Page 956 – Christianity Today (2024)

Let's first celebrate how many movies released this year pass the “Bechdel Test” (in which at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man). As a woman and a movie fan, I'm especially pleased by that. But watching Miss You Already, I couldn’t help but wonder why a movie that takes female friendship seriously has to revolve around childbirth and death.

Miss You Already is not easy to watch. I won’t watch it again any time soon. That’s why I kind of resent the fact that Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette) have one of the most realistic and nuanced friendships I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Jess and Milly, friends since childhood, are now in midlife. Their relationship has already survived the full range of life changes, including jobs, marriage, children, and an obvious wealth gap. This seems rare both cinematically and in real life.

Director Catherine Hardwicke, who is known for making movies about women (yes, even Twilight sort of counts), is unsparingly honest when it comes to depicting human behavior in relationships. There is a reason it’s rare for two people to stay close for twenty years or more, regardless of the type of relationship, and that’s because it’s hard. Sometimes one person works harder at it than the other; sometimes other relationships and life circ*mstances conflict. MissYou Already deals with all of this while teetering on the line between emotional manipulation and emotional honesty. The movie just barely succeeds at not falling over that line, but it does succeed.

The movie opens with Jess in labor, alone with a nurse in a hospital room, moaning for Milly. Who? Cue flashbacks to Milly, her best friend since moving to Great Britain in grade school. Jess and Milly experienced “everything” together (see: the usual beats in a coming-of-age story, including first kiss and first sexual experience). Milly was the “wild child” and “the hot one” who unexpectedly grew up into a successful (if sometimes “inappropriate”) wife and mother. Jess, whose family is mostly absent in the film, grew up into a dowdy, environmentally-friendly hippie who lives on a houseboat with a sweet but financially insecure man.

The two women remain friends through all of this. But as the movie transitions into the year before Jess wound up pregnant and alone in a London hospital, something has obviously pushed these two women in separate directions.

Milly gets cancer. This movie’s depiction of cancer is intense and not seen through cinematically rosy glasses; there are close-ups of needles, vomit, bruised veins, and patchy scalp. But it is also depicted through humor, sometimes the bleak kind that comes from a hopeless situation and often the ironic kind that can only come from a good friend you know cares deeply enough to make light.

Compared to what Milly is going through, Jess’s problems with IVF and getting pregnant seem to pale—and Jess knows it. Jess is the first person Milly tells that she has cancer. Jess is at Milly’s side for her first round of chemotherapy. When Milly struggles to keep up her home life, Jess moves in. And when Milly eventually undergoes a mastectomy, Jess is the only person she shows her still-bleeding scars.

This intimate focus on the relationship between two women sidelines their romantic relationships with men in a way that is unusual for even movies with a female protagonist. Both Milly and Jess have loyal and supportive men in their lives. These men—Dominic Cooper as Milly’s husband Kit and Paddy Considine as Jess’s Jago—get brief moments to bond, to grieve, to fail, and in Jago’s case, to protest that Jess prioritizes the needs (or “bonkers whims”) of her friend ahead of his or even her own.

Jago has a point, but the movie allows Jess to reach his conclusion gradually and after Milly’s behavior deteriorates until a confrontation set on the moors of West Yorkshire. This scene (which follows one in which the two women literally dance on the moors while living out their shared Wuthering Heights fantasy) teeters on the edge of melodrama—there is a tearful argument, a “big reveal,” and even a traumatic fall).

However, the movie does such a good job treating both women with compassion that while I was rooting for Jess to finally yell at Milly, I also understood the fear driving Milly to the point where she needed it. “You’re so selfish. You’re a cancer bully,” Jess charges Milly: words that would be forbidden in a less brave movie.

Although ultimately the cancer plot drives the movie—which had me crying by the end—Miss You Already proposes that best friends can and should keep each other honest. Milly might not have confronted her own problems if Jess had continued to indulge her. And Jess needed to admit to her own needs.

Small quibble, perhaps, but while the movie does excellent work decanonizing Milly as the cancer victim, Jess remains the steady, sacrificial, martyr of a friend throughout, making the relationship and the story a little one-sided. Even at the end, Jess is still the go-to for everyone in both her life and Milly’s. Her big moment is the birth of her first child—a major life moment, certainly, but a conventional scene in which she yells at the father (who, amusingly, watches on live video surrounded by other men) and grits her teeth for that one last heroic push.

Miss You Already doesn’t hide the fact that one of its protagonists dies in the end. Instead, the drama comes from excellent acting and great dialogue. The movie is so life-like in its storytelling that it makes it more painful to watch.

So I love that a movie like this exists. But I still wish for more movies about female friendship that I can actually enjoy.

Caveat Spectator

This movie depicts the body horror that goes along with disease, including vomit, needles, bloody drainage and post-op scars. There is enough language and frank sensuality (including extramarital sex in a closet filled with kegs) to edge the movie very close to an R-rating.

Alicia Cohn is a regular contributor to Christianity Today's Her.meneutics and freelance writer based in Denver. She tweets @aliciacohn.

Ever since Wycliffe Associates (WA) debuted a new approach that can translate almost half of the New Testament in two weeks, the smaller sister organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) has been inundated with requests.

The process, called Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation (MAST), relies heavily on the local church to provide translators that are fluently bilingual. In a radical shift from earlier work, translators work simultaneously on the text instead of sequentially, and they learn translation principles (including proper names, idioms, and key terms) as they go instead of attending weeks of training beforehand.

By the end of 2014, WA had 115 projects underway. It added another 133 in 2015, and expects to begin another 500 in 2016. The world has about 4,100 living languages without any Bible translations, according to Mission Frontiers, the online magazine of Frontier Ventures.

“This is a breathtaking moment in the history of the church,” WA president Bruce Smith said in October when announcing MAST’s growth. “Christ’s Great Commission is doable. We can share God’s Word with every language group on earth—in our lifetime.”

