Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (Engaging Culture) Review

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(More customer reviews)This volume by Fuller Seminary professor Robert K. Johnston is a readable introduction to film criticism from a thoroughly Christian perspective. Johnston is evangelical in outlook, and yet does not sacrifice his love for cinema to a fearful, fundamentalistic disdain for human culture. Rather, from the outset, he affirms the Christian truth that God's grace is to be found everywhere (what theologians have called 'common grace') and that cinema can be an occasion for a 'revelatory event'. Just as all life is 'sacramental' (that is, every aspect of the world has the potential to show us God), so the movies can help us to transcend to a deeper understanding of God and humanity.
Johnston rightly affirms that a film must first be approached on its own terms (as opposed to viewing it through the lens of a preconceived agenda). Once the audience has participated in the world of the film, then is the appropriate moment to begin the dialogue with theology. For this reason, Johnston's approach is to walk us through the basics of film criticism before applying that to the Christian study of film. On a few occasions, I worried that the author was taking us too far away from the book's stated intention (ie. a book about theology and film in dialogue), but Johnston always seems to be able to bring the material back round to assessing its relevance to the task of theological application.
His examples are far-ranging: theologically, his sources draw from every stream of Christian tradition; his choice of films to be analyzed is eclectic. He frequently homes in on a specific film (eg. Shane, Smoke Signals, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) or set of films (eg. the films of Peter Weir) in order to illuminate and illustrate the points he makes. Overall, Johnston exhibits a healthy attitude towards film, and is a breath of fresh air in an evangelicalism that too often regards films with suspicion and a superficiality that is likely to oversimplify issues of content and theme (such as sexuality and violence).
This book helped me to clarify my own method in approaching film. I have long been a lover of the cinema, and have sometimes found it hard to escape the incongruity of some aspects of this with voices from my fundamentalist past. Johnston is a man after my own heart, and seems able to encapsulate my feelings about film and how the movie experience is essential to the formation of my theology. In one chapter, Johnston addresses this role of cinema in theological method, and provides useful comparisons with various models of theological method (such as the Wesleyan quadrilateral).
I can also credit this book with changing some of my views. For example, I have long had a suspicion of mainstream cinema, almost amounting to a disdain at times. Johnston showed me the fallacy of associating commercialism with artlessness, however. After all, he reasons, didn't Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel on commission? In a sense, my aversion to mainstream cinema (or, perhaps more accurately, the mainstream of the mainstream) was a kind of misconceived snobbery. Johnston's appreciation of film from every corner of the film industry helped me to see my own short-sightedness in this regard.
This is a book I would recommend not just for film-lovers, but for theologians whose knowledge of film may not be particularly wide, but are willing to let the pursuit of the knowledge of God lead them into dialogue with other possible sources of inspiration, namely, the cinema. Johnston presents an accessible overview of film criticism and, in doing so, demonstrates how films can be, in a broad, but real way, means of grace for a Christian wanting to let the knowledge of Christ invade his experience of his culture.

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Increasingly, thinking Christians are examining the influential role that movies play in our cultural dialogue. Reel Spirituality successfully heightens readers' sensitivity to the theological truths and statements about the human condition expressed through modern cinema. This second edition cites 200 new movies and encourages readers to ponder movie themes that permeate our culture as well as motion pictures that have demonstrated power to shape our perceptions of everything from relationships and careers to good and evil. Reel Spirituality is the perfect catalyst for dialogue and discipleship among moviegoers, church-based study groups, and religious film and arts groups. The second edition cites an additional 200 movies and includes new film photos.