Page 1489 – Christianity Today (2024)

An Arizona bill that could leave many employees of religious schools and daycares ineligible for unemployment benefits is on the verge of becoming law.

According to the Associated Press, “[Arizona] House Bill 2645 would allow religious organizations to avoid paying unemployment taxes for educational and day care workers. … Proponents argue that the proposed law is necessary after some state tax officials recently started interpreting the current religious exemption so that it only applies to church staff and not private school teachers.”

The debate over unemployment benefits for religious employees arose last year, after the state’s Department of Economic Security decided that religious “schools and child care centers did not qualify under the [existing] exemption because their mission statements were to provide general education or adult supervision.” Supporters of the bill say it is a return to the previous status quo, not a stripping away of benefits from employees.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that Wednesday’s vote in the Senate was a voice vote, but if the bill is approved after an upcoming roll-call vote, the bill will be passed on to the governor.

CT previously has reported on the topics of church finances and unemployment, including the loss of tax breaks for ministry leaders in Canada.

Update (April 23): The New York Times reports that Pennsylvania Judge Jeffrey Minehart has thrown out three of the seven murder charges in the case against Kermit Gosnell. Minehart “also granted a motion for acquittal in five charges of abuse of a corpse against Dr. Gosnell, who, according to prosecutors, killed fetuses that were alive after they were aborted by plunging scissors into their necks. Dr. Gosnell was also acquitted on one charge of infanticide.”

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The absence of reporting on the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell has outraged some pro-life groups, and they’re taking to social media to protest.

A so-called Facebook and Twitter “Tweetfest” that begins at noon today aims to break the “strange silence of the mainstream media regarding one of the most gruesome murder trials in American history.”

Sponsored by Operation Rescue, Priests for Life, Stand True, and AbortionWiki, the event encourages social media users to use #Gosnell to draw attention to the Gosnell case.

Gosnell “is accused of killing seven live babies at the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society clinic and a woman who was administered too much anesthesia,” the Daily Mail reports. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Operation Rescue, one of the Tweetfest sponors, offers an extensive archive of past coverage of Gosnell, dating back to his original arraignment and grand jury report in 2011, and the trial (though readers should be warned that many of the articles contain graphic images of aborted fetuses).

CT previously weighed in on the case against Gosnell in 2011, arguing that the real scandal is not the stark charges against the doctor but something much more commonplace.

Update (April 16): Adventist Review reports that Adventist General Conference president Ted N.C. Wilson, told the church members gathered to celebrate the denomination’s 150th anniversary that it is a “very sad” anniversary.

“We should have been home by now!” Wilson said. “The Lord has wanted to come long before this. Why celebrate any more anniversaries when we could be in heaven?”

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(RNS) Over the past 150 years, Seventh-day Adventists have built one of Christianity’s most inventive and prosperous churches, all the while praying for the world to end as soon as possible.

A small band of believers has mushroomed to more than 17 million baptized members, including 1.2 million in the U.S. Nearly 8,000 Adventists schools dot dozens of countries. Hundreds of church-owned hospitals and clinics mend minds and bodies around the world.

You might expect Adventists to celebrate their success while marking their church’s 150th anniversary this May. There’s just one problem: the church wasn’t supposed to last this long.

Back in the 1860s, the founders of Seventh-day Adventism preached that Jesus would return – and soon. That’s why they called themselves “Adventists.” By Second-Coming standards, the church’s long life could be considered a dismal sign of failure.

“If you took a time machine and visited our founders in May 1863, they’d be disconcerted, to say the least, that we’re still here,” said David Trim, the church’s director of archives and research.

Current Adventists aren’t exactly excited about the anniversary, either.

“It’s almost an embarrassment to be celebrating 150 years,” said Lisa Beardsley-Hardy, the church’s director of education. “But it’s also an affirmation of faith in Christ’s return.”

Adventist leaders have slated May 18 – the Saturday before the 150th anniversary – as “a day of prayer, remembrance and recommitment to mission.” On May 21, Adventists will hold a small ceremony at church headquarters in Silver Spring, Md. Don’t expect balloons or birthday cake.

“In one kind of way it really is a sad event,” said Michael Ryan, a vice president at the church’s General Conference, its top governing body.

“We’re a church that by its name believes in the Second Coming of Christ, and we have been hopeful that long ago Christ would have come and taken the righteous to heaven and this world would have ended.”

But Jesus told Christians to occupy themselves until he returns – advice that Adventists take to heart.

Ryan, the church’s director of strategic planning, said he eagerly anticipates projects to open health centers in poverty-stricken communities and a 26-story hospital in Hong Kong. Besides worshipping on Saturday – the biblical seventh day when God rested – Adventists may be best known for their healthy lifestyles. Studies show they live about 10 years longer than their neighbors.

Of course, most Christian churches preach the Second Coming, and nearly half of Americans believe Jesus will return in the next 40 years, according to a 2010 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center. But few American churches have been built on the ashes of apocalyptic dreams.

Adventism was founded in the aftermath the Great Disappointment, which dashed the hopes of some 50,000 followers who expected Jesus to arrive in 1844. Some had sold their possessions and let their fields lie fallow. The celestial letdown drove a few insane, crushed under the weight of what social psychologist Leon Festinger would later call “cognitive dissonance.”

But the movement did not disintegrate, as Festinger argued. Instead, early Adventists like James and Ellen White adjusted their beliefs. Something of divine import had happened in 1844, even if it wasn’t the Second Coming, they taught.

Meanwhile, Adventist leaders brought dejected believers together, feeding the hungry and bonding over their shared disappointment. While keeping their ears perked for Gabriel’s horn, Adventists also turned an eye to earthly time, setting Saturday as their Sabbath and preaching the value of healthy living.

Over time, Adventists’ social bonds and distinctive doctrines “led to the creation of a church which survives and prospers today as one of the fastest-growing denominations in Christendom,” writes Stephen O’Leary, a scholar at the University of Southern California.

When those doctrines sail against cultural winds – as when Adventists are forced to work on Saturday, or famous members back Creationism – church solidarity strengthens, scholars say.

Adventist growth is especially intense in Latin America and Africa, where people are attracted to the faith’s blend of ethereal optimism (Jesus is coming soon!) and earthly education (Eat your vegetables until he does.)

“It’s a religious movement whose belief system compensates for both human needs and human longings,” said Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Latino Religion.

But some Adventists worry that the church’s modern success may bring Adventism full circle: a movement haunted by the hereafter becomes preoccupied with the present.

