Over the past few years I have seen a number of documentaries and essay films inspired by different ecclesial byways in the US. It has been interesting to track this trend alongside all the recent hub-bub about a growing Christian Film Industry – as this increasing number of documentaries is either a creative response to or side-effect of the growing market for film that has something to do with all the subcultures that comprise churched American. Most of these documentaries I have seen lean towards schools of theological thought that handily (and convincingly) reject the facile imitatio Hollywood enacted by what is supposed to become the Christian Film Industry. I take this is a sign that there may very well be a new media emerging parallel to the movements of Younger Evangelicals towards greener ideological pastures and away from the worn channels of a previous generation’s culture wars.
Scenes From a Parish is a great example of this direction in filmmaking. James Rutenbeck spent four years with his camera in the St. Patrick Parish of South Lawrence, MA – a depressed town transitioning towards its growing immigrant Hispanic population. He tracks the efforts of Rev. Paul O’Brien, formerly of Harvard and a far more comfortable areas of the east coast, to unite his increasingly scattered flock. He searches for theologically responsible ways to cross barriers of language and class while his parish comes to grips with this new America that has become increasingly divorced from the Christianity they grew up with.
The cast of characters Rutenbeck encounters is a fitting cross-section of the kinds of fears and anxieties that are by now part of everyday churchgoing. Sexual identity, broken families, lost sheep, conflicting cultural identities. Father O’Brien is of the opinion that these kinds of issues are best addressed at the level of local community, and the response he garners is startling. This is an excellent look at a growing theological praxis in America that refuses to begin by submitting to the long defeat.