Is this the death knell for longstanding translation practices, which invest years into language training and translation preparation?

Not quite, said Roy Peterson, CEO of the American Bible Society (ABS). That model was already dead.

“There is no such thing as traditional right now,” he said. “We are watching methodologies evolve right before our eyes that are accelerating translations.” ABS recently completed a New Testament in Zambia in three and a half years, he said. In 1980, the same text would have taken 10 years, according to Mission Frontiers.

Three and a half years is still a lot longer than MAST’s claims. But the accuracy of MAST was recently called into question by a peer-review assessment team, which included members of the Seed Company, Word for the World, WBT Ethiopia, and WBT Africa. They observed a two-week MAST project in Ethiopia in August.

While cautioning that “this review should not necessarily be interpreted as a ‘blanket assessment’ of other MAST implementations,” the group found that “the rate of progress and the quality achieved clearly do not substantiate the widely publicized claims made for the accelerated rate of translation that can be achieved through the MAST methodology.”

The review group had trouble with both of MAST’s time-saving techniques.

Having different translators work simultaneously on different parts of a Bible chapter “can only result in major inconsistencies in style and terminology, especially where they are working from different source versions,” the report said.

It also warned against skimping on pre-translation training: “Such shortcuts may give the impression that the goal is being achieved faster, but they inevitably result in loss of quality.”

A first draft of the Gospel of Mark in five languages was “achieved faster in the two-week Ethiopia MAST workshop than is typical in other initial translation workshops, but the quality was such that much more work will be needed to bring it to an acceptable quality and in a condition ready for wider testing,” the report said.

While all Bible translators want both speed and accuracy, accuracy is more important, six organizational members of Every Tribe Every Nation told CT. The alliance includes some of the world’s largest Bible agencies.

“The only thing worse than keeping someone waiting for the Bible in his or her heart language is a new translation that jeopardizes the clear communication of this same gospel message,” they wrote.

Making errors can cause lasting damage, said Peterson, whose society is part of the Every Tribe Every Nation coalition. “There’s something so delicate and important about the transmission of the Word of God. If we don’t give [local translators] the tools and training, if we let Scripture go out that has not had the care, then I think we’re playing fast and loose with the Word of God.”

Seed Company CEO Samuel Chiang agreed.

“There is deep historical precedence for training,” he said, pointing to the education Old Testament rabbis received. “I would never want to overweigh people with things, but [training] ahead of time is important.”

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for MAST, both Chiang and Peterson said.

“We want to build bridges with everyone who is trying new things,” Peterson said. “[WA is] passionate about translation and we want to affirm that, and ask in what ways we can make sure quality and accuracy are the hallmark of whatever methodology we embrace.”

The report had “elements that are helpful inputs and other parts that are both inaccurate and perhaps not as helpful,” WA’s Smith told CT. The Ethiopia MAST project was hampered by some specific problems, he said.

“We encouraged the church to bring whoever they chose to participate, and we ended up with people who were not actually fluent in two languages,” he said. “Bilingual speakers are really the foundation for all Bible translation.”

The lack of language skill “significantly handicapped the outcome,” he said. So did the size of the teams, which were smaller than WA prefers for MAST.

But letting the local church choose the number and fluency of the translators remains one of WA’s core commitments, he said. “Part of the results in Ethiopia are the result of allowing the church to exercise their full authority over stewarding God’s word in their language.”

The MAST process, correctly used, still turns out a level of accuracy that rivals slower translation methods, Smith said. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

“We’re still on a learning curve,” he said. “We’re improving this.”

While MAST increases the options available to local churches, it doesn’t make other Bible translation methods obsolete, Smith said. “There remains an overwhelming number of languages without even one verse of Scripture. At this point, every strategy is needed to get God's Word to every nation.”

Every Tribe Every Nation, an alliance of philanthropic and Bible agencies, represents groups that have developed more than 85 percent of the Bible translations in the world. It includes the American Bible Society, Biblica, Seed Company, SIL, Wycliffe USA, and the United Bible Societies. After Christianity Today published its article on Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation (MAST) in its June issue, the alliance sent this statement. See also today’s CT report on the ongoing debate over MAST.

Speed and accuracy. In many areas of life, we are challenged to balance speed and accuracy. An equestrian trying to finish a course in the quickest time with the fewest penalties. The typist who strives for the fastest speed with the fewest errors. Medical researchers searching for the quickest path to a cure with the fewest side effects.

And when it comes to Bible translation, speed and meaningful accuracy are also fundamental principles that undergird the work. We have an incredible sense of urgency to ensure that all people can access the gospel message, but we take very seriously our spiritual responsibility to ensure that each new translation accurately relays the Scripture’s full meaning and spirit of the gospel.

The balancing act of delivering the Bible in a new language as quickly as possible while ensuring this accuracy of God’s Word has always been the challenge for Bible translators. People become Bible translators because they have experienced the power of God’s Word in their own lives and feel called to get the gospel message into the hands and hearts of others. But especially as this work of Bible translation moves closer and closer to local communities, they also recognize that the only thing worse than keeping someone waiting for the Bible in his or her heart language, is a new translation that jeopardizes the clear communication of this same gospel message.

While speed and meaningful accuracy are consistently hard to balance in Bible translation, technology has allowed us to make huge leaps forward in accelerating the process. For decades, translators used to labor in relative isolation over handwritten translations that were vulnerable to theft, fire, or natural disaster. Today’s translators use cutting-edge software that not only safeguards the translation, but also provides immediate access to collaboration tools including historical, archeological, and linguistic information.

Over the last five years as members of the Every Tribe Every Nation alliance, we have had the privilege of serving together, bringing more than 1,100 Scripture portions and versions of the Bible into one, universal Digital Bible Library. This library allows for rapid release of these texts through ministry “library cardholders,” seeking to serve the nearly 5 billion people represented by the languages housed here.

