COMMENTARY: Reasonable faith, unreasonable fear

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In Sean Penn’s recent movie “Into the Wild,” there is a touching scene between an elderly man, played by Hal Holbrook, and a young wanderer, portrayed by newcomer Emile Hirsch. The elderly man, who is depicted as a devout Catholic, teaches the young man, who is on a quest […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In Sean Penn’s recent movie “Into the Wild,” there is a touching scene between an elderly man, played by Hal Holbrook, and a young wanderer, portrayed by newcomer Emile Hirsch.

The elderly man, who is depicted as a devout Catholic, teaches the young man, who is on a quest for self-discovery, a lesson about forgiveness. The scene is all the more surprising because Holbrook’s character is presented as a decent, thoughtful and intelligent man.


Chances are, when someone described as “religious” appears on television or in the movies, the person is depicted as narrow-minded, addle-headed or just plain brain-dead. Usually, religious people come off as stupid.

There are also specific stereotypes for different denominations. Catholics are often pegged as repressed, sex-hating hypocrites, while evangelicals are sometimes portrayed as uneducated, mean-spirited bigots.

Obviously, there are plenty of stupid things that religious people have done over the centuries. Fundamentalism of any stripe, and within any religion, can sometimes lead to an inability to think rationally. There’s the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the bombing of abortion clinics and the 9/11 attacks.

Yet the history of religion is just as often one of thoughtful believers trying to find their way through the world, using not just faith, but reason. Indeed, the 11th-century monk Anselm of Canterbury described theology as “fides quaerens intellectum”: faith seeking understanding. For the truly religious person, reason does not oppose faith, but complements it.

That’s why religious people are often angered when they see believers portrayed as idiots. They know that their histories are replete with examples of learned, intelligent and even brilliant men and women. So are their recent pasts.

Protestants, for example, might think of someone like Reinhold Niebuhr (1894-1962), whose writings on the complex relationship between Christian social teaching and contemporary political issues influenced scholars in nearly every American religious community.

Catholics might think of Dorothy Day (1897-1980), the journalist, author and founder of the Catholic Worker movement, which still seeks to care for the urban poor. Day’s unshakeable commitment to nonviolence influenced an entire generation of Catholic leaders.


And Jews might think of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), the great Judaic scholar and civil rights activist who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., another towering religious figure of commanding intellect.

Given the examples of such intelligent believers, where do the negative stereotypes come from?

They may come from those working in the film or television industries who have little connection with believers. (If you don’t know many religious people, it’s easier to think in terms of stereotypes.)

Or they may come from a selective reading of history. (If you know only about the sexual abuse crisis and not about Dorothy Day, it’s easier to mock the Catholic Church.)

But they may also come from a deeper place: fear.

Much of what we see on television and in the movies is written, directed and produced by intelligent people. Some of them might be threatened by the idea that one can be both intelligent and religious. Because that would mean that religion may have something to say to them. That would mean change of course. And change is always threatening.

About the only thing that religious people can do when seeing themselves portrayed this way _ short of writing a letter to writers, directors and producers _ is to laugh at the absurdity. And to think of people like Niebuhr, Day and Heschel, from their posts in heaven, laughing right along with you.

(James Martin is a Jesuit priest and author of a new memoir, “A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage With Jesus, Judas and Life’s Big Questions.”)


A photo of James Martin is available via https://religionnews.com.

KRE/PH END MARTIN

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