Saved!: Christianity Without Christians?

This review was posted originally on cinekklesia on August 16, 2005.

Brian Dannelly's Saved! (2004) is a scathing satire of contemporary American (particularly Evangelical) Christianity. I am surprised that I didn't hear more about it, particularly from Evangelical groups that normally rail against such Hollywood fare. Remember Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, which drew heated calls for Christian boycotts, or, on the flip side, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which generated millions of dollars in church-sanctioned revenue? Whenever Christianity is the subject of a film, it seems that a large number of Christian interest groups make their voices heard in favor or against (usually the latter). (The cinematic adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is already generating rhetorical heat; however, before you launch your own boycott, remember that you may be inadvertently helping the film's producers. As the cliche goes: There is no such thing as bad publicity.)

Thus, I am surprised that I didn't hear more news about this film since it is quite a biting critique. Set in a Christian high school, Saved! follows the travails of Mary (Jena Malone), a senior who discovers that her boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), is gay. She then receives a "vision" from "Jesus," telling her that she must do all that she can to bring Dean back to heterosexuality; thus, despite all that she has learned about shunning the nasty before marriage, she ends up sleeping with Dean and getting pregnant.

Mary's whole life is then rent asunder. She's mad at God because she thought that they had a "deal" — however, if she's pregnant and Dean's still gay, then "clearly" God didn't live up to His end of the bargain. Mary's anger and confusion alienates her from her friends, notably Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), the local Christian prima donna that everyone loves to hate; however, she ends up developing relationships with the school's "tax collectors and sinners": Cassandra (Eva Amurri), the token Jew, and Roland (Macaulay Culkin), Hilary's wheelchair-bound brother.

The reader should note that Saved! served as cinekklesia's first selection for its monthly movie night, co-hosted with the Durham, NC-based Emmaus Way on August 13. One question raised during the post-screening discussion centered on whether viewers needed a special, insider knowledge to "get" all of the satirical references. I would argue no. Despite occasional laments about being ostracized from mainstream America, Evangelicals are actually a very powerful social and political force in the United States today. As such, I hypothesize that the probability is high that non-Evangelicals at some point in their lives encounter the language, music, and cultural references that Evangelicals take for granted. Saved! would not have been able to work as satire without broad recognition of at least some elements of the Evangelical milieu.

Thus, if Saved! is satire, then what, exactly, does it critique? On the one hand, it digs up themes as old as the Pharisees: hypocrisy, religious institutionalism devoid of substance, and the blindness of those who would purport to lead the flock. Hilary Faye serves as our 21st-Century Pharisee: conversant in all the "right" Christian language, ever striving to "serve" the Lord, but ultimately full of herself, rather than the Holy Spirit.

In addition, by focusing on teen pregnancy and homosexuality, Saved! mirrors the Evangelical obsession with all things sexual. Two thousand years after the Gnostics falsely argued that the physical body was of no consequence, Christians today perhaps err on the other extreme by obsessing about the body. While sexual ethics are certainly important, contemporary Christians' intense focus on those tenets at the expense of others (e.g., economic ethics) renders our theology shallow and unidimensional. Ironically, by condemning our culture's focus on sex, many Evangelical groups end up contributing to the body-obsessed, sex-saturated discourse. I, too, get tired of all the sex talk; thus, I certainly don't want to hear even more of it in church.

If Saved! is satire, then is it a fair one? That, of course, depends on who you ask. Any satirical work can expect the following range of reactions: On one extreme are those who "can't take a joke" and who howl cries of indignation and offense at having been mocked; on the other are those who not only agree with a given satire's message but who do not see any of its hyperbole as hyperbole — for them, the work is actually documentary, illustrating the flaws with the group/institution/ideology in question (another point raised at last Saturday's screening). It is important to note that those who agree with a satire's premise include both detractors, who relish taking pot shots at their enemies, and members/affiliates of the target group, who see the satire's message as a wake-up call for reformation.

Keeping in mind Saved!'s overall perspective (which, as far as I could discern at the end, was agnostic or secular humanist), I argue that this movie is a fair critique...as far as it goes. Its tone could have been much harsher, and Dannelly avoids overly simplistic us/them social dichotomies (e.g., Patrick, the pastor's kid, ends up befriending the outcasts). Dannelly doesn't completely reject Christianity (it doesn't appear that he's an atheist); rather, he attempts to soften it and smooth its rough edges. While I ultimately disagree with his views, I don't regard Dannelly as unfair or even antagonistic — merely critical.

The larger point to keep in mind regarding this or any satire is the fact that people often make the worst representatives of any belief system. This is where the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura proves invaluable. If someone asked me for an illustration of Christianity, I don't think that I would point him/her to a particular individual, church, or Christian organization; instead, I'd point that person to the Gospels. There are plenty of Hillary Fayes in Christendom (and, to dredge up an old cliche, there's a little bit of Hilary Faye in all of us). Thus, the antidote to the ills besetting the Christian high school in Saved! may not be more Christians, but simply, Christ Himself.