With this technology and the removal of perennial “de-celerants”—which could be as simple as a needed generator or advanced as necessary linguistic training—we’re beginning to see the length of translation projects moving faster. Where the average time for New Testament translation projects 60 years ago was more than 20 years, these projects are now being completed in less than half this time (eight years on average). And this last spring, one African New Testament project cut this time in half again (fewer than four years). While every translation is different, each with unique challenges, it is highly encouraging that this significant acceleration, with verified quality, is now emerging.

All of which points to an even bigger leap forward in Bible translation: collaboration. Over these last five years, the world’s largest Bible translation organizations have joined together each month with partners from the business and philanthropic community around a common mission. Drawing from the best practices for language group readiness, localized project ownership, and proven translation training, we’ve developed a shared approach called A Common Framework for Bible Translation.

Collaboration through this Common Framework opens a pathway for improved efficiency and better stewardship of resources. Participating Bible agencies are coordinating rather than competing. We are combining unprecedented prayer support and leveraging the resources of each organization to work with language communities, all to achieve one shared goal: universal access to God’s Word.

This Common Framework affirms that translation agencies must demonstrate a posture of service toward local leadership. This includes a shift in focus—from completing and delivering a whole Bible to providing first portions to churches throughout the translation cycle. The result is helping people gain faster access to the gospel message without having to wait years and years for a project to end. Urgency of access to usable Scripture is a cry of the growing Church around the world. This Bible translation framework embraces urgency as central but also understands the need to manage the polarity of urgency with accuracy.

One of the big criticisms of critical scientific research is that researchers don’t share information, thus prolonging the process of finding treatments and cures. As leaders of organizations committed to A Common Framework for Bible Translation, we are realizing what can be accomplished when we are willing to lay aside logos and egos and work together toward a common goal.

Though we are leaders of different organizations with different histories and unique cultures, we all want the same thing—people everywhere able to fully engage with God’s Word in their own heart languages. Our prayer is for nothing short of the total eradication of Bible poverty. So stepping forward to serve, and stepping back to let local communities lead, we move forward. Together. Balancing speed and meaningful accuracy, and recognizing that we have never been closer to seeing a powerful dream realized.

Freddy Boswell is CEO of SIL International. Samuel Chiang is CEO of The Seed Company. Bob Creson is president of Wycliffe USA. Carl Moeller is CEO of Biblica. Michael Perreau is director general of United Bible Societies. Roy Peterson is CEO of the American Bible Society.

If you’ve ever watched a group of people glued to their smartphones and wondered how these devices are shaping our relationships, Sherry Turkle’s research is for you.

The MIT professor, known for her insightful books and TED talks, studies Americans' relationship with technology and how it spills over into our interactions with our partners, kids, and friends.

A recent Pew Internet survey found that 9 in 10 Americans had used their cell phones during the most recent social gathering they attended, even though the vast majority of us (82%) consider it annoying or distracting for others to do so in conversation.

Actually talking with other people, free from interruptions, can help mitigate some of the damage done by distracting smartphones and tablets, writes Turkle in her new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. “The pathway to empathy is something you learn through conversation. It’s not as if we need to invent incredible new technology,” she said. “We learn empathy through the process of conversation.”

Turkle recently spoke with CT assistant editor Morgan Lee about the constant interruption of digital notifications, how we became so uncomfortable with boredom, and why we should stop using our smartphones as alarm clocks.

What makes screen-based technology different from other technologies we have adopted?

What’s special about this technology is that it’s small: small enough to be always on and always on you…. You can interrupt a conversation with somebody at any time. We’re in a conversation at lunch, and I put my phone on the table so I can be with you and also with all the people who come to me on my phone.

Malcolm Gladwell notes that once a certain number of people have adopted something, it prompts others to join in, even if they are uncomfortable with the idea. Can we relate that concept to interrupting a conversation with your phone?

In the late 1990s, one of my graduate students said to me, “I had the weirdest experience today. I had a friend with a cell phone, and in the middle of a conversation, he put his hand in my face and said, ‘Just hold on for a second, I need to take this call.’ ” My student said to me, “It made me feel like he was putting me on pause, like I was a tape recorder.”

I remember thinking, that’s a terrible feeling, that this guy feels like he was put on pause! That was in the late ‘90s. Since then, this is like, Welcome to my world, welcome to all of our worlds. We think nothing of putting each other on pause….

We are doing something that hardens us, so there's been a drop in our capacity for empathy. We have gotten used to living that way. It turns us into people who are less sensitive to others.

We understand how a person feels—and yet override our natural response to that.

The question is, do we understand how another person is feeling and override it, or are we collectively forgetting how other people are feeling in those situations?

When you’re on the Internet, you don’t see another person’s face. People really do forget about how other people feel. Philosophers teach us that someone’s face calls another person and their feelings into reality.

If you teach your child that it’s okay to be in conversation with them when you’re also on the phone, you are raising a child who never feels the power of having a parent's full attention. That’s a very difficult thing.

What are your own personal boundaries?

I don’t use my phone as an alarm clock, because I realized I was waking up in the middle of night and checking messages. There were plenty of other perfectly good alarm clocks out there. I developed this habit because of working with teenagers. They told me that they were sleeping less because they were texting all night. One big piece of advice to parents is to check the phone before children go to bed, and to not let them use it as an alarm clock.

How has the idea of boredom changed over time?

Boredom is your mind’s signal to you to go to your imagination and let it run free. We are not allowing that signal to get through, because as soon as we get bored, we go to our phones.

There’s an incredible study of college students who are left without a phone and without a book. After six minutes, they are giving themselves electroshocks rather than just being alone. It’s not that surprising, because if you look at people’s behavior at stop signs and checkout lines, we think of boredom as a problem that technology can solve.