Adventism thrives because of the urgency of its message, argues church historian George Knight. Countless missionaries have crossed the earth to warn of Jesus’ imminent arrival. “When that vision is gone,” Knight writes, “Adventism will become just another toothless denomination that happens to be a little more peculiar in some of its beliefs than others.”

But Adventist leaders say the apocalyptic pull is still strong at church headquarters, especially during planning sessions. “I see that in our education system,” said Beardsley-Hardy. “Not wanting to over-invest in building because Jesus is coming.”

Beardsley-Hardy said she feels the same tension in her personal life. Should she sock away extra money in her retirement account, she wonders, or gratify immediate needs?

As a child, Beardsley-Hardy said she was convinced that every passing thunderstorm heralded the Second Coming. Now 54, with two children and two grandchildren, she said that sense of urgency is returning.

“I’m getting back to waiting,” Beardsley-Hardy said. “But I’m kind of glad the Lord has tarried.”

Like any of Terrence Malick's films, To the Wonder is full of breathtaking beauty: Paris bathed in the golden hour, a herd of buffalo amidst amber waves of grain, women lifting their hands in rapturous praise against purple-orange sunsets—all paired with lush classical selections from the likes of Górecki, Berlioz, and Arvo Pärt.

Yet more than any of Malick's five previous films, To the Wonder also contains quite a bit of mundane, un-rapturous imagery: laundromats, SUVs, suburban cul-de-sacs, car-washes, Sonics, Targets, Kraft mac n' cheese displays at the grocery store. There is a fair share of ugliness too: polluted rivers, infidelity in an Econo Lodge, broken, battered and dying human bodies of every kind.

Especially in contrast to the nebulae-and-dinosaurs grandiosity of The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder is almost disarmingly grounded in the sometimes-blah business of everyday life. It's a subdued film by comparison, but is equally curious about questions of God, suffering and beauty. Far from the "minor Malick" some have labeled it, Wonder is a characteristically ambitious, boundary-pushing film that builds upon the stylistic and thematic trajectories of its predecessors.

Malick—notoriously reclusive and sporadic in his film output— is entering a prolific period. With 2011's The Tree of Life,To the Wonder and a pair of films currently in production, Malick is on track to match his first 33 years of output (four films) in just a five-year span. Maybe he's found the perfect set of kindred-spirit collaborators, or maybe it's because he turns 70 this November, but the philosopher-turned-filmmaker seems more reflective and urgent than ever.

"Just Let It Roll Over You"

Already firmly established as a living legend, Malick is at the point in his career where he can make films exactly as he wants them, thoroughly unconcerned with the norms of studio filmmaking. But the ultra-abstract, "what just happened" tenor of his recent work is perhaps what you'd expect from a man who studied philosophy under Stanley Cavell at Harvard in the 1960s, read Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and lectured in philosophy at MIT.

This can make things tough for the average filmgoer: part of some audience's trouble with Malick's films is that they sense them to be layered, complex, and heady (which they are) and thus approach them as intellectual puzzles to be assembled in logical fashion. But Malick himself would advise audiences (as he did once in a rare post-screening Q&A in his hometown of Bartlesville, Oklahoma) to "just get into it; let it roll over you."

This is probably good advice for one's first viewing of Wonder, as with The Tree of Life or even The New World (2005). These are films best experienced viscerally first, intellectually later. Still, it might be unwise to encounter To the Wonder with no idea of what or why it is. It helps if you see The Tree of Life first.

I heard someone describe To the Wonder as a B-side to The Tree of Life, which seems fitting. The films—releasing only two years apart (a millisecond in Malick time)—are thematic and stylistic companion pieces made by the same core crew: producer Sarah Green, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, production designer Jack Fisk, costume designer Jacqueline West, and so on. And like The Tree of Life, which was a memoir of Malick's childhood in 1950s Texas, To the Wonder is also an autobiographical film exploring an ill-fated romance in Malick's adult life.

In the early 1980s (near the beginning of his twenty year absence from cinema), Malick lived in Paris and fell in love with a Parisienne named Michèle Morette who lived in his apartment complex and had a daughter from a previous relationship. After a few years the three of them moved to Austin, Texas and Malick and Morette married. The couple divorced in 1998, however, and Malick reconnected with his rumored former high school sweetheart (Alexandra "Ecky" Wallace) and they are married still today.

Though the names and some of the places are changed, this is more or less the plot of To the Wonder. Ben Affleck plays the Malick character (named Neil in the credits), and at the start of the film we witness the apex of his romance with "Marina" (Olga Kurylenko). We see the couple twirling around Paris, sometimes with Marina's 10-year-old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline) in tow. We see them take a trip from Paris to "the Wonder," a nickname for Mont Saint-Michel, the Normandy monastery that gives the film its name.

These rapturous early scenes of joy, which call to mind similar "love in Eden" openings of Days of Heaven (1978) and The New World, soon transition from the Old World romance of France to the New World frontier of the Oklahoma plains. From here the film settles into a somewhat more homely place: Bartlesville, the small town where Malick grew up and where Malick's father Emil (a former oil geologist played by Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life) lived until his death in February at age 96.

Against the backdrop of oil boomtown Bartlesville, Malick—described by one critic as "a Red State Coleridge" and "a philosopher-poet of the oil patch"—applies the full force of his vision to a town near and dear to his heart. Amidst carnivals, main street parades and high school marching bands, Marina and Tatiana try to acclimate but never feel quite at home. It becomes apparent that the love between Marina and Neil isn't going to be all wheat field sunsets and golden hour vistas.

Soon the "days of heaven," as it were, fade and Marina's visa expires. She and Tatiana return to France and during this off period Neil reconnects with old friend Jane (Rachel McAdams, in what seems to be the Ecky Wallace role). Eventually Marina returns to Bartlesville and she and Neil get married.

But challenges persist. Marina's unsettledness leads her to an emotional departure that proves fatal to the relationship—similar to John Smith (Colin Farrell) and his hunt for the "Indies" in The New World, or Miranda Otto's "I got lonely" infidelity in The Thin Red Line (1998). By the film's third act Eden feels far away and Neil and Marina realize that, as Nat King Cole croons at a similar "it's over" juncture in Badlands (1973), "the dream has ended, for true love died."

Finding God

Though on the surface To the Wonder may play out like a repetitive narrative of up-and-down relational strife between two people we never really know very well, the film cuts deep if you let it. There are big, God-oriented questions afoot.

"Everywhere you are present, and still I can't see you. How long will you hide yourself?" prays Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), a Pope Francis-esque servant who regularly prays with the sick and dying of Bartlesville, gives communion to prisoners, and even comes to the aid of dogs chained to porches.

