Arts & Culture

Especially for those churches who imagine ourselves to be a mediating middle path in a country where every issue has become sharply partisan, Civil War illustrates that objectivity ends where the suffering of vulnerable people begins.

The Dune series’ ambivalence and criticism about the role of the messiah lends some light on one of scripture’s more enigmatic ideas: the messianic secret.

Dispatches of Devotion

The BBC weekly podcast Heart and Soul dissects religion’s ubiquitous and misunderstood presence in public life. Imbued with a refreshing human sensitivity, weekly episodes cover a range of faith topics — from Russian Orthodoxy in Kenya to a Sikh music revival. BBC

DURING THE COP 28 climate change conference in Dubai, participants deliberated at length on the climate crisis and rightly set ambitious goals to address the challenges. As may seem natural, much of the conversation centered on securing a planet habitable for humans. But as Christians we must wrestle deeply with sharing God’s covenant with other creatures. Seeing creatures and the natural world as having no meaning other than how they serve human interest is a failure of human vision. The 2007 documentary Earth poignantly highlighted how an anthropocentric worldview and the human-caused environmental crisis have imperiled other creatures in a miraculously delicate system.

Perhaps out of species self-interest, much environmental work focuses on how climate shifts impact current and future human generations. But as people of faith, we can take a more wholistic view that also demonstrates commitment to the well-being of all God’s creation — animate and inanimate — because all are interdependent. In the context of the climate crisis, corrective justice requires addressing the concerns of communities disproportionately affected by climate collapse, as well as ensuring the welfare of nonhuman creatures. It is incumbent upon us to challenge the anthropocentric lens and champion biocentric approaches that affirm the sanctity of all life and creation. Our scripture readings this month present nonhuman creatures as equal partners on God’s planet and speak forcefully about their right to exist and thrive alongside our human communities. They feature animals dancing in open spaces, frolicking in the sea, and celebrating life in its fullness. Everything in nature reflects God’s glory, participates in God’s salvation, and reminds us of the divine presence.

MANY YOUNG CHRISTIANS grow up with special “adventure Bibles” composed of a curated selection of Genesis stories. Featuring colorfully illustrated characters and simplified, “age-appropriate” plot lines, these stories are admittedly easier for children to absorb. Take, for instance, the adaptation of Genesis 3 found in Zondervan’s The Beginner’s Bible: We meet Adam and Eve walking the arcadian Earth. Their bodies are hidden behind carefully placed branches and auburn waist-length hair. Acting alone, Eve takes a bite of bright red fruit and loses paradise. It’s a simple story. It’s also inaccurate.

Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis presents a much more complicated portrait of the first book of the Bible. She invites us to return to these ancient tales and allow the figures to re-introduce themselves. In Robinson’s telling of Genesis 3, Eve is much more dynamic. She is “the mother of all living” who, alongside Adam, “disobeyed, doubted, tried to deceive,” and as a result, brought about “human agency, responsibility, even freedom.”

IN THE WOUNDED HEALER: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Catholic theologian and priest Henri J.M. Nouwen analyzes how the church fails to address the heart of our collective pain and longing. Nouwen presents a paradigm for renewed Christian leadership and care founded on the archetype of the “wounded healer.” More than 50 years after the publication of The Wounded Healer in 1972, we continue to struggle — both individually and societally — with the “wounds” Nouwen names: alienation, separation, isolation, and loneliness. Whether we’re ministers or not, we need the gentle wisdom of the wounded healer to build a more loving, just world.

While the concept goes back at least as far as Plato, the term “wounded healer” was coined by psychoanalyst and doctor Carl Jung. To demonstrate the link between personal suffering and the capacity to care for others, Jung draws on the Greek myth of Chiron. Chiron is a centaur who, due to severe physical pain, becomes an important healer and teacher. Nouwen extends this principle to ministry, calling for church leaders to cultivate “a deeper understanding of the ways in which [they] can make [their] own wounds available as a source of healing.” For both Jung and Nouwen, this work develops depth and compassion. Nouwen writes, “For a compassionate [person] nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”

WHEN THE FULL Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released in 1952, the translation used “young woman” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14, which so enraged conservatives like Rev. M. Luther Hux that he publicly burned that page of the Bible. This would not be nearly the most impactful RSV translation, however, as the new film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture seeks to explain.

1946 (named for the year the RSV New Testament was released) aims to measure the drastic effects of the RSV being the first Bible translation to use the word “homosexual.”

The film follows the research by Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford on the RSV translation, with supplementary scholarship from other academics who help explain the RSV’s rendering of the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai as “homosexual.” It also traces the cultural ripples of this translation, which the film asserts helped anti-LGBTQ+ Christians demonize and ostracize queer people. Finally, it shows the relationship between the film’s director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, a lesbian, and her father Sal Roggio, a conservative pastor.

Translating portions of the Bible can be tricky business. As scholars note, arsenokoitai is a word with few other uses across the ancient world and may have been invented by the apostle Paul. Literally, it is a combination word that means “man who beds with males,” connotating a sexual usage. Malakoi means “soft,” and is understood as referring to “effeminate” men.

In the American Standard Version, a common translation that preceded the RSV, the translation used for arsenokoitai is “abusers of themselves with men.” The RSV later changed its translation to “sexual perverts,” though at the time, this was code for LGBTQ+ people. After the RSV, the New International Version used “men who have sex with men,” while the New Revised Standard Version used “sodomites.” The NRSV’s Updated Edition, released in 2021, uses “men who engage in illicit sex,” while noting that the meaning of the Greek is uncertain.

Hirayama’s mundane work of toilet washing becomes a sanctified act, for one simple reason: He does it for other people.

The new documentary God & Country, inspired by Katherine Stewart’s book The Power Worshippers, fortunately escapes most of the major pitfalls of political documentaries as it addresses the rise of Christian nationalism.