One young man I interviewed said he was excited because his generation would be the first generation that would never know what boredom felt like. He said that as if it were a good thing. But childhood boredom is a very important thing. It’s when the brain resets itself and comes back to letting the imagination feel free. Adult boredom is also important.

People say to me, “There’s nothing new here. It’s just another form of technology." But other technologies didn’t cause people to get so antsy that they needed to electroshock themselves in order to not have a moment of boredom. Something is new here, and we have to confront that.

Are there ways screen-based technology is helping us communicate better?

We know more about other people. We learn about things that we never knew before. For example, the tragedies in the migrant populations in Europe. I don’t know what information we would have about that if not for the Internet. During World War II, there was a tremendous disruption in European populations and vast deportations. If there had been an Internet, we might have known much more about it than we did.

Knowledge of persecution and humanitarian crises and how other cultures are living—all of this is fantastic. My problem is not with that. My problem is with something very specific: how we live with devices that take our attention away from the people we are with, right now.

Is there a group of Americans who are better balanced about technology?

Younger people are on to and feel discontent with the way they are living now. For example, a young man said to me, “Don’t study texting. Our texts are alright. It’s what it does to our face-to-face conversations that’s a problem.” He’s very aware of what interrupting conversation to look down on his phone is doing. It’s making him feel further from his friends because he knows they are talking about trivial matters. Who wants to have a deeper conversation if at any moment someone could go off to text?

In the book, I record a conversation between a woman who just broke up with her boyfriend and her best friend. The best friend is trying to comfort her. In the middle of this comforting, the woman starts to get text messages and becomes more engrossed in the messages she’s getting than in the conversation. The best friend said, “I couldn’t compete with the people on the phone.” We’ve all felt that way.

In person, you can ask deeper questions: What went wrong? Are you to blame at all? It’s riskier to have these conversations. A lot of my research illustrates that when you talk to the person with you, the conversation can get risky, and people are trying to avoid risky conversations.

What recommendations do you have for parents?

Create sacred spaces—in your kitchen, living room, and car. If your child objects, stay very sweet, and don’t complain about this behavior. Tell them what’s good about this practice: "Conversation is very important to our family, and because I'm not texting in the car, this is a time when you shouldn’t either. This is how we do things in our family."

Many times, members of the younger generation will say, “I don’t know what to say. I’m bored.” Instead of arguing with them about it, if you’re in the kitchen, give them a chopping board and a bell pepper, and say, “Help me make a salad.” The kitchen is a perfect place for conversation, because you can give them things to do.

Same for the dining room. Board and card games are fantastic. The point is, you’re doing something where you take the pressure off talking and also respect silence. The nice thing about a card game is that a lot of time can go by, then somebody says something, and then more time goes by. You stop thinking of conversation as a steady stream. That’s what happens on the phone. But in a conversation you have to give yourself space to be a little boring.

It takes seven minutes for a conversation to unfold to see whether it’s going to be interesting. One of the things that I advise parents is to give yourself seven minutes to let things unfold. Teach your children to give themselves seven minutes.

How do you call your own friends out on their behavior?

How do you avoid being the nagging friend? We all have to be part of reclaiming conversation. We can say:

I want to talk to you, and I’m finding it hard to get out what I want to say when your phone is out, and when you could go to your phone at any minute. I’m willing to have a shorter time with you. We could just have a half-hour drink. It would mean a lot to me to have this.

Put it on yourself…. Don’t go there for two hours if you need to be online for part of the time. Let both of you experience being together, without fear of interruption.

Morgan Lee is an assistant editor at Christianity Today.

[Image souce]

In the weeks since Nepal officially dashed the desire of many citizens to return to being a Hindu nation, attendance at its Christian churches has plummeted. Not for a lack of faith, but a lack of fuel.

After nearly a decade of debate, the former Hindu kingdom adopted a new constitution in September that declares the Himalayan nation to be a secular state. In response, India—Nepal’s top trading partner—cut off fuel from its neighbor, claiming that the new document hurts the political representation of minority groups.

The embargo has curtailed travel for many Nepalis, including its Christian minority. AsiaNews reports that some churches have seen attendance drop by 50 percent.

"Every year, hundreds of non-believers visit Nepal’s churches because they want to convert,” CB Gahatraj, general secretary of the National Christian Federation, told AsiaNews. “These people want to learn about the culture and life of the Christian community before their baptism. But in the current situation, they can be disappointed. We have just run out of fuel for our normal religious activities and missionary work."

The issue: India has sided with the Madhesi and Tharu, two ethnic minorities who claim the new geographic designations will leave them underrepresented by the new parliament. (The Indian Express offers an explainer.)

For more than a month, India has blocked fuel from crossing into Nepal, a disruption that has strained Nepal’s transportation and education systems. Madhesis living along the border have also physically blocked goods from entering the country.

Many Nepalis protested against India and its prime minister Narendra Modi, who was elected by a heavily pro-Hindu base. Last week, China agreed to begin importing fuel to Nepal as a means around the blockade.

Although some feared that Nepal's new constitution might lose its secular stance, more than two-thirds of lawmakers rejected turning the country back into a Hindu state. The new constitution upholds freedom of religion, but also states that “no one shall attempt to change or convert someone from one religion to another, or disturb/jeopardize the religion of others, and such acts/activities shall be punishable by law.”

This line could be used as “groundwork for future restrictions and discrimination,” said Elijah Brown, chief of staff at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a religious freedom advocacy group supported by former congressman Frank Wolf. (Wolf serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow for the organization.)

In August, the group organized a letter asking Nepal’s government to reject a constitution draft that signatories believe “nullifies and criminalizes the freedom to share, change and choose one’s religion.”

Nepal’s constitutional process has been contentious. About 40 people, mostly protesters, died leading up to its passage. This week, police began clearing protesters from the camps where they have lived for the past month. About 500 protesters clashed with authorities.

