Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous” hit the theaters last week. I decided that I would make a point of seeing it once I saw the preview. (As a wise person once told me: “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer!”) In general I like to know what religious critics are saying about religion in our culture today because many of them are sitting out there in the pews every week.
Bill Maher is the politically incorrect person par excellence. In his recent TV interview on “Larry King Live” he said he has wanted to take on “religion” for at least 10 years. He spoofs people’s certainty about their religion — including Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity and Islam — by peppering his documentary (some call it a “mockumentary”) with his rationalist doubt. One commentator summarizes it this way:
‘Religulous’ is a 2008 American documentary film directed by Larry Charles and starring political comedian Bill Maher. According to Maher, the title of the film is a portmanteau derived from the words “religion” and “ridiculous,” implying the satirical nature of the documentary that is meant to mock the concept of religion and the problems it brings about.
You can check the preview here
I must say that I found myself simultaneously offended and laughing hysterically throughout the film. Religulous is drenched in sarcasm. Maher makes no bones about his own biases. I must say, however, what I enjoyed most were his encounters with Christian fundamentalists. In his defense, some religious antics defy human reasoning and easily lend themselves to ridicule and Maher got some of it on tape.
He also lampoons some literal interpretations of the bible and questions Catholic doctrine on the Blessed Mother and the Sacraments. In my judgment, some of his ambivalence may be related being raised in a Jewish Catholic household; he ended any religious affiliation by the time he hit early adolescence. (It may have been easier to dismiss both traditions than to find the inherent truths in either of them. Nor does he give any indication that he is ready at this point in his life to pursue a disciplined religious journey.)
In the end, this movie for me was bittersweet. Religious extremism deserves to be lampooned…that is the sweet. However, as I watched Maher’s demeanor in the interview by Larry King, I saw disdain, not joy in him, even though he is a comedian by profession. This is the bitter.
I am currently reading Wild & Robust by Carmelite William McNamara. In it, he takes on the fundamental desire we have for joy and how both secularism and false religion can interfere with it. He says:
(Jesus) denounces the scribes and Pharisees with their strict but heartless fidelity to the law. He calls them ‘whited sepulchres’ because they were closed and opposed to lighthearted joy and mirth, to love, freedom and the good fellowship that characterize the children of God…
By impoverishing the life of the spirit, we heighten the temptation of what is traditionally called ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil.’ To paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘No one can live without delight. When we are deprived of spiritual joy, we resort to carnal pleasures.’
Joy is God’s answer to the bittersweet of our lives. Are we really sure we want that gift? Maher may upset or humor us, but he does not offer us hope. In the end, it’s all bitter and no sweet!
Among the vast array of emails out and around as we near the elections, Billy Graham’s prayer caught my attention and I thought it worth sharing with bloggers. It is not new, but it is as timely now as ever…and it beautifully transcends the political “talking points” of the day:
