"Bill Maher's Religulous: ego-bruising, insightful"

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Beacon oped, 10/23/08

Epileptics at a rave. A McCain lawn sign in Cambridge. A vegan birthday party in a tub of milk. A Christian seeing Religulous, Bill Maher’s new anti-religion documentary.
All of these seem unlikely. But I did the fourth.

It wasn’t an Act of God or coercion or a class assignment. I didn’t go to prove, out of righteous defiance, that I could brave the movie’s message. Or to assuage repressed self-loathing. Or to laugh at Maher’s acerbic wit. I didn’t go for any of these things.

I saw it because, as a Christian, I think Maher (the host of the HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher) has a point.
In many religious circles, the film’s topics have been long neglected: the hypocrisy of church opulence, fundamentalists’ defense of strict creationism, the illogic of supernatural belief, unceasing bloodshed in God’s name (the Holocaust, the Crusades) and so forth. Maher doesn’t set out to find religion; he is devoutly agnostic. Instead, he’s looking for answers: why do so many otherwise rational, intelligent people embrace religion, with its abstract, unprovable absurdities and violent zealots? And how do they defend themselves?

The film leaps from interview to interview, with Maher’s personal musings threaded throughout. He spends most of the movie on Christianity, but also addresses Judaism, Islam and some more obscure faiths, including an Amsterdam-centered church whose only discernible practice is smoking epic amounts of pot.

In one scene, Maher’s crew visits a small chapel at a truck stop and, with the worshipers’ permission, peppers them with direct questions about the validity of the Bible and the existence of a benevolent, Christian God. For the most part, the questions are well-received. On his way out, Maher thanks the congregation “for being Christ-like, not just Christian.”

But before Maher leaves, one man loses his cool. With fists brandished and voice raised, he storms out: “If you start questioning my God, then we got a problem.”

It is a problem. But the problem is not the questioning; the problem is the answer. Many Christians have become so stern-faced, so guarded when answering questions that, like an unused muscle, their ability to discuss religion on a logical level has wilted away. This is tragic in two ways: the non-religious cannot understand why the religious believe, and the religious cannot articulate their own beliefs.

Maher runs circles around interviewees and when he confounds his subjects, they fall back on matters fundamental to faith–and meaningless to Maher. The Bible. A claim on truth. Anecdotes of miracles. A last-ditch reply of “well, you just don’t understand,” or “that’s God’s way.”

Clearly, there is a linguistic divide between religion’s adherents and its skeptics, both in Religulous and in the real world. The faithful lean on words like “blessed,” “sin” and “faith”—vapid words to many outsiders. This Christianese can be unintelligible like a mad lib: “God’s saving grace through our Savior, Christ Jesus” may as well be “God’s pink elephant through our saxophone, Jed Cleevus.”

In the Oct. 9 issue of The Beacon, Arts and Entertainment Editor Harry Vaughn described Maher’s tactics as “bullying.” Rather than seek out religious intellectuals, Vaughn says, Maher gravitates to the plebeian flock, which is “defenseless” against Maher’s rhetorical blitz.

Maher is a bully, and his practices are far from journalistic. But he doesn’t care about fairness. He cares about making a point: many religious people embrace something they struggle greatly to express. And since these bumbling believers are a large part of the religious population, Maher’s findings are highly relevant. He wasn’t setting out to disprove God, but to prove religion is a corrupting influence, a brainwashing sham.

But impotence at defending our beliefs is a cultural, not religious, phenomenon. Many of us believe, with fundamentalist zeal, things we cannot express. Just talk with average American voters who make their decision based on snippets of nightly news, e-mail hearsay and the partisan, fact-starved drivel that dominates our political landscape.

Still, the religious should be ready to provide informative, accessible answers, not defensive religio-speak. They should approach discussions of religion as discussions, not as arguments. Taking responsibility for the wrongs of the church is encouraged. Finger-pointing and nastiness is not. Such civility and openness is crucial, especially for the college-aged, who have had precious few years of post-adolescent lucidity to determine what they believe.

I walked away from the movie with my ego bruised and my mind buzzing. But any religious person who is secure in their beliefs shouldn’t feel threatened: no film is an existential threat to their faith. The ideas deserve careful evaluation and lengthy discussion, whether their presentation is fair or not. For until Christians observe criticism like Maher’s, they will have only mouths agape when asked the important questions that lie within.


Chris Girard is a junior political communication major, the president of the Emerson Goodnews Fellowship and a former opinion co-editor of The Beacon.