In many ways Quintana is a counterpart to Marina—a resident alien (he prays in Spanish, she in French) who feels the pang of being other. They are the two major voices of the film and share a desire to see the wonder and experience God, yet their approaches are different. Marina recognizes the presence of the divine, yet she struggles with the two women inside her: "One full of love for [God]" while the other "pulls me down towards the earth."

It's a familiar Malick theme: this "war in the heart of nature" (The Thin Red Line) and "I do what I hate" (The Tree of Life) inner battle, visualized with the juxtaposition of a placid, still river (on the "love for God" side) and a violent torrent of water dammed up (on the earthly pull side). Quintana also understands his search for God in terms of water, repeatedly praying things like "My soul thirsts for you" and "Will you be like a stream that dries up?"—sentiments that echo Pocahontas inThe New World (referring to God as "the great river that never runs dry") and bring to mind the "Paradise restored" imagery of the River of Life and Tree of Life in Revelation 22, a key biblical passage for The Tree of Life.

Each of Malick's films is in some sense about the specter of Paradise Lost and the felt breach of communion between God and man (on account of sin). Each film longs for that Revelation 21 moment when God will once again dwell in physical presence with his people. But until the moment comes, how do we experience God's immanence even when the stream seems dry?

Quintana suggests that we should seek God not by looking inward or focusing on love as our emotions define it, which "come and go like clouds." Rather, we should try to model the other-focused love of Christ that is not a feeling but a command. Quintana's call to focus away from ourselves and to let our love be transformed into something higher is a call to open our eyes to the beauty and wonder all around us, to witness the "Love that loves us" in the child's face, the horse's gallop, the flock of birds in the sky, the spongy texture of a marsh.

A key quote in The Tree of Life applies here as well: "Love everyone. Every leaf. Every ray of light. Forgive." This is a near quotation from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, when Zosima advises:

Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God's creation, both the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love animals, love plants, love each thing. If you love each thing, you will perceive the mystery of God in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin tirelessly to perceive more and more of it every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an entire, universal love.

This passage seems to encapsulate not only the message of To the Wonder but also Malick's overarching approach to cinema. It's perhaps noteworthy that To the Wonder is credited as "A Brothers K" production, which may be a Dostoevsky or David James Duncan reference, or both.

Seeing Ourselves Rightly

To the Wonder is about a way of seeing—both seeing the world around us, and seeing ourselves properly, something he embodies not just on screen but in his working process. It's no coincidence that it begins with the point of view of Marina and Neil's own cell phone camera (as they travel by train "to the Wonder"). It's the focusing of our attention via lenses on life: perceiving the beauty in the pretty and the ugly, the thrilling and the mundane, and seeing how it all points heavenward. Christ in all; "All things shining" (The Thin Red Line).

Malick's camera has a particular gaze. He spends more time than most on almost gratuitous beauty (puffy clouds, swimming turtles, beautiful hands). And his lens lingers on the mundane: empty rooms, walls, appliances, even a laptop displaying a Skype conversation. Everything is interesting to Malick.

Everything except himself. In both To the Wonder and The Tree of Life, the actors portraying the adult Malick (Ben Affleck and Sean Penn, respectively) come across as passive observers—quiet, contemplative, almost awkward bystanders in the movie. They are fitting representations of a man who seems far more comfortable paying attention to the world around him than bringing attention to himself.

Much has been made of Malick's tendency to hire big-name actors for his films, shoot tons of footage, and then leave them largely or entirely out of the final cut. Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Amanda Peet, and Barry Pepper are among the actors ultimately cut out completely from To the Wonder. Adrien Brody famously thought his three months of intense shooting on The Thin Red Line would result in a starring role, only to find out at the premiere that his part had been reduced to a single line of dialogue. It may be a somewhat cruel trademark (from the big-ego actor's point of view), but this method is fundamental to Malick's vision of man's place in the cosmos.

In this, Malick is suggesting that it's far more important for us to see well rather than to be well seen. Insofar as cinema has a purpose, it should not be about audiences glorifying actors or actors glorifying themselves, as much as creating an environment of focused vision and contemplation wherein the beauty of this world confronts and perhaps transforms the audience.

The whole of Malick's oeuvre seems to be a call to put aside our hubris and wake to the Divine all around us. Brad Pitt's character in The Tree of Life "wanted to be loved because I was great," but by the end of the film he recognizes that he was foolish for paying no attention to "the glory all around us . . . I dishonored it all and didn't notice the glory."

But when Malick speaks of being awakened to the "glory all around us," what does he mean? Is it a sort of pantheistic deification of nature? A deistic affirmation of some vague, removed divinity? With The Tree of Life and now To the Wonder, I am convinced that he is speaking of "the glory" of the world not in the sense of being the thing to be worshipped but as pointer to the Being to be worshipped, namely the Christian God. To adopt this way of seeing is to engage with external activators of the sensus divinitatis built into our very being—an innate proclivity to suspect God's existence.

Grateful Belief—in the Sacred, and the Mundane

Though many of Malick's characters struggle with faith and feel God to be distant (Mrs. O'Brien in The Tree of Life, Pocahontas in The New World, Sgt. Welsh in The Thin Red Line), most of them—through encounters with Love or with beauty—come back to a place of belief. Father Quintana in To the Wonder, for example, remains thirsty for God the whole film, even in the midst of suffering. In a beautiful sequence Quintana quotes part of St. Patrick's Lorica in a prayer that encapsulates the film's underlying vision:

Teach us where to seek you. Christ be with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right. Christ on my left. Christ in my heart. Thirsty. We thirst. Flood our souls with your spirit and life so completely that our lives may only be a reflection of you. Shine through us. Show us how to seek you. We were made to see you.

Immediately prior to this prayer, Malick's curious gaze lands on a nun, fully outfitted in habit, standing at a kitchen sink alone, washing silverware. We then see that it is actually Quintana looking at her, and we see that he is moved. In one image: the sacred and the mundane; work and worship; washing away the stain; the specter of Eden in a household chore. In a way the moment echoes the final voiceover of the soldiers leaving Guadalcanal in The Thin Red Line, looking out on the blood-soaked beaches and the baptismal wake of the departing boat: "Darkness and light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind, the features of the same face?"

