God Help Us!
Bill Maher zaps faith in ‘Religulous’
By Andy Klein
If the most commonly cited public opinion polls are correct, Americans feel more comfortable voting for a woman, a Jew, a black person (fingers crossed, at the moment), a Catholic, or a Mormon than for an atheist. Hell, Americans would rather vote for a homosexual than an atheist. (What’s the world coming to?) (And, by the way: BARNEY FRANK FOR PRESIDENT!)
Hey, there, all you Republican closet cases! Time to come on out! Just keep the faith when you do!
In the new documentary Religulous, comedian Bill Maher takes stands against religion and against the very notion of faith (as the word is generally used these days) some of the time; and against the intermingling of religion and public policy all of the time. It’s not a minor distinction: There are many millions of believers in the U.S. who are as resolute about the separation of church and state as the most devout – does that word apply here? – atheists. Hell, lots of them thrive even in a godless sinner’s paradise like Los Angeles.
Early in the film Maher tells us that he was initially raised Catholic and didn’t find out until adolescence that his mother was Jewish – a set of circumstances that certainly affected his comedy. (In an old standup excerpt, he talks about “being half Catholic and half Jewish and bringing a lawyer into confession: Bless me father for I have sinned – and I think you know Mr. Cohen ... .”)
For the film, Maher travels around the U.S. and to Israel and Europe to interview believers (and former believers) of all faiths. Well, not exactly all: His interviews cover only the subscribers to Abrahamic religions – Catholics, Evangelicals, other Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and Mormons. Nothing about Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, and the rest. There are swipes at Scientology, but mostly for the sake of ridiculing Mormonism. (Speaking of which: Is there anything more gobsmacking than hearing devout Catholics making fun of Mormons for embracing such nonsense as Joseph Smith’s miraculously changing golden plates? As opposed to such sensible down-to-earth phenomena as the Virgin Birth and transubstantiation?)
He talks to Islamic scholars, rabbis of various stripes, Christian ex-Jews, Southern evangelicals (at the Truckers Chapel in North Carolina), creationist U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (“Hey, you don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate,” Pryor tells him), and even his Jewish mother, who proves herself a pretty sharp old babe.
We meet Pastor Jeremiah Cummings, who was known as Jerry Cummings back when he was in Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes; Ferre van Beveren of Cannabis Ministry in the Netherlands; Dr. Francis Collins, who is a devout Christian, yet also the scientist in charge of the Human Genome project; and Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, of Miami’s Growing in Grace Ministry, who confidently and unironically proclaims himself to be the second coming of Christ. Maher verbally spars with the actor portraying Jesus at Orlando’s Holy Land Experience, while other park employees nervously huddle to figure out how to handle this intrusion of apostasy.
He introduces one man as a “former homosexual,” who now works helping “cure” others. “I’m not a homosexual,” the man tells us. “I’m a heterosexual man who dealt with homosexuality. I don’t believe people are born homosexual.” (“Have you ever met Little Richard?” Maher responds skeptically.) He talks to the Muslim owners of a gay bar in Amsterdam.
It’s easy to imagine many viewers – certainly many of the targets – seeing Maher as a smirking wisenheimer. And, while he tries not to look snarky, his comic impulse sometimes overwhelms him.
Maher is not alone: For many of us, it makes about as much sense to take the Bible (or any of the other religions’ texts) as absolute truth as it does to regard The Lord of the Rings (or Gulliver’s Travels or The Story of O) as Holy Writ. The Bible’s exceptional status is more an accident of history than a proof of divine origin. And thinking God is actually speaking to you is, well, a little bonkers, whether you’re Moses or Joan of Arc or the guy on his knees praying, right down the street.
The problem for us scoffers is: We all know a lot of people who do believe those things and who seem to be – in every other aspect of their lives – neither psychotics nor drooling imbeciles. On the one hand, we want to make them see the folly of their beliefs; on the other hand, it’s almost always a futile process, an offense to the other party, and hence downright rude.
Maher may have been willing at some stage to gently mock without making a militant stand of his disbelief. But, in the first and last scenes of Religulous, he explains why he thinks atheists shouldn’t be meek and polite about the foolishness of blind faith anymore.
And, metaphorically speaking, the reason is – though Maher couldn’t have known it while making the movie – Sarah Palin ... Moose-Hunting Mom ... Wicked Wolfkiller of Wasilla ... Field-Dressing Fascist from the Frozen North.
Maher wraps things up by zeroing in on a particular, ever-growing corner of Christianity, the evangelicals who welcome the coming of the End Times, as supposedly forecast in Revelation ... you know, with the final battle at Armageddon, which just happens to be located in the Middle East. This particular group – seen as loonies by many other Christians – has had disproportionate influence on the Bush administration without quite driving us into a self-fulfilling final war.
The rise of Sarah Palin is the scariest development on this front to date. Palin accepts some of this apocalyptic gibberish or, at the very least, has paid lip service to it. If, through some fluke (or through rigged voting machines and suppressed minority turnout), McCain wins the upcoming election, the actuarial odds are pretty high that, within the next decade, Palin could be calling the shots (and I do mean shots). If Maher considered the situation urgent while he was shooting Religulous, he must consider it doubly so now.
Religulous. Directed by Larry Charles. With Bill Maher and the faithful. Opens Friday citywide.
Published: 10/01/2008
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