Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday “came out,” as they say, as a Christian, writing a thoughtful essay about her faith and her calling.
From Ann Hornaday Essay: Confessions of a Christian film critic – The Washington Post:
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
It may come as something of a surprise for Washington Post readers to learn that these are the words I silently invoke every time I sit down to write.
It would surely shock the gentleman who recently e-mailed to castigate me for the “evil” review I wrote of the film “Son of God,” the screen adaptation of the “Bible” TV miniseries. “You will have much to account for the day you meet God,” the e-mailer wrote. “It is now evident you cannot write a review without your personal biases surfacing. That is not professional.”
My correspondent’s words stung — not only because something I had written had caused such obvious distress. In just a few short sentences, he summed up the tensions, contradictions and fleeting moments of grace I have experienced as a film critic who also happens to be a practicing Christian. . . .
But my resistance to invoking God, Jesus Christ and matters of the spirit in my writing also has to do with something the “Son of God” e-mailer correctly identified: the journalistic habit of not allowing my personal biases to surface, thereby inappropriately using my work as a religious platform and alienating those readers who don’t share my faith or have no faith at all. Those individuals have every right to read a movie review or essay without feeling sermonized, excluded or disrespected.
Still, I believe that work — like every other aspect of daily life — is both a venue and a crucible for exploring and expressing our deepest values. I take to heart the exhortation of the British mystic and writer Evelyn Underhill — one of my spiritual heroes — that work should be “part of the creative apparatus” of the Holy Spirit. How to live into that reality and still be inclusive, accessible and — please, God — free of scolding, self-righteous sanctimony?
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