The Difficulty of Religious Communication: Brother, Born Again
J. Michael Utzinger
Streaming video affords us the ability to watch
many film documentaries about religion that otherwise might escape our notice. I have been watching several of these lately:
some recent and some not so recent. I am
always intrigued about personal documentaries and what makes them compelling.
Michael Hammond reminded us a while back
in a past post that "our best understanding of this thing we call
religion comes in stories and testimonies and strange recollections of the way
that people find meaning in their lives."
So, I left a recent viewing of Julia Pimsleur's "Brother, Born
Again" (2001), pleased with the raw and complex religiosity one can
observe in a family divided by religious convictions. The rest of this post is a spoiler, so if you
wish, you
can watch the entire film here before finishing the post.
The film had all of the making of a really
interesting exploration: brother from an educated Jewish family joins a
separatist evangelical group in Alaska.
After ten years of separation, his sister, feeling cut off from her
brother, seeks to understand how this could happen and hopefully reunite the
family. Oh, and she brings a documentary
film crew with her as well.
The beginning portions of the film shows the
considerable misunderstandings that religious individuals bring to other
religions. One of my favorites was when
Julia visited a Christian bookstore to find information about the
evangelicalism her brother now professes.
After wading through Christian kitsch
(and this word is both the right and wrong one in this particular context) the
store clerk tries to explain the experience of his conversion: "I was on
another planet. I was like so high on
Jesus." After essentially calling her Satan, another store clerk (perhaps the
owner?) admonishes to Julia just to pray
that the Lord make himself real to her (which is what her brother wants for
her). When she says she cannot pray in
that way because it does not mean anything to her, the clerk is genuinely
baffled. "But you want to know the
Lord?" "No, I want to
understand my brother. I want to
understand what he finds in the Lord."
One is left wondering if these two worldviews are simply incommensurable.
No sooner have we gazed at this great gulf, Julia
reveals that her open bisexuality is another likely sources of division between
her and her brother. In a conversation
with friend, she wonders how many concessions will she have to make and how
many will he need to make for them stay close?
She worries aloud, "He has this great alibi called 'Jesus.' And I don't know what I have that carries
that much weight. Except that I am your
sister, dammit! You have to try harder."
It is our good fortune that both siblings are
willing to try harder. Julia flies to
Hoonah, Alaska to see Marc and the separatist community to which he belongs, called
"The Farm." After a worship
scene, Marc and Julia discuss his conversion.
After ten years on the Farm, Marc speaks of God with such familiarity
with his sister that it is disarming. One
is struck by the irrationality of it all, an irrationality that seems central
to Marc's notion of authentic faith, and Julia's apparent fear that such a
faith is even possible. In fact, Julia's
discomfort with this irrationality leads her to throw out other psychological
explanations for her brother's experiences that preclude the very religious
explanations her brother uses to understand himself.
Marc's dramatic conversion is contrasted with Lucas
Clark, who was born on the commune.
Clark was five years old and prompted by his mother to accept Jesus into
his heart. When asked whether he had the
option to do otherwise, Clark responds honestly but comfortably, "I never
had that chance." Julia presses
this line of questioning wondering if she could be accepted if she did not
accept Marc's beliefs. Another young man
at the table (Jason Koontz), however, answers for Marc: "It can't OK if he
loves you. If you don't come into the
same beliefs as us, there only option about where you are going to be with your
eternal life, right?"
Julia continues to explore the mystery of the
religion that divides her from her brother, and the palpable tension begs for
an argument. Julia wants to understand,
intellectualize, and argue. Marc wants
to listen, follow, and feel. The film
pushes this divide further and further (one worries too artificially) as it
progresses. An elders on the Farm recounts
that Marc's conversion was about breaking his intelligence. As Marc and other commune members retell the
story of his conversion, including an attempted suicide and speaking in
tongues, Julia's perception of her once close family is shattered. How much did she know about her own
brother? Had this commune functionally
become his family? She even admits,
"In some ways, the Farm saved his life."
But the rationality-irrationality theme comes back
to the fore quickly. Julia says,
"Sometimes I think you worked out your issues through religion, and I
worked out my issues through therapy."
Marc cannot believe that her way is valid, and, despite her plea for
tolerance, her attempts to convince Marc and the camera that she thinks his way
may be valid for him rings hollow. One
is struck by the unfair irony that the children of famed linguist Paul Pimsleur
cannot seem to learn to speak one another's "language."