Nepal received more than $4.4 billion in foreign aid after an earthquake 16 times more powerful than Haiti’s 2010 disaster killed more than 9,000 people in April. But it still struggles financially. While the government initially set 6 percent economic growth as a goal, the World Bank “reduced growth to 3.7 percent, due to various difficulties already present: the slowdown in growth, the drop in tourism, the growing protests among the population,” AsiaNews reports.

CT previously reported how dozens of Nepali Christians died when April's 7.8 magnitude earthquake occurred on a Saturday, the day weekly church services are observed. The Christian minority has long been enmeshed in an ongoing debate over burial rituals. Christians and Muslims favor burying their dead, while Hindus prefer cremation. Plans to establish official cemeteries for Christians, who have tripled in number since the Hindu monarchy was abolished in 2006, have not resolved tensions.

Editor's note: the following is a review from the Toronto Film Festival, where the film premiered in September.

My biggest fear going into Spotlight, the historical drama which reenacts the Boston Globe’s exposé of clergy sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, was that auteur Tom McCarthy would find some way—probably through lionizing the journalists—to recast this horrific chapter of our history into a feel-good story. In America, we don’t mind movies that ask us to pity victims. But we sure seem to hate anyone or anything that asks us to not feel quite so good about ourselves.

I had nothing to worry about.

If anything, Walter Robinson’s (Michael Keaton) biggest epiphany is a bit of a Schindler moment: Why didn’t I do more? As Robinson and his team of investigative reporters act as our surrogates, they don’t lead us into the temptation of self-righteous hindsight, nor do they deliver us from realizing that we’re complicit in our silence. Spotlight is a serious film, both artistically and morally, and it wrestles with explosive content while never feeling exploitative or self-aggrandizing.

The story begins when Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) takes over the Globe. It is 2002, and newspapers are already feeling the effects of the Internet. In one pointed establishing shot, we get a billboard for AOL that reminds us of just how much our communication methods can change in a decade.

Robinson worries, not without cause, that his team’s investigative model—picking their own stories, doing research for a year or longer, supporting four full-time salaries—will soon be unsustainable. Yet when Baron asks him to see if there is any fire behind the smoke surrounding the case of a pedophile priest, Robinson is reluctant. This is Boston. “Thou Shalt Not Embarrass the Roman Catholic Church” is both an eleventh commandment and a survival mantra.

Reluctantly, the team starts digging. Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) camps in the office of lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), who is representing scores of victims in multiple lawsuits. Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) talks to a victim from a support group, and she knocks on doors looking for others. She finds one priest who admits “fooling around” with several kids, but insists he is without remorse, because he took no pleasure in it. Robinson chips away at his friend Jim Sullivan (Jamey Sheridan), trying to get confirmation from someone who had a hand in prosecutions of how extensive the scandal might be.

Spotlight most resembles All the President’s Men. Both films present journalism not as an exotic movie profession but as a sometimes tedious, usually inefficient means of groping after the truth. Investigations consist of knocking on doors, poring through archives, sitting in offices, and generally trying to get other people to confirm what the reporters already think they know but can’t yet prove.

Some viewers might be put off by the movie’s focus on the case’s procedural elements. Early on, Baron asks Robinson to focus the story not on any one priest or victim, but on the systemic nature of the cover up. They argue that this focus—and only this focus—will be enough to keep the system from perpetuating abuses.

There is logic in this argument, but it does make the story more abstract. Even though the film features interviews with two victims and lets us glimpse of a few others, there’s never really a face on the scandal’s human cost. Only in one late scene, in which Rezendes glimpses some kids waiting in a conference room, does it truly sink in for him (and us) that each name on their ever-growing list represents a shattered life.

There is another way in which the film may frustrate some viewers. It almost exclusively focuses on the professional lives of the Spotlight team, rather than their personal lives. As in Law & Order, we get dribbles of personal information, but only as they come out at work. Matty Carroll lives near a “treatment” house where he knows inactive pedophiles are living, and wonders if he can justify not warning his neighbors. Sacha has a nana that goes to church three times a week, and she wonders how her family will feel about her exposing the church. Rezendes is married but lives in a shabby apartment; the same qualities that make him an effective reporter apparently make him a less than effective spouse.

This silence on the characters’ personal lives robs the film of some of its emotional impact. But gradually, as the story inches forward, something amazing happens. The actors start showing the toll that moving into the light is taking on them—through pained grimaces and hunched shoulders, through knowing glances and stunned silences. Instead of giving the characters (and us) the release of voicing their indignation too often, McCarthy lets the immensity of what is being revealed dawn on them slowly and wear on them steadily.

Michael Keaton, especially, is phenomenal here (yeah, better than in Birdman), showing just the right amount of stubborn resolve tinged with strains of regret. Stanley Tucci plays Garabedian as a man less interested in tilting at windmills than being the good Samaritan in a land that neither wants nor thanks him. He turns in yet another stunning performance and remains one of our most consistent, yet generally unheralded character actors.

Spotlight is all the more powerful for being so understated. Ultimately, I would argue, the toll of bringing the truth to life, and the sheer horror of that truth, while never expressly stated, is evident in each character’s numbed, pained incredulity. If it is true, as Shakespeare once wrote, that the evil men do lives after them, perhaps one of the greatest goods we can enact is to finally acknowledge that evil and speak the truth about it.

Of course, doing so will not change the past, but it can change us in the present. But if we come to care more about the “least of these” than we do about our own or God’s reputation, perhaps we will have taken the first small step towards becoming a light, rather than cursing the darkness.

Caveat Spectator

The “R” rating here is primarily for the subject matter; there are sexual references, particularly when victims of sexual molestation recite their testimony.

Kenneth R. Morefield (@kenmorefield) is an Associate Professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I, II, & III, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.

