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<\/a><\/p>\nJust a few quick thoughts about the depiction of violence and religion in Nate Parker\u2019s The Birth of a Nation<\/a><\/i>, which tells the story of Nat Turner\u2019s slave rebellion in 1830s Virginia.<\/p>\n Turner was a slave who knew how to read, and \u2014 as depicted in the film, at least \u2014 the only book he is allowed to read is the Bible. He gets to know the Bible so well that his master rents him out to other slave-owners, so that he can preach a message of obedience, telling other slaves to obey their masters.<\/p>\n The first time Turner preaches one of these messages, he cites I Peter 2:18<\/a>, which tells slaves to submit to their masters, \u201cnot only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.\u201d1<\/sup> As Turner finishes the quote, he looks back over his shoulder somewhat nervously, as if he\u2019s afraid the slave-owners standing behind him will think he has just criticized them for being \u201charsh\u201d \u2014 but it turns out the slave-owners either didn\u2019t notice or didn\u2019t care how the verse ended. They\u2019re just happy to see that one slave is telling the other slaves to obey them.<\/p>\n (I\u2019ll come back to that passage in a moment.)<\/p>\n Later on, Nat Turner\u2019s wife Cherry is raped and beaten. (Reportedly there was a rape scene in this film when it premiered at Sundance, but now the rape takes place offscreen.) Nat is seething with a desire for revenge, but Cherry reminds him of what Nat taught her: that those who live by the sword will die by the sword (as Jesus said in Matthew 26:52<\/a>).<\/p>\n Eventually Nat gets into an argument with a white preacher, and they quote scripture at each other, each man using verses that appear to support his side of the argument. For his insolence, Nat is whipped. At the end of his punishment, he has a vision of an angel.<\/p>\n And then, in another scene, he reads a Bible passage that confirms for him that he should lead an armed rebellion against the slave-owners. The Bible passage in question \u2014 which the camera does linger on \u2014 is I Samuel 15<\/a>, in which the prophet Samuel tells King Saul to commit an act of genocide against the Amalekites.<\/p>\n This is one of the most problematic passages in the entire Bible.2<\/sup> And this is the passage that, according to the film, convinces Nat Turner to become a Braveheart<\/a><\/i>-like hero.<\/p>\n Is the film aware<\/i> of how problematic this passage is, or indeed of how problematic Nat Turner\u2019s entire campaign of violence was? I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n There are moments in the film that could<\/i> be interpreted as ambiguous or even potentially critical of Nat Turner\u2019s rebellion, such as when a slave enthusiastically beheads his master \u2014 an act of violence that is now typically associated with terrorism.<\/p>\n But for the most part, the film wants us to take Nat Turner\u2019s side. Indeed, it mythologizes Nat Turner and depicts him as a \u201cchosen one\u201d who does God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n The film begins with a prologue in which Nat Turner is a boy with a birthmark on his chest, and some older female slaves hail him as a prophet because he bears the \u201choly marks\u201d of their ancestors. \u201cWe should listen to him,\u201d says one of the women.<\/p>\n When Nat begins his rebellion some years later, he is hailed by women once again: his mother tells him, \u201cI\u2019m proud of you,\u201d while his wife \u2014 who had previously tried to talk him out of getting revenge by reminding of his own pacifist preaching \u2014 now tells him, \u201cFight for us all.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there is the (female) angel who appears to him when he is whipped, and who appears to him again when he is about to be executed.<\/p>\n Other directorial touches signal the filmmakers\u2019 approval of Nat Turner and his actions. Light pours into his prison cell as he awaits execution, and then, in the film\u2019s final shot (spoiler alert!), a boy who betrayed Nat Turner watches him die and then morphs into his adult self, wearing a Northern uniform and fighting in the Civil War. Thus the film connects Nat Turner\u2019s unauthorized<\/i> but sanctified violence to the authorized<\/i> violence that was needed to end slavery for good in the United States.3<\/sup><\/p>\n The film does not depict how the historical Turner and his rebels killed white children, and it only barely depicts the killing of one woman (when slaves attack a married couple in their bedroom). If the film had shown the full scale of Turner\u2019s violence, it could have painted a more ambiguous, complex portrait of the cycle of violence, and how scripture was used to justify atrocities on both sides.