I suspect Malick's answer is yes. Pain, struggle, loss, strife: it's all an opportunity to see the face of God and to grow in faith. Just as nature was created to be resilient in the midst of difficulty (see the asteroid in The Tree of Life, or the palm shoot springing up from the bombed out beach in the final shot of The Thin Red Line), humans were created to press on and grow, emboldened by the grace, forgiveness and guiding Spirit of "the Love that loves us," come what way. The same advice that keeps Pocahontas going in The New World (to think of a tree: "If a branch breaks off, it don't stop but keeps reaching toward the light") helps Marina overcome hard times and press on in To the Wonder.

It's enough for us to simply say—as Marina does in the film's final line—"thank you." Thank you to a God who gives us purpose and guides us "towards the light." And thank you to a filmmaker willing to join us on that journey.

The Family Corner

To the Wonder is rated R for a few brief scenes of sexuality and fleeting nudity. It is extremely brief and artfully presented and is tame compared to many PG-13 films. There is also one scene of adultery inside a cheap motel, but it is clearly presented as a wrong choice with serious consequences later in the film. Moreso than its content, the film's elusive, abstract style will likely keep the film off the radar for all but the most adventurous young filmgoers.

Ever since social media invaded our personal lives—and the delivery room—postpartum photos have created a new pressure on expectant mothers. In an instant, hundreds if not thousands of people can look in on the joy of the moment. That's not always a bad thing; however, when private moments become public, it's tough to ignore the watching eyes. When we have an audience, we are far more likely to perform.

From top to bottom: Her.meneutics writers Amy Julia Becker, Megan Hill, Amy Simpson, and Caryn Rivadeneira share their first photos as new moms.

The Jersey Shore's Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi recently told expectant mom Kim Kardashian that to look her best post-delivery, she should to stay away from nude lipstick and "remember to bring an extra pair of eyelashes in your purse in case you are not at home when your water breaks." Both Polizzi and Kardashian make a living presenting a certain image, but the pressure to perform isn't reserved for reality TV stars. As much as I would like to say that I'm above such vanity, I'll confess—like many moms—I am sympathetic.

On a Sunday afternoon in late August, I was nine days past my due date. I sat curled around a wingback chair, my eyes clamped shut and my face buried in the cushion while my dad looked on with a furrowed brow. I tried to relax my body and breeeeathe while another contraction washed over my body. I'd been having contractions all day long, and while they had increased in strength they had not increased in frequency, which meant I couldn't yet check into the hospital. My parents were in town to await the delivery, and my dad was especially anxious. As I sat there groaning on the chair, my dad finally he said, "It's time."

I packed my bags for the hospital with everything I needed: a nightgown, a change of clothes, slippers, hair ties, a toothbrush, and a camera. I also threw in some items to help me relax during labor: a lavender-scented heating pad, and a sock full of tennis balls for massaging my back. Before I zipped up my things and hopped in the car, I made sure to pack one final thing: makeup. I grabbed some cover-up, blush, eyeliner, mascara, and pink lip-gloss. Only then was I ready to go have a baby.

Long before that day, I had been concerned about how I would look post-delivery. I'd seen countless Facebook photos of postpartum mothers who looked like they'd been run over by a truck. In contrast, I saw pictures of Beyoncé soon after giving birth, looking flawless and serene. Between the two options, I wanted to look like Beyoncé. But how?

I perused the Internet for tips, and soon discovered that I was far from being the first woman to worry about how she'd look in her post-delivery photos. I found discussion boards counseling women to have their hair done before checking into the hospital, or recommending taking photos from a high angle, which is more flattering.

My postpartum beauty regime may not have ascended to Snooki-level heights, but the heart of my concern speaks to my reliance on makeup. In a sense, makeup allows women to hide and to be less vulnerable. For some, appearance is not just about vanity, but also security, power, and control.

Between the pressure of social media and the power of makeup, what's a new mother to do?

For starters, some of us might consider scaling back on social media. If Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook threaten to interfere with the beauty and intimacy of the moment, then save the memory for you and your loved ones alone.

Second, we need to reclaim the beauty of the post-delivery moment. Postpartum photos are rarely beautiful in the traditional sense. Labor and delivery can get pretty ugly, and any woman who has gone through it has experienced the terrible "pain of childbearing" (Gen. 3:16). I was in labor for well over 24 hours, developed pre-eclampsia, and retained an enormous amount of fluid. The picture my husband snapped just after the delivery is perhaps the worst picture ever taken of me in my entire life.

When I first saw that photo, I was embarrassed. I did not see beauty. But my husband did. He loves that photo and always comments on how beautiful I look in it. Although my face and body were puffy distortions of his wedding day bride, he saw beauty in that moment, and he saw beauty in me. That's the funny thing about the post-delivery moment. In it co-mingles a blessing with a curse. The brokenness of our world is written all over our bodies, and yet those marks are the signs of a marvelous new life.

In that respect, the post-delivery moment echoes the paradox of the cross. Jesus' crucifixion is both hideous and glorious. In Christ's death we witness the terrible consequences of sin and the radiant love of God. The cross is both ugly and beautiful, all at the same time.

Likewise, mothers literally lay down their bodies to bring new life into the world. The beauty of that moment conforms not to earthly standards, but to that of Christ's sacrifice. It is a different kind of beauty, one that is faintly cruciform.

When I look at that post-delivery photo of myself, that's the kind of beauty I hope to see. I want to relish in the splendor of that moment. I want to recognize the beauty of new life coming out of physical sacrifice. And I want to glory in the scars that gave me my son.

In the spirit of that desire, I join with several other Her.meneutics contributors in sharing our own postpartum photos. In doing so, we want to celebrate the beauty of life springing forth from formidable sacrifice, and to claim those physical costs as glory. We hope you will pull out your own postpartum photos and do the same!

From countless pulpits every week we hear an implicit message that has wormed its way into our minds: We lack the key to unlocking the secrets of Scripture because we don't know the original languages. Sure, we have translations of the Bible—a lot of them, in fact. But pastors tell us again and again that, unlike the term in the Bibles in our laps, the true meaning of any given term in the Old or New Testament is something quite different. It's a bit like pre-Reformation times, when illiterate believers had to depend on church authorities to tell them what the Bible said and meant.

A little overdrawn? Perhaps. But many Christians assume that they could glean a deeper and more profound meaning from Scripture if only they knew the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

As a working translator, I have studied translation for years. And though I would agree that knowing the original languages is key for any other text, when it comes to the Bible, I don't. In fact, I believe that translations of Scripture are not secondary fill-ins. Rather, they are integral to the ongoing and primary expression of God's message to us.