“You write every scene brilliantly,” Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) half-jokes to Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) on the porch of his house, where they’ve been working on the script of the 1960 film Exodus. “And I will direct unevenly.”

The quip would function almost too well as a cipher for what happened with Trumbo, except the screenplay isn’t brilliant, either. It has its moments. Once in a while, it’s fantastic. But Trumbo mostly suffers from the now agreed-upon affliction we might call Important Biopic Syndrome, in which all the material that makes for a good movie gets vacuumed up by the things which the movie must signal to us are Important (lest we miss them) via musical cues and circular pans. Moments of political courage, for instance. Especially regarding the First Amendment. Arguments with the family. Epiphanies. Stupidities. One-ups. Sometimes, unfortunately, even jokes.

The movie tells the story of Dalton Trumbo, which is both interesting and historically important, especially if that name means nothing to you. Trumbo wrote Roman Holiday and The Brave One and won Oscars for both—later, he wrote Spartacus—but he wasn’t listed as a writer on either of those films. That's because he was one of the famous “Hollywood Ten,” mostly screenwriters, who were accused of being Communists and refused to cooperate when brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947. Subsequently, they were cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted. The film tracks with the story as Trumbo and several others are imprisoned, for a time. Even after release, their careers are—well, to put it mildly, they are hampered, and their families suffer from the financial burden.

Trumbo's brilliance as a writer doesn't go unnoticed, even as he writes a pseudonymous assortment of B- (or C-) movies for King Pictures. Eventually, Kirk Douglas tracks him down at home and gets him to work on Spartacus, quickly followed by the director Otto Preminger, who needs help getting the novel Exodus into a form in which Paul Newman can star. The efforts of Douglas and Preminger eventually result in Trumbo receiving the writing credit he deserves on those screenplays, and the blacklist is effectively ended.

As a film, Trumbo is set up by director Jay Roach (of the Meet the Parents and Austin Powers films) and writer John McNamara (who mostly works in TV, including the recent Aquarius) as a kind of long-form boxing match. On the one side are those who would track down the Commies—John Wayne (David James Elliott), as head of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals; Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), vitriolic blackmailing columnist; Congress generally and J. Parnell Thomas particularly (followed, of course, by Joe McCarthy). On the other are the Hollywood Ten, many of whom were actually card-carrying members of the Communist party, led by a courageous Trumbo and some sympathizers and supported by Trumbo's longsuffering wife (Diane Lane). They get knocked down. They get up again. Et cetera.

I realized recently that I got to adulthood having received a pretty solid education but completely unaware, except in the vaguest sense, that there was a period in our nation’s history in which Americans were openly called before Congress to answer for their political views. This is scary to me, not least because those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

So I can appreciate what Trumbo and other movies that cover that period in history are after, but I wish they’d also go about making a good movie about politics while they’re at it. The actual politics in this film are more setup for the boxing match, a sort of human interest round to keep you interested. Anyone attempting to understand how a person could reasonably claim to love America and also be committed to Communist ideals will not be helped here; the movie suggests that being a Communist is basically like being a little to the left of a liberal Democrat. The explanation is as caricatured as the opposition. In fact, the principles of Communism are literally reduced to an illustration Trumbo gives his young daughter, whilst she sits astride a horse, involving sharing a sandwich with a hungry schoolmate.

The film also gives us no reasonable or rational detractors on the other side; they’re all kind of the worst, which is more ironic given Trumbo’s early pleas to his friends to not demonize people they haven’t met. Instead (perhaps savvily) it shifts its attention to matters of free speech: members of the Communist party, it correctly argues, are as entitled to free speech as anyone else. And Trumbo accurately pinpoints the problem with the witch hunt to be precedent: if “they” can shut you down for being a Communist today, what happens when “they” decide some other party is also a threat to national security? But the movie can't get over its own caricatures, and its political sense is severely stunted and romanticized.

Trumbo is at its best when it gets to be the off-the-rails film its trailer seemed to hint it would be. The best scenes all involve John Goodman, playing the dirtbag head of the dirtbag studio Trumbo approaches looking for work. Sometimes we talk about actors eating the scenery; Goodman gnaws and regurgitates everything in sight in a buoyantly projectile manner.

On the whole, the film works best as an actor showcase. Cranston is going to get all the credit for this film come awards season, but he’s not the best in this film: that belongs to Louis C.K., with a naturalist rendering of Trumbo’s frenemy/radical Communist/screenwriter Arlen Hird. There’s also Christian Berkel as Preminger, who had the audience at my screening in something nearing hysterics by the second time he opened his mouth. And in a truly excellent dramatic role, Michael Stuhlbarg plays Edward G. Robinson, the actor whose naming of names severed his friendships with many.

Trumbo's problem is basically this: if you’re going to make a movie about one of the most famous screenwriters of all time, you can’t lean on your actors to save a shoddy script. You have to write a good script. This film takes a full hour to get to anything interesting, and it simply doesn’t play like the old-timey movie it’s maybe meant to ape. As several characters meaningfully asked for Trumbo’s help to “find the story” in a bloated script, I could only wish he’d been around for this one, which certainly has a tremendous story that’s trying hard to get out.

Caveat Spectator

Plenty of bad language—profanities and sexual references. There’s some drug use, though it’s not prevalent throughout the film. There’s a brief scene of rear male nudity in a prison that’s not sexual, but is uncomfortable (and is meant that way).

Alissa Wilkinson is Christianity Today’s Chief Film Critic and an assistant professor of English and humanities at The King’s College in New York City. She is co-author, with Robert Joustra, of How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World (Eerdmans, 2016). She tweets @alissamarie.