<\/p>\n But that isn\u2019t what writer-director Nate Parker, who also plays Nat Turner, wanted to do here. In multiple interviews (with Alissa Wilkinson<\/a>, Steve Harvey<\/a> and others), Parker has argued that Nat Turner was a heroic \u201cman of faith\u201d, and he has suggested that there are two kinds of Christian: \u201cNat Turner Christians\u201d on the one hand, and the kind of Christians who killed Nat Turner and oppressed the slaves on the other hand. Parker has even suggested that Nat Turner was \u201cChristlike\u201d.<\/p>\n And, um, well, wow.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where I\u2019d like to take another look at that passage in I Peter, an epistle that is traditionally believed to have been written by the very same man that Jesus was addressing when he said that those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.<\/p>\n When the author of that epistle wrote that slaves should submit themselves to their masters \u2014 and that Christians in general should submit themselves to human authorities \u2014 he was addressing people who lived in a pagan society that was actively persecuting Christians. The assumption the author made was that the masters were pagan and the slaves were Christian. No one at the time thought that slave-owners would ever use those passages to justify their own cruelty.4<\/sup><\/p>\n Instead, the whole point<\/i> of the passage in I Peter 2 is that we are called to follow Christ\u2019s example when we suffer unjustly. In the film, Nat Turner quotes just verse 18. But in the verses that follow, the epistle says, among other things:<\/p>\n 21<\/sup>To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22<\/sup>\u201cHe committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.\u201d 23<\/sup>When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So it is not just the slave-owners who missed the point of that passage (and its criticism of \u201charsh\u201d slave-owners) when Nat Turner preached it to their slaves. Nat Turner himself missed the point of that passage when he embarked on his retaliatory rebellion.<\/p>\n Instead of following in Christ\u2019s footsteps, the Nat Turner of this film deliberately sets aside the words of Jesus and embraces a message of violence based on an Old Testament passage that explicitly calls for genocide. That<\/i> is the character arc followed by this film\u2019s version of Nat Turner. That<\/i> is what the filmmakers depict their \u201chero\u201d doing.<\/p>\n I have been fortunate to live in a time and place where neither I nor anyone I know has ever been a slave or had to live under the brutality of an empire like Rome\u2019s. So I don\u2019t want to pretend that I know what it would be like to live under the sort of oppression that Peter or Nat Turner had to endure. I know how easy it is to say the words of Jesus and Paul; I do not know how hard it would have been to have to live<\/i> those particular words.<\/p>\n But if we\u2019re going to talk about \u201cChristlike\u201d behaviour, then this is what we need to be talking about. If we\u2019re going to talk about the different kinds of Christians out there, then we need a third, non-violent option \u2014 an option that rejects the violence of the slave-owners and<\/i> the violence of rebel slaves who, as depicted in this film, deliberately set the words of Jesus aside when they set out to kill men, women and children.<\/p>\n To be clear, the film didn\u2019t have<\/i> to give us that third option. I don\u2019t believe films always have to provide positive answers; sometimes it\u2019s enough to shine a light on the problem, and a film that consciously explored how both sides distorted scripture to suit their violent ends could have given us plenty of food for thought.<\/p>\n The problem here is that this<\/i> film, by mythologizing Nat Turner the way it does, and by literally putting him on the side of the angels, obscures these issues. And that makes the film something of a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n 1. I\u2019m quoting the NIV version of the passage. I assume Turner, in the film, quotes the KJV.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Saul\u2019s attack against the Amalekites was given a sensitive treatment<\/a> in Of Kings and Prophets<\/a><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n