Words and Their Wiles

We all know that words are powerful. The words spoken to us in anger as children can haunt us, and the tender words of those who love us can provide remarkable comfort for years. But we may not realize how fickle words can be. They are fickle because language, at its root, represents a perception of reality—our perception, which isn't necessarily shared by anyone else.

Words reflect what we believe or make believe. There is no guarantee anyone will ever completely understand our words—and we know from experience how easily they are misunderstood. Our immediate listeners typically understand because they share our context, but otherwise, words and their meaning can be slippery and difficult to pin down.

That's all the more true for words that describe someone as mysterious as God. When Moses asked God to tell him his name, to reveal his identity, God told Moses what he needed to know: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶֹאֲ אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh asher ehyeh) or "I Will Be What I Will Be" (Ex. 3:14). But as it turns out, this divine revelation in human language is insufficient, as the translation by Jewish translator Robert Alter illustrates. Alter notes that "rivers of ink have since flowed in theological reflection on and philosophical analysis of this name," which could also be translated as the more familiar "I Am That I Am," "I Am He Who Endures," and many other possibilities.

Of course, God knew that a name was inadequate to reveal his full nature, so he used a long historical narrative full of poetry, instruction, and visions in order to communicate who he is in relation to us. By studying this comprehensive work, the Bible, we find out about—indeed, find—God.

But language is not merely a medium to convey information about the story of the Bible. Language itself is a crucial part of the narrative, something core to the Bible's very nature.

The Medium and The Message

In the beginning, language set divine creation in motion ("God said, 'Let there be …'" in Genesis 1). And in the end, Revelation 7:9 tells us, worshipers will stand before God "from every nation, tribe, people, and language" [my emphases]. According to the Bible, therefore, language is centrally important in God's dealing with us, and ours with him.

Between Genesis and Revelation lies the birth of the church, an event that in the biblical narrative is also marked by language—namely, language translation. According to Acts, as soon as the apostles were filled with the Spirit, they started to speak in languages that were immediately understood by the many bystanders, who represented "every nation under heaven" (2:5). This supernatural translation event marked the beginning of the great and ongoing mission project at whose very core lies Scripture translation.

These two short paragraphs hardly do justice to the uses of language in God's purposes for us. The larger point is that he has spoken to people at special moments in history and employed written language in Scripture to communicate with us.

Equally Relevant to God

When Paul proclaims in Galatians, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile," he states one of the strongest tenets of our faith: There is no difference in the value of a person based on origin. In the same manner, there is no difference in the value of particular languages and how they express the Word of God. Yale historian Lamin Sanneh, who has written extensively about the translation of the Christian message, notes, "God, who has no linguistic favorites, has determined that we should all hear the Good News 'in our native tongue.'"

Andrew Walls, a leading British missiologist, maintains that the translation of the Word is a reflection of the very nature of Christianity. In fact, he points out that Jesus' incarnation as described in John 1:14—"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us"—is the very first act of translation. This divine act of translation gives us ultimate confidence in the further successful translatability of the Bible. As Walls says, "There is a history of translation of the Bible because there was a translation of the Word into flesh."

And of course, the God who became human, who was translated into humanity, also used language—not just signs or miracles or mystical visions—to communicate divine truth to us.

Any expression in any one language has a range of meaning, something that linguists call a semantic field. In the case of "I Will Be What I Will Be," a variety of expressions in English—and in any language—can be used to convey single aspects of the field. But none matches the full range of meanings. Add to that the constantly changing nature of language and corresponding changes in meaning, the opinions and allegiances of translators to certain theologies and doctrines, and the ongoing research that casts new light on the source text, and you end up with a lot more than one translated version of the Bible for each language, especially in cultures with vibrant faith communities.

In English alone, we've had more than a dozen new mainstream translations in the past 20 years alone. But instead of this confusing the meaning of Scripture, it actually gives English-speaking Christians a rich, multilayered resource for gaining fresh insights on the Word of God.

But what about translations in other languages—what difference do they make to English speakers?

The Ultimate Choir

It's important to remember how the Revelation passage concludes. Here's how the Voice translators relay the scene:

I looked and saw a huge crowd of people, which no one could even begin to count, representing every nation and tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and waving palm branches. They cried out with one loud voice [emphasis mine]: "Salvation comes only from our God, who sits upon the throne, and from the Lamb."

Based on the number of languages today, there will be more than 6,000 languages represented in that one loud voice. The sound of unimaginable harmonic complexity will be the most complete human expression ever to represent Christ—perhaps the perfect reflection of the Lamb, whom the crowd worships. It will certainly be language's crowning achievement.

It's an amazing sight and sound to anticipate. In the meantime, until we join the polyglot choir, what relevance does it have to us today? We may have a vague idea that translators are laboring in obscurity around the world to translate the Bible into 6,500-some languages. But what difference does it actually make to us that translators are working in languages that we don't understand?

It's this: Every new rendering of God's Word in a linguistic set of human expression—a language—enriches the worldwide church in her understanding of God, regardless of whether we speak that particular language. Our thinking and imagination are necessarily confined and constrained by our own language and its assumptions. But when we encounter another language—and as it confronts and interacts with the biblical text—it can expand our understanding of God and our world. This is true in our dealings with the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic source texts, yes, but also the more than 2,000 target languages into which the Bible or parts of the Bible have been translated.

Take this example from a number of Chinese Bible translations. We know that God transcends gender, but most languages are limited to grammatical gender expressed in pronouns. In the case of English, this is confined to he, she, and it. Modern Chinese, however, offers another possibility. In modern Chinese, the third-person singular pronoun is always pronounced the same (tā), but it is written differently according to its gender (他 is he, 她 is she, and 它/牠 is it). In each of these characters, the first (or upper) part defines the gender (man, woman, or thing/animal), while the second element gives the clue to its pronunciation.

I believe that translations of Scripture are not secondary fill-ins but an integral part of the ongoing and primary expression of God's message in written form.

In 1930, after a full century with dozens of Chinese translations, Bible translator Wang Yuande coined a new "godly" pronoun: 祂. Chinese readers immediately knew how to pronounce it: tā. But they also recognized that the first part of that character, signifying something spiritual, clarified that God has no gender aside from being God. This translation discovery was an aha moment for Chinese believers. But knowing this benefits us as well—even if we don't understand Chinese—because it expands our comprehension of God's divine character.

There is no automation in this process. Translation is not a magical act where a unique facet of God is unearthed each time a new translation is published or a language is "conquered." But as each faith community matures, discoveries like the Chinese divine pronoun can add to our understanding of God. In the case of the Chinese pronoun, it took a maturation process of 100 years and a member of the native church to reach this revelation.