Our church met for several years in a small strip mall tucked in behind the city’s post office on a not very busy street. It felt like we were hidden from the world. If you wanted to attend our church, you would have to come looking for us. Eventually we rented three of the office spaces in that little strip mall, and made the space work as best we could. The classrooms were usually too small, the air conditioning had trouble cooling that many people, and there was no “yard” outside where the kids could play.

We were cramped, but we were happy. The tight space brought us close together during breakfast on Sunday mornings; people had to stand and eat elbow to elbow. You can’t hide in a space like that. You cannot remain anonymous.

After several years, we saved up enough money to build a place of our own. By every measurement you can imagine, our new facility is superior. It is larger. It is on a very visible street. We have a huge yard and a fantastic playground. The sound system is better. My office is fantastic.

I worried that this comfortable building with its larger size and better amenities would diminish some of the fellowship the smaller, poorer building forced upon us.

I admit that I experienced some trepidation as we moved to our newer, bigger, and better place. I worried that this comfortable building with its larger size and better amenities would diminish some of the fellowship the smaller, poorer building forced upon us.I feared that we would get a different “kind” of visitor. Here in the heart of the Bible Belt cultural Christianity is a real challenge. When we met in a strip mall, we usually got visitors who had researched us, and only those visitors who really enjoyed our fellowship were going to stay. Frankly, we didn’t have much else to offer. Other churches had nicer buildings, more space, more money, better nurseries, nicer bathrooms, and better parking spaces.

Now, I feared folks might come and stay just because the place is nice. I feared that our congregation would change. We were united, in some ways, by the inconveniences that we endured and by the shared hope that one day we would have a better place. Now we have that place. Would our newer and better building give us a sense of “arrived,” or would we continue to be the outreaching, welcoming church that I believed we had always been?Our new building has certainly affected our congregation. We have grown, and for that, I am grateful to God. Because of our location, people have heard of us who would never have known about us before. Our place is nice enough for people to be comfortable, and our congregation is excited at the blessing that our building represents.

“The church isn’t a building; the church is God’s people!” I understand what people mean by this exhortation, and I agree, but I also believe in the value of a church building.

Sometimes I miss the early days of that little building. I miss being crammed in there and laughing about it with the rest of the congregation. I miss it sort of like a couple might miss the early days of their marriage when money was tight, the apartment was small, but new love and joy of unity made all those things bearable, even pleasant.

I remember crafting my future son’s new crib. My wife and I were delighted to be having a child, but we were also afraid. Were we ready for this? Could we handle the responsibility for caring for this little, helpless person? Many think of church growth as the primary goal of ministry. Our building may be a sign of health and joy, but I’ve spent many nights worrying about how this building will change our dynamic, how we will respond to those who visit, and how we will provide for the needs of all those we will find ourselves responsible for.I think we are as ready as we can be. We have talked about those we hope will be helped here. We have prayed for them. We will have coffee and meals here. We will laugh here. We will cry here. We will raise our children here. We will learn to love here. This building is more than “just a building.” For our local church family, this building is our home.

Brad Williams is pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church in Albertville, Alabama.

Copyright © 2015 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Editor’s note: Sarah Bessey's new book Out of Sorts explores how our faith can change over time. The following excerpt comes from a chapter encouraging readers to not be intimidated to raise questions and study theology as a way to foster their own spiritual growth and evolution.

Robert Farrar Capon writes in The Supper of the Lamb, “There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace.” It’s for this reason that, while I love professional hockey such as the NHL games, nothing gets Canada more excited than the World Junior Ice Hockey Tournament. There’s something about a bunch of kids who play just for the love of the game that is so sweet to us. They’re amateurs, sure, not as skilled as the professionals, but oh, do we love to cheer them on.

John Wimber, one of the founders of the Vineyard church movement, used to say, “Everyone gets to play.” He meant that everyone gets to minister, everyone gets to hear from God, everyone has a part to play in this church and in this world, everyone gets to speak life and healing, to pray and to serve, to lead and to follow. When it comes to the kingdom of God, everyone gets to play.

In 1 Peter 2:9-10, Peter writes, “You are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted” (The Message, used throughout).

That’s us; we have all gone from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted. And so we are priests to one another, and for one another. We all get to play.

One of our final tin gods as a church might be the belief that not everyone gets to “do” theology. Unless you have been to seminary and have a lot of letters after your name; or, unless you’re in full-time vocational ministry, your thoughts about or experiences with Jesus aren’t considered as valid or trustworthy.

There are folks who believe that I—as a woman who hasn’t been to seminary—can’t possibly play with the big boys when it comes to theology. My opinions don’t matter as much; my experiences with Scripture and church, life, and the Spirit don’t count. But I still believe that everyone gets to play.

I get to read theology and study the master thinkers, and form my opinions. I get to be challenged and to challenge, even if I’m doing that work far from the ivory tower. (That’ll be the Western Canadian kid in me coming out: we have a lively horror of the elite.) Of course I grapple with these questions. What thinking person doesn’t find themselves wondering? Theology belongs just as much to the mother folding laundry, the father coaching basketball, the university student training to be a nurse, the construction worker, the artist, the refugee, as it does to the great scholars.

In Acts 4, Peter and John were brought before the religious elite because they had been preaching the resurrected Christ. The disciples had just been to the temple, where they encountered a man crippled since birth. When the man asked them for money, Peter replied, “I don’t have a nickel to my name, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” and pulled him to his feet! The man was immediately healed. Then Peter addressed the crowd with a rousing sermon about repenting and turning our faces to God. The religious elite promptly arrested them and threw them into jail. The rulers met with Peter and John to interrogate them, but Peter wouldn’t back down, declaring (v. 12) that salvation comes in no other way than Jesus.

They couldn’t take their eyes off them—Peter and John, standing there so confident, so sure of themselves! Their fascination deepened when they realized these two were laymen with no training in Scripture or formal education. They recognized them as companions of Jesus, but with the man right before them, seeing him standing there so upright—so healed!—what could they say against that? (v. 13-14)

Later on in the chapter, when the religious leaders and scholars threatened Peter and John, warning them to stop preaching about Jesus, they shot back, “We can’t keep quiet about what we’ve seen and heard” (v. 20).

