Sometimes Right is Wrong (UPDATED)

Yesterday I picked up the phone and called the number of this fellow who is hosting a DaVinci Code protest. I won’t mention his name, just that I found him on a web site that is trying to organize protests against the DaVinci Code nationwide. I had decided that if I want to brave the Friday night crowd to see it, I should do so in full view of the protestors as a sort of anti-protest.
He answered the phone. I asked him about the protest and he told me at what theater nearby he would be and what time. I thanked him and told him I might be bringing several friends that night to see the film. There was a pause and he said curiously, “to see the film?”

This started a nice ten-minute dialog between us. He stated his point: his religion is under attack, and that his film is a toll to discredit his belief. I reminded him that the movie is fiction, and that parts that are based on reality have some adherents, what about those people who have a different view on Christianity that his beliefs. I talked about the persecution of the Gnostics by mainline Christianity because they believed different. I challenged him that his battle was more an attack on non-Christians and part of the larger “war on Christianity” which, to my eyes, is designed to limit my free expression of ideas contrary to the fundamentalist Christians.

It is funny, because it seems that Christianity has more power in the US than in years past. We have a President that often speaks in religious terms; we have faith-based organizations getting precedence for Federal support. Show me the war?

I remember when the wonderful film by Martin Scorsese, The Last Temptation of Christ, was attacked and fundamentalist boycotted it. That boycott was very successful. To this day Blockbuster video will not carry the title. The movie presented a view that many Christians outside the fundamentalists could see merit, that for a savior to die for man’s sins he would have to understand the temptations man must fight. Yet there was protest after protest, until some theaters and video outlets outright banned the movie. The religious right then launched a boycott against the Kevin Smith film Dogma. Eventually no distributor in America would carry it. A Canadian company eventually picked it up.

In this “war on Christianity,” most of the battles have the religious right on the offensive. How many boycotts are aimed at them? Do you see pickets outside of churches? Or outside showings of The Passion of the Christ? What are reported as strikes against Christianity are such nonsense as department stores that ask their employees to say “Happy Holidays” to customers. Seeing that there are many Americans who are not Christians (Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Voodooists, atheists), it seems like a good plan. Other offenses that may smack of religious intolerance are either struck down by the court, or in cases like where the Ten Commandments are not allowed to be displayed in a court room (unless, let us note, it is part of other historical documents) as not to highlight one religion above any other. The argument by the religious right is that there is a war on Christianity because the law is not elevating the stature of Christianity above other religion.

My point to the gentleman was that if there is a sense of religious intolerance from non-Christians it is because it is being mirrored back to them. Frankly, by getting movies partially banned or otherwise restricting the availability of movies, books and music based on their belief just makes those inconvenienced by these actions less tolerant.

The conversation ended on a sour note. He told me the reason why they are opposed to the showing of the film is that people will not realize it is not real (as even the author admits it is fictionalized with some part simply made up to make the story work). I told him I do not believe people to be that stupid. Films, even documentaries or docudramas based on real life must be taken with a grain of salt. Anytime someone is telling a story, either an orally or through film or books, you are getting the view of the storyteller. Bias is expected.

I used the example of James Cameron’s Titanic. It was film based on an actual event replicated in astonishing detail, but how many people believe the main storyline played out by Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet was real?

UPDATE: Check out this blog entry which I wholly agree with.