From my article that appears in the June, 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic:
In 2012 Sister Simone Campbell and the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK launched the “Nuns on the Bus” tour to “live the biblical demand for social justice” and “to speak truth to power” in the name of the poor and marginalized. Campbell and her fellow sisters traveled thousands of miles by bus to call attention to programs for the poor that were under attack from budget cuts. The bus has since made a second tour, which focused on immigration, and now a documentary film is in progress to show how the movement has reshaped debates about values, fairness, money, immigration, and the role of government.
“Speak truth to power” is a phrase attributed to the Quakers, who coined it in the mid-1950s to encourage Americans to speak up against the fascism and totalitarianism they perceived in the culture at the time. Documentaries can be the perfect medium to express belief in making positive changes.
Although Hollywood documentaries that speak truth to power through their stories about social justice and human rights may or may not draw intentionally from biblical principles, they certainly come from genuine concerns for the good of humanity. Because these films attempt to teach truth and often warn us about the consequences of doing nothing to contribute to change, they can be called prophetic. They dare to depict disaster and propose solutions by imagining what peaceful change can look like.
Not all Hollywood documentaries are about social justice, but they all tell a human story. Take this past year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries, for example. The Act of Killing is a weird hybrid of art and history that becomes a call for justice for the leaders of the Indonesian killing squads of 1965–1966 who murdered half a million people but were long considered folk heroes. None of them have been brought to justice.
Dirty Wars documents the work of war correspondent and author Jeremy Scahill between 2010 and 2012, when he discovered the secret, administration-approved wars carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). From Iraq to Afghanistan, America’s war is now synonymous with “America trying to kill its way to victory” through the use of kill squads and drone strikes in a war that has no hope of ever ending, if this continues.
The Square records the difficult realities Egypt faced during the Arab …. CLICK HERE to finish reading this article at. U.S. Catholic.
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