Theology is simply what we think about God and then living that truth out in our right-now lives. So theology matters, not only as a vast scholarly exercise, but also because those ideas trace their way back to what we truly believe about the nature and character of God, which informs everything in our lives. The Spirit leaves evidence of one who had, as the religious leaders identified, “been with Jesus.” Oh, I long for that! I love for my work and my witness to testify to Jesus Christ. Anytime we wrestle with our theology, with how we live out the hope of glory, with what we know or believe or think or even hope about our God, I pray that we will have that same boldness to testify, to bring healing, to speak the truth, to worship.

Credentials are no replacement for knowing Christ.

And God continued to use wise and learned men and women throughout Scripture. Look at Paul, who was so well educated and trained in religious thought. As he wrote to the church in Philippi, “You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.” And yet he writes,

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. (Phil. 4:6-9)

I’m not against credentials—far from it! But as Paul says here, credentials are not righteousness. Credentials are no replacement for knowing Christ. And when we encounter someone who knows Christ, well, that person gets to play, and we get to play with them.

Perhaps this is the danger of dualistic thinking—this is right, so this is wrong. We need to hold the “yes, and” more than the “either/or.” Yes, we need scholars and academics, leaders, and minister. And we need people like me—low-church, untrained laity who are a bit sloppy at times—to grapple with the deep theological issues, bringing our stories, our wisdom, our knowledge to the larger conversation. Everyone gets to play. (Later in the chapter, I discuss more about the experiential focus of my Charismatic upbringing, and how that influenced my approach to theology.)

In Matthew 11:25, Jesus prayed aloud, “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.”

We have much to learn from the ordinary people, from people on the margins, from people who experience God and life so differently from ourselves. I’m still a recovering know-it-all.

Excerpted from Chapter 3 of Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith (Howard Books). Used with permission.

Sarah Bessey is an award-winning blogger and the author of the bestselling book Jesus Feminist and the new release Out of Sorts. She lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and their four tinies. You can find her on Twitter at @sarahbessey.

[Image source]

I bumped into Lindsey the morning after she’d spoken for our campus ministry gathering. She looked ill. I understood why when she described her experience: “I kept hearing this voice saying, ‘You have nothing to offer. You have no right to be up here teaching.’ But it wasn’t just a quiet whisper. It was like someone was screaming it at me the whole time I was leading and it took all my energy to speak over it.” The next words out of my mouth were, “Sounds to me like you’re called to ministry! Let’s get lunch!”

As I prepared for that lunch I realized how odd it was that I saw her experience as a sign of ministry calling. You would think it would be the opposite. But as I reflected on it, I figured out three reasons why, when someone hears these voices, it’s an indicator for me that they might be called to ministry:

1. It reveals an appreciation for the gravitas of this calling.

While it may look like ministry calling, bravado in an emerging leader (or any leader, for that matter) sets off all kinds of alarms for me. Even if the confidence is all an act, what are they trying to be? People who approach ministry believing they have enough within them for this work have little regard for what it is they’re being called to, the depths of personal growth it will require of them, how much it will throw them in at the deep end emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. So those who enter it, shaking in their shoes, have a right sense of what kind of adventure they’re beginning.

Those who enter ministry, shaking in their shoes, have a right sense of what kind of adventure they’re beginning.

2. It forces us to rely on God.

But just feeling overwhelmed or inadequate for the sake of it is not the point. Leaders who get stuck there are not very effective. Instead, when that sense of the huge challenge of the ministry forces them to cry out to God for help, their awareness of what they lack becomes a ministry resource, constantly sending them back to the source of their hope and life. Ministry vitality grows when ministers know whose power they work from and that rarely feels great. So, if directed well, that sense of inadequacy can be an opportunity to lean on God and watch his power be revealed through our weakness.

3. It’s a sign that “someone” is threatened.

It’s uncomfortable (or just plain weird) to talk about evil forces. But we know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It makes no sense, after years of school presentations, that the voices became deafening this time when this young woman stood to speak on God’s behalf. This goes beyond stage fright. I believe the enemy saw a heart wanting to serve God and saw red flags.

I’m glad I had a chance to name these three factors before meeting with Lindsey. It gave me time to recognize the gravitas, the need for reliance on God, and the spiritual forces at work. And it gave me courage to end my time with her in a prayer, something like this:

Father,

We recognize that it is Satan who is our accuser

Voices that belittle are not from you

We acknowledge that you have gifted your servants for your work

And that darkness does not like it

Father, I see Lindsey’s desire to serve, her gifts and her love

And I know the evil one is threatened by the work you can do through her

We do not accept his efforts to undermine her

Today I pray your protection over her heart

Provide people to come around her and encourage her

Let her hear your words of comfort and kind challenge

Protect the work that you have to do in and through her

And give her your peace.

Amen

Maybe I also recognize this “I don’t belong here” experience as a sign of ministry calling because it was also my story and it almost took me out of ministry. I believed that since the people on stage seemed strong and confident, had quick answers, held many degrees, I didn’t belong there because none of that was true for me.

When I told God “I’ve got nothing!” I wanted to hear him respond the way a friend would, reminding me of my qualifications, experience, gifts. But instead he just said, “Yep. But it’s okay.”

None of us has a right to be here. If it’s about our strength and intelligence and education and charm and authority, then the church is in a lot of trouble. My authority grows from the burden God has placed on my heart to care for the things he cares for, from the laying on of hands of faithful leaders, from the equipping I’ve received from spirit-filled people who saw something in me. We have no right to be here. But we have the authority handed to us from the One who is over all things, calling us to work alongside him.

Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.