984), the guide is a black mute extraterrestrial who beams down in Harlem; in Matewan (1987), a union organizer; in The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), a young girl. In Men With Guns, our "escort" is Humberto Fuentes (Argentinean actor Federico Luppi), a wealthy doctor approaching retirement who has never paid any attention to the political realities of his unspecified country. He considers his greatest achievement to be his participation in an international health program in which he trained students to work as doctors in the poorest villages.
Just As I Am is the biography of a humble man. While outlining the development of his ministry, Billy Graham’s biography is anything but an exercise in self-glorification. He describes his evangelistic crusades from their early beginnings in tent meetings in Los Angeles to "the more recent massive gatherings in sports stadiums." He tells about his encounters with powerful heads of state. He recounts his special friends who made up the support group that kept him faithful to his mission and nurtured an integrity that even those who reject his message respect. Graham takes us with him as he meets with presidents over nine administrations, amusing us as he describes his brash holier-than-thou attitude in his first meeting with Harry Truman, and inspiring us as he describes his compassionate pastoral attitude toward Bill Clinton.
Through it all he critiques himself in ways that will help those who would make him a role model to escape his pitfalls. There is a kind of self-deprecation in this autobiography that only serves to enhance his stature.
Particularly interesting are the roles that he played in facing the pressing social concerns that have troubled the nation over the last half-century. Critics might attack him for not expressing opposition to the Vietnam War or being more specific in supporting civil rights legislation, but his autobiography reveals that he accomplished more to further social justice causes than these critics might imagine.
In recent years, observers of the religious scene in the United States have commented on two trends that at first glance appear to be contradictory. On the one hand, they have noted that the main institutional forms of religion—that is, the mainline churches and denominations—have experienced little, if any, growth. In fact, several of the larger denominations have lost membership. (Financial pressures have also been common.) On the other hand, interest in religious matters in the general public seems to be on the increase.
Rather than being contradictory, the presence of these two trends suggests that a reasonably important shift may be occurring in the expression Americans give to their religious beliefs. Mainline churches are only one of the options available, and increasing numbers of persons are seeking alternative forms through which to express their spirituality.
Donald Miller, professor of religion at the University of Southern California, calls one alternative form the "new paradigm churches." To represent this emerging new shape for Christianity in this country, Miller has identified three of the fastest growing movements within Christianity in this or any other time period in history, and has spent several years studying their growth. The result is Reinventing American Protestantism, a thoughtful, largely sympathetic but provocative book.