The inevitable argument finally unfolds, when Julia
asks Marc whether he forsaken intellectual pursuits when he studies the Bible. Marc is clearly wearied by this line of
attack. When Marc reaches for the Bible
to answer her question about heaven, she presses him to tell her what he thinks
apart from the Bible. "I don't see
why when I ask you a question you have to go look it up." It seems this divide will not be
overcome. The pinnacle of
misunderstanding comes on a boat, when Julia asks Marc to promise never to pray
for her to become straight. The question
was asked honestly and lovingly, albeit irrationally, for she knows she is
asking him to be inconsistent. Marc's
discomfort with his sister's request is only matched by his honest inability to
grant her request, coupled with his obvious affection for her.
The film's concludes with Marc flying to New York to
be reunited with his mother and Julia.
They bring him to the matriarch of the family, Great Aunt Beatie, who
says his faith and commune are "crap." And in a surprise move, Marc and Julia's
mother defends Marc's choices. The film
leaves us with the potential (but not the resolution) that this family can
live, love, and accept one another despite being divided by faith, sexuality,
and distance.
This film is definitely worth watching. It is disarmingly honest and, therefore,
refreshing. The conversations,
especially those surrounding religion and sexuality, often seem so current that
one forgets that this was filmed 21 years ago.
(It is also startling to see the Twin Towers on the New York
skyline). Nonetheless, the film also
missed opportunities. Never does
Pimsleur examine or engage the cultural angst so many American Jews have about
conversion or mixed-faith families that inhabits background of portions of the
film. We never seemed to meet fully Marc
where he was spiritually or religiously.
The film is really Julia's voice and vision, not her brother's. We also learn precious little about the Farm,
and what we do learn seems suspiciously to advance Julia's thesis about the
irrationality of Marc's faith rather than an fair appraisal.
While any viewer can be relieved that Julia's
clear love for her brother overcomes her befuddlement with his faith, she never
seems to bridge the chasm of understanding with the resources available to her.
For example, her struggle for acceptance, because of her sexuality, might have
ironically given her the best access to engage her estranged brother's
conversion and faith. After all, she
movingly states that the hardest thing about being in a lesbian relationship is
coming to terms with the fact that "your happiness makes other people
unhappy." One wonders if Marc feels the same way about his evangelical
faith? In the end, one is left with the
greatest of appreciation of the difficulty of communicating the dimensions
faith with outsiders, all the while watching educated non-experts heroically
try and fail at this difficult task, because they have "skin in the
game," so to speak.
Comments
Oh, and she brings a documentary film crew with her as well.
Then although 21 years ago, it's reality TV. Once a camera is introduced, it's no longer reality.
It's a reality of sorts. We see what he does when he's fronting for his faith, she for her sexuality.
There is truth to be extracted from theater, but does reality TV even qualify as theater?
Or is it just a study of bad actors?
In the eight years since we first put this story of the air, Marc has left Alaska to medical school in Texas. He's now in his first year of residency. He is still a Christian. He is still affiliated with The Farm. In the eight years since Julia made her film, she's gotten married-- to a man, a rabbi, in fact. They have two kids.
Go figure.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/166/transcript
OTOH, I have no idea where 2014 might find them. Life is funny that way. People are funny that way. It all could have gone anywhichway and surprised none of us.
Thx for the report, Michael.
I'll toss this question out to the thread: could anyone recommend a resource (mono, article or otherwise) that addresses conversion angst in the Jewish community? Particularly conversion to Christianity. I'm developing a character for a novel who was born to secular Jewish parents and jumps camp at university, and would like to substantiate that process with good scholarship.
Thank you once again for the great report, and to everyone here at the blog. Even for an amateur who's not active in the field, the posts here are frequently informative and a delight.
-Ben
A strong point, Michael.
Although it may be more of a snapshot of a phase she was going through--or a self-mythologizing--about who she "is," considering how perpendicular to it her life story actually turns out.
Again, what I meant by "fronting" for her sexuality, or identity as an intellectual or artist, whathaveyou, more a chronicle of momentary self-delusion than one of genuine self-discovery.
[The brother's the one who remains who he is, more or less.]
_____
Aside to Ben Thomas: I've been told converting from Judaism to Catholicism is somewhat understandable, but converting to Protestantism, that's a head-scratcher. Since this was a WASP nation for the longest time, Jews and Catholics often ended up together on the same couch, with Sidney, Jugdish, Mohammet, and Clayton.
[This isn't to say your second wife couldn't be a shiksa, but conversion was not part of the deal.]