According to linguist David Crystal, the ongoing death of languages (judged by the death of the last speaker of that language) will occur at the rate of about one every two weeks over the next century. The Ethnologue, a language inventory published by SIL International, lists 473 near-extinct languages, those with "only a few elderly speakers … still living." This represents nearly 500 fewer languages in that grand choir and 500 fewer opportunities for all of us to understand aspects of God that only those languages may have offered.

Future translations of the Bible into languages with existing translations and into those many languages without the Bible will not add anything to the original words of the Bible. But each of these translations has the potential to mature and increase our understanding of those words and, ultimately, our comprehension of God. Naturally, the primary beneficiaries are the people into whose language the Bible is translated. But as other language groups hear about the structure and thinking behind the new translation—e.g., the new Chinese translation—their knowledge of God's Word also deepens.

There certainly are advantages to being able to read the source texts of the Bible—just reading the many testimonies of Bible translators who have discovered a deeper and often more personal understanding of Scripture by working through the original languages speaks volumes. But just as access to many different translations in one language deepens our understanding of God, grasping how Chinese, Tagalog, Arabic, and Swahili versions of the Bible are translated can provide insights into the nature of God that might be found only in those translations.

Here's my dream as a faithful translator sitting in the pew: The next time my pastor expounds on the broader meaning of a biblical term, that foreign-sounding word he draws from may well be Quechua or Navajo or Korean or any of the more than 2,000 other possibilities, thus drawing me and my fellow worshipers into the ongoing translation process of God's Word.

Jost Zetzsche is a translation technology consultant, translator, and coauthor of Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World (Perigee).

For today’s entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Michael Wear. Michael was the faith outreach director for President Obama’s 2012 relection campaign and until recently served in the White House Office of Faith and Community Partnerships. He recently cofounded Values Partnership with another Obama faith veteran, Joshua Dubois. This is a social enterprise that helps nurture public, private and non-profit partnerships within the faith community. Michael and his wife, Melissa currently reside in Washington, D.C. where they attend National Community Church. You can follow Michael on Twitter here: @michaelrwear

-Daniel

What is the biggest misconception evangelicals have about the President’s faith?

There are some surface level misconceptions, or insufficiently informed judgments, some hold that are obvious: that he’s a Muslim (he’s not) or otherwise not a Christian (he is), for instance. But I think a more fundamental misconception that some might hold runs deeper and applies to a range of politicians and public figures: that his faith is inanimate. What I mean by that is, I fear many of us talk about the President’s faith as if it is like anything else related to The White House or government—something to be debated or dissected, something to be poked and tested. And this can be done without much regard for the soul of the man.

I’ve prayed with him, and I’ve been with him as he’s discussed his faith in public and in private. He is no theologian, but he is a man on a walk with Jesus. He ponders scripture. He prays. He starts his day with a Christian devotional. We should be very careful about how we address the faith of such a person, President or not, particularly if we don’t have a relationship with him.

The President alluded to some of this in a speech he gave at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2010:

My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we’re being true to our conscience and true to our God. “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

If we care first and foremost about seeing men and women come to a saving knowledge of Christ, and to grow in that faith, than that should be our modus operandi when thinking about the faith of the President or any other person.

Working in the White House and on a Presidential campaign is a pretty intense job. How did you maintain your spiritual vitality?

Excellent question. To be honest, early on, I didn’t take the challenge seriously enough. I was maybe putting as much in the tank as I was prior to working for the President, but the problem was that I was taking so much more out! It took a bit for me to understand what was happening in my life, and that I would need to create new rhythms so that I could stay grounded in the Gospel in a pretty tough environment. While I was in DC, I started reading my Bible on the metro ride into work, which helped me prepare for the day. My wife and I also joined a small group at our local church here in D.C., National Community Church.

When I started the campaign job last year leading faith outreach, I knew I would be facing a whole new set of challenges, and so I asked a few close brothers who I trust and respect to join me on a prayer call each week. Finally, it was really helpful that for the entire time I was serving the President, my job allowed me to connect with Christian leaders and organizations on a regular basis, which made it easier to keep my faith at the center of my day.

Evangelicals have some disagreements with the President on a number of issues, but also found ways to work with him. How hard was it for you to navigate that relationship?

When I was working at The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, we wanted to pursue building relationships with evangelicals (and all religious and non-profit groups and leaders) that prioritized our shared capacity to serve people in need, rather than politics. For too long, engagement of evangelical leaders in D.C. seemed to be all about political power. That approach was both inconsistent with our values, and also, I should add, untenable given that so many of the evangelicals in this country doing good work had purposefully rejected a concentration on partisan politics. We—the Administration and evangelical leaders–provided each other room to disagree on some issues so that we had the freedom to partner on areas of common cause. So on issues from adoption to immigration reform to human trafficking to climate change, and so many more, we sought to connect with those who were doing the best work in these areas, and found ways to partner in concrete ways that actually moved us closer to our shared goals. There are problems that can arise in these kinds of partnerships. It takes courage and putting your reputation on the line. But I believe more than ever that this spirit is critical if government truly wants to serve all of the people, and it’s crucial for the church as a testimony to who we are and who we serve.

Campaigns, of course, are all about political power. So in that context political differences are not able to be overcome in the same way that they could in government. However, in my role leading faith outreach for the President’s re-elect, I tried to make sure that our work communicated an appropriate level of humility and left space for committed people of faith who disagree with the President. I hope that was felt by folks during the campaign.

Some groups have been concerned about the HHS mandate and religious liberty. Do you think the White House will continue to address their questions?

This is such a tough issue. I think The White House will continue to listen to and find ways to address conscience issues raised by religious groups in a way that is consistent with their values. I think Melissa Rogers, the newly-appointed head of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, understands religious liberty issues as well as anybody in the country. She will serve the country well, and we should be thankful someone who has thought so much about these issues is in that role.

I will mention two things that I think are important in this general area of religious liberty that I think will be increasingly important in what is a rapidly changing, post-Christian national culture where Christianity no longer provides the dominant narrative and backdrop for the way our society considers issues. First, we can no longer assume familiarity with what it means to be religious. I met very few leaders in Washington, of either Party, who were intentionally antagonistic toward people of faith. In more cases though, the messages of the faith community can just get lost in translation. We need to think about how we communicate what it means to be religious to policymakers who may or may not be believers themselves, and what practical implications that has in their work. I care a great deal about this issue today, and I view it as central to my work moving forward.

