{"id":1182,"date":"2013-10-01T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/american-jesus-the-wounded-subculture-of-american-religion.html"},"modified":"2013-10-01T09:07:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T09:07:00","slug":"american-jesus-the-wounded-subculture-of-american-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/american-jesus-the-wounded-subculture-of-american-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAMERICAN JESUS\u201d \u2014 The Wounded Subculture of American Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
There is something extraordinarily dangerous and ugly at the heart of American life: literalistic religion.\u00a0There is something extraordinarily beautiful and enlightening at the heart of American life: literalistic religion. Now there is a movie that explores this paradox: what\u2019s uniquely best about America \u2014 religious freedom \u2014 is also our continuous downfall.<\/span><\/div>\n
I\u2019m an author and commentator not a journalist. So it\u2019s not often I get the pleasure of stumbling on what\u2019s called a \u201cscoop.\u201d This time I\u2019m beating the rest of the media to a big story. My scoop is to introduce a movie to you.\u00a0\u00a0American Jesus<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u00a0is an important documentary that will redefine how the world looks at America and how we Americans look at ourselves. I only know about this movie because I\u2019m in it. So last week I had the privilege of seeing an advance screening.<\/span>\n

Premiering at the Woodstock Film Festival\u00a0<\/a>(and in Spain) on Oct. 4th\u00a0<\/span>American Jesus<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>documents the strange relationship between faith, materialism, politics and personal spiritual passions in what is a uniquely American inner life.<\/span>\u00a0American Jesus\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/em>asks how dynamic and loving faith may coexist with the darker side of cynical empire building and magical thinking. In asking this question, with a level of intuitive intelligence I\u2019ve never seen before in a film on religion,<\/span>\u00a0American<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Jesus<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u00a0shows us how the best and worst coexists in big time American religion. The movie shows us the paradoxically improbable combination of idealism and crass grasping for riches and striving for power. This combination of the venal and the sublime is what American religion is. And this matters because we impact the rest of the world as the world\u2019s only superpower. What we believe translates into global, often violent, action.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is something extraordinarily dangerous and ugly at the heart of American life: literalistic religion.\u00a0There is something extraordinarily beautiful and enlightening at the heart of American life: literalistic religion. Now there is a movie that explores this paradox: what\u2019s uniquely best about America \u2014 religious freedom \u2014 is also our continuous downfall. I\u2019m an author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cAMERICAN JESUS\u201d \u2014 The Wounded Subculture of American Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is something extraordinarily dangerous and ugly at the heart of American life: literalistic religion. There is something extraordinarily\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/american-jesus-the-wounded-subculture-of-american-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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