Second, for an issue as important as religious liberty, we must ensure that what we are communicating is essential, is actually essential. We must not conflate issues of religious liberty with general policy goals that we have, because that will undermine our pursuit of protections for religious liberty. In an increasingly pluralistic nation, hyperbole can’t be our primary mode of rhetoric as we engage in the public square. Let’s reassess what is essential and what is not, and then stand strong for those things that are core to protecting religious liberty in this country.

How would you counsel Christians to pray for the President?

I think that we should pray for the President as we would for anyone in a position of power. Pray that God will give him a peace that surpasses all understanding, and banish anxiety from his heart. Pray for perspective, that God would speak to him, and that he will have the faith to follow Him. Pray for his family.

But more directly to your question of how we should pray for the President: Pray with a spirit of love and goodwill. Pray knowing that Jesus is Lord over all things, and that he cares about the future of this country and the fate of the world more than any of us ever could. And pray without condescension in your heart, with a humility that represents a proper perspective of who we are, and who God is.

Bonus Question: You’re a huge Buffalo Bills fan. How do you think they will do this year?

You’re asking at the wrong time, Dan. Our team is in utter disrepair: We don’t have a legitimate starting quarterback; we have a #1 wideout who would be a phenomenal #2, and not much to back him up; our linebackers were the weakest part of our team, and for some reason we’ve let go of our best ones without any sign of a replacement; at the moment our offensive line started to gel, we decided we didn’t want to pay one of our top lineman (Levitre); need I go on? I’m withholding a final judgment, because it’s too painful to think about now, until after Draft Day. Ask me then, and I will likely either be in deep despair, or holding onto the faintest glimmer of hope. I think we’re looking at 5-11 right now, and even that may be too optimistic.

Daniel Darling is a pastor, author, and speaker. He regularly blogs here. Follow him on Twitter: @dandarling

It's common these days for each new episode of a TV series to begin with a montage that sums up all the relevant plot points from previous episodes. So it was only natural that, when the History Channel aired its five-part mini-series The Bible over the month of March, all but one of the episodes began with narrator Keith David intoning, in his deep baritone voice, "Previously, on The Bible …"

All of the show's strengths and weaknesses are captured in that one phrase. Produced by Mark Burnett (a TV mogul best known for unscripted "reality" shows like Survivor and The Apprentice) and his wife Roma Downey (who once starred in Touched by an Angel), the mini-series rushes through the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in ten hours—though it's more like seven, once you bracket off the commercial breaks—and it zips through the stories so quickly that you barely notice when they are compressed even further in those opening sequences. But the mini-series also makes a point of emphasizing the continuity between Bible stories in a way that is quite rare among Bible films, and in a way that sometimes allows individual stories to shed light profitably on others.

So, praise where praise is due. The Bible covers some awfully familiar territory—there have been many films about Moses and Jesus over the years, and there are more in development as we speak—but it also covers stories that aren't brought to life on the big or small screen all that often, such as the Babylonian exile and the rise of the early church. Even better, the mini-series connects the familiar and unfamiliar stories, so that, for example, the Peter who followed Christ around Galilee and the Peter who led the church in Jerusalem are played by the same actor. Very few films have allowed for that. (The Visual Bible's adaptations of Matthew and Acts featured the same actor as Jesus, but changed most of the rest of the cast.)

Even more intriguingly, The Bible comes from an unabashedly Christian perspective, so that, for example, when Abraham speaks to "the LORD" (as per Genesis 18), it is strongly hinted that the person he is speaking to might actually be a pre-incarnate version of Christ. (We never get a good look at the person's face, but his voice and hair seem awfully familiar.) Later, when Daniel describes his prophetic vision of "a son of man coming on the clouds," it allows the mini-series to segue quite smoothly into the New Testament.

The mini-series also features several scenes in which characters from a later Bible story are conscious of the characters who have come before them. Moses, for example, says on a few occasions that he is leading the Israelites out of Egypt in order to fulfill a promise that God made to Abraham—a point that other Moses movies don't always make.

Sometimes the enhanced continuity leads the filmmakers into more dubious territory. For example, the Ascension marks the traditional end of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances in bodily form, but in the mini-series, Jesus makes a number of appearances after the Ascension that are indistinguishable from the ones he made before it: the Book of Acts describes what Paul saw on the road to Damascus as a bright light from heaven, but the mini-series has Jesus stand by the side of the road, like someone waiting to hitch a ride; and where the Book of Acts says "the Spirit" gave instructions to Peter regarding the conversion of Cornelius, the mini-series has Jesus pay Peter a visit instead. Later on, Jesus appears to the elderly apostle John on Patmos and raises the hole in his hand for our contemplation, just as he did on the first Easter.

Still more problematic is the way the mini-series smoothes over certain tensions within the Bible until it cannot hide them any longer, at which point it doesn't really give us any way to deal with them. The Old Testament pulls in different directions on a number of issues, such as whether foreign races ought to be exterminated and/or excluded from the assembly of Israel (compare Deuteronomy 23:1-8 and its ruthless enforcement by Ezra and Nehemiah with Isaiah 56:1-7 and the punchline to the Book of Ruth), and, if anything, the mini-series seems to tilt in favor of ancient Israelite chest-thumping when, say, the soldiers led by Joshua wave their swords and chant "Israel! Israel! Israel!" But then, a couple of episodes later, Jesus feeds the multitude and the crowd replies by chanting "Israel! Israel! Israel!" and demanding that Jesus be their king—and this greatly disturbs Jesus, who protests, "No, this is not the way! Not by force!" A suppler film might have offered some way to understand this apparent change in divine tactic, but this mini-series isn't up to the task.

The nationalism itself is sometimes expressed in ways that are problematic for the current viewer. One of the show's recurring themes is that "God is with us"—but this sometimes seems to carry the connotation that God is, therefore, not with someone else, not with them. Violent acts that receive no particular divine sanction in the Bible, such as the raid Abraham stages to rescue Lot and his family, are here presented as evidence of what you can do when you "trust in God." And where the Bible depicts the miracle in the fiery furnace as something that forced Nebuchadnezzar to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, the mini-series depicts it as a morale-booster for the Jewish exiles—while leaving Nebuchadnezzar to languish in the ancient Babylonian equivalent of an insane asylum, without reprieve.

This last detail, of course, is symptomatic of an even larger problem, which is the way the mini-series loses much of the narrative and emotional nuance of the Bible by rushing through it so quickly, especially with regard to the Old Testament stories. The Pharaoh yells "No!" to Moses' demands for liberation after each and every plague, instead of sometimes saying "yes" and then breaking his word, as he does in Exodus. Samson, for some reason, is played by a black actor even though virtually every other Israelite is not—so the Philistines kill his wife just because they're racist, and not because of any escalating antagonism between them and him. (Later, Samson tells Delilah the secret to his strength the very first time she asks, which itself is an oversimplification of the story.) John the Baptist is sent to prison and executed immediately, so that we never experience his moment of doubt. And so on.

And yet, despite all these narrative short-cuts, the mini-series still finds time to insert a fair bit of violence, some of it warranted by the biblical source material and some of it not. The angels who visit Sodom do not merely blind the crowd outside Lot's house, but pull out swords and start slashing away. The spies in Jericho get into a swordfight in the streets and, ducking into Rahab's house, actually hold swords to both her throat and that of her son to keep them quiet. Herod personally stabs a Jewish rebel in the neck and lets him bleed to death. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary while her fellow Nazarenes are fighting the Romans in the streets. Pilate, while practicing his swordplay at home, deliberately slashes his partner's chest after he has already defeated him—and the camera and the soundtrack linger for a few seconds on this moment of pain. Other examples abound.

Some of this can be justified on the basis that it provides historical context—it is especially helpful to be reminded that Pilate could be quite brutal at times, as Luke 13 attests—but the sense one gets is that the producers were constantly looking for opportunities to make the show "exciting," and that the easiest way to do this was to keep jacking up the "action."

The mini-series caters to modern sensibilities in other ways, too. Aesthetically, it borrows from other Bible movies—most notably Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ—and it employs a soundtrack by Hans Zimmer that sounds virtually identical to the music he and his associates have written for popular movies like Gladiator and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. The dialogue also leans towards banal anachronisms, such as when Delilah tells her fellow Philistines that Samson has "changed. He's a different man since he met me!"

More significantly, when Jesus first meets Peter and gives him a miraculous catch of fish, the script omits any reference to Peter's awareness of his own sinfulness (as per Luke 5) and, instead, has Jesus make bland pronouncements such as, "Give me an hour, and I will give you a whole new life." Later, Jesus tells Peter he's giving him "the chance to change your life" and says that, together, they will "change the world." This is the language of talk shows and infomercials, not the language of first-century Jews and Christians.

That being said, the mini-series does put some clever spins on these stories. For example, while the Book of Daniel generally refers to Daniel's three friends by their Babylonian names (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego), the mini-series has one of them insist on using his Hebrew name, Azariah, and it builds up the relationship between Daniel and Azariah in a way that allows each of them to bear witness as the other is put to the test: first Azariah in the fiery furnace, and then, years later, Daniel in the lions' den.

Later, in the episodes based on the gospels, Nicodemus is depicted as an early critic of Jesus—it is he who asks Jesus whether the Jews ought to pay taxes to Caesar—who gradually turns around and comes over to Jesus' side. The mini-series even makes a point of cross-cutting between Nicodemus' encounters with Jesus and Judas' meeting with the high priest, so that Nicodemus, in a sense, "betrays" Caiaphas just as Judas betrays Jesus.

There is also a striking moment when Jesus calls on Matthew, the tax collector, to join him and his followers. When the scene begins, Jesus is surrounded by disciples and critics who agree on little except that tax collectors are "vermin"—so Jesus tells the parable of the publican and the Pharisee, and as he reaches the words that the publican spoke in humble prayer, Matthew recites them in sync with Jesus and starts to cry. The parable, it seems, is more than just a story; it is evidence of Jesus' prophetic or divine knowledge, and it gives Matthew, who now knows that his prayers have been heard, an emotionally compelling reason to drop his work and join the Jesus movement right then and there.

There are several other moments like these scattered throughout the mini-series, and they are sometimes quite brilliant, even if the filmmakers never quite know how to follow through on them. (Jesus' temptation in the wilderness is accompanied by flash-forwards to the Passion—but he seems to be caught off-guard when he has yet another set of premonitions during the Last Supper.) Bible adaptations like this are at their best when they hit on an aspect of the story that the viewer might never have considered before, or when they juxtapose texts in a way that prompts the viewer to think about the story from a fresh angle. In a nutshell, they work best when they open the story up for the viewer. (One excellent recent example is the Oscar-nominated animated short film Adam and Dog, which re-imagines the story of Creation and the Fall from the point of view of man's first best friend.)

But the rush-rush-rush of this particular mini-series, which relies heavily on the narration to smoothe over narrative gaps and explain the meaning of individual scenes, runs the risk of closing the stories and their meaning to the average viewer. Instead of coming away changed, the viewer comes away feeling good about a story of "change." And that is not quite the same thing.

Peter T. Chattaway is a freelance film critic and blogger at Patheos.com with a special interest in Bible movies. His episode-by-episode blog posts on The Bible can be found here. He lives with his family in Surrey, B.C.

Copyright © 2013 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

The future United States was not on the Puritans’ minds when they founded New England. Yet (with Ronald Reagan’s help) we still seem to think that John Winthrop—and perhaps even Jesus—meant the American nation when he spoke of a “city on a hill.”

One of the best antidotes for this American national myopia is realizing just how English the early Puritans were. I can think of no better book for this purpose than Francis Bremer’s Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds. Bremer, one the leading scholarly experts on the Puritans, uses the influential but understudied Davenport, the founder of the equally understudied New Haven Colony, to shift our view of the Puritans by de-centering America generally, and Massachusetts specifically.

Born in England in 1597, Davenport did not come to America until he was forty years old. By then, he was a principled veteran of the puritan movement in England and the Netherlands, having reluctantly concluded that he could not comply with Anglican demands to implement extra-biblical practices such as kneeling at communion.

In 1638, Davenport founded New Haven, a principled experiment in Congregationalist church and state which Connecticut would absorb 25 years later. Still eager to influence the international Reformed cohort, Davenport accepted the pastorate of First Church Boston in 1667, but died three years later.

Bremer traces much of Davenport’s zeal for transatlantic religious reform to his belief that he was living during the “Middle Advent,” a time in which the Holy Spirit would powerfully transform true (Protestant) churches to prepare them for Christ’s second coming.

Non-specialists may struggle with the biography’s painstaking details, but Bremer convincingly uses Davenport to disrupt notions of the typical American Puritan. Indeed, Bremer contends that through the lens of Davenport’s fully transatlantic life, we see more clearly that there “was no such thing as a typical puritan.”

Thomas S. Kidd is professor of history at Baylor University. He is writing a biography of George Whitefield for Yale University Press.

Copyright © 2013 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

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