In Search of the Real Balian

By Steven Gertz

In Kingdom of Heaven, Sir Ridley Scott turns Balian of Ibelin into an agnostic, but what do we know of the Balian of history?

I have to hand it to Sir Ridley Scott. He knows how to grab your attention. In the opening scenes of his epic Crusades movie Kingdom of Heaven, the young poor blacksmith Balian (played by Orlando Bloom) suddenly finds himself heir to a fief in the exotic East. His crusading father Godfrey (Liam Neeson), recently returned from the Holy Land to France, offers his illegitimate son Balian not only a chance to find forgiveness for his wife’s suicide by going on crusade but also the hope of securing a new future as a noble in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Balian hesitates at first but then takes the bait, and off he goes with Godfrey.

Fine and good as far as movie theatrics go, but was Balian a real person? How much of this is history and how much of this is Scott just spinning a good story? And how reliable is Scott as an interpreter of crusader motivations?

Balian did in fact play a crucial role as a Crusader noble in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 to the Muslim sultan Saladin. But Balian never had to travel to the Holy Land—as he does in the movie—because he was already part of the nobility there. His father Balian the Old (not Godfrey) fathered three sons, Hugh, Baldwin, and Balian, all of whom were legitimate and recognized as such. Long before Saladin made his masterful invasion of the Holy Land, Balian and his elder brother Baldwin had established their reputations as competent members of Palestine’s feudal nobility. Indeed, Balian was married to royalty even before the events Scott portrays—and he wasn’t at all romantically involved with the princess Sybilla, sister to the king of Jerusalem. (Actually Balian’s brother Baldwin was the one who had a love interest in Sybilla.)

In the movie, Balian’s faith in God is in jeopardy. Scott has Balian questioning whether God even knows him—his search for forgiveness in Jerusalem ends in disappointment. But what little we know about Balian from historical records suggests he was indeed a pious Christian who took his faith quite seriously. According to one account from the 13th century Estoire d’ Eracles (an old French translation and expansion of a 12th century Western chronicle of the Crusades), Balian was on his way to join forces with other crusaders when he realized it was a church feast day and stopped in town to take Mass. Rather than doing his military duty, he stayed overnight at the house of the bishop, talking all night with him. The visit actually cost the kingdom something, as Balian was not there to help his comrades prevent a military defeat.

Nor do Balian’s actions following the fall of Jerusalem suggest a man who had lost his faith. Far from being disgusted with the Crusades and returning to France (historian Jonathan Riley-Smith points out Balian’s grandfather was from southern Italy, not France) Balian retired to Beirut in Lebanon, which he proceeded to fortify against Muslim invasion. He was present at the signing of a truce with Saladin, which secured a measure of peace for the few Crusader cities still left. And his descendants continued to play important roles in the Crusader kingdoms of the 13th century.

That’s not to say Balian was the epitome of piety. As a warrior, he could be ruthless if need called for it. Saladin’s vow to kill the crusaders, their women, and children once he took Jerusalem drove Balian to an equally heartless solution. Muslim chronicler Ibn Al-Athir quotes Balian as such:

Know O Sultan, that there are very many of us in this city, God alone knows how many. At the moment we are fighting half-heartedly in the hope of saving our lives, hoping to be spared by you as you have spared others; this is because of our horror of death and our love of life. But if we see that death is inevitable, then by God we shall kill our children and our wives, burn our possessions, so as not to leave you with a dinar or a drachma or a single man or woman to enslave. When this is done, we shall pull down the Sanctuary of the Rock (today’s Dome of the Rock) and the Masjid al-Aqsa and the other sacred places, slaughtering the Muslim prisoners we hold—5,000 of them—and killing every horse and animal we possess. Then we shall come out to fight you like men fighting for their lives, when each man, before he falls dead, kills his equals; we shall die with honor, or win a noble victory.

This hardly sounds like a Christian speaking. But Balian was also a crafty politician and probably hoped that such a threat would move Saladin to offer the crusaders more acceptable terms, as he in fact did. Saladin was less liberal than the movie makes him out to be—he demanded that each man, woman, and child in Jerusalem pay a ransom for his or her freedom, and consequently thousands of poor Christians faced the grim prospect of slavery. In an effort to avert this catastrophe, Balian paid out of his own purse Saladin’s price for many who could not afford it.

Balian’s story is in many ways a case study of crusader motives. As Bruce Shelley asked in his article in Christian History Issue 40, why did Christians go on crusade? Kingdom of Heaven would appear to suggest that crusaders went for land, wealth, and power even as they claimed to fight for the good of Christendom and the spread of Christianity. There may indeed be some truth to this claim, though as historian Thomas Madden points out, “the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder.”

The Balian of history suggests a more complicated picture, however. Here was a man well versed in the ways of war, and his possessions and livelihood were at stake in the conflict. Yet as the story from Estoire d’ Eracles demonstrates, he placed great importance on the things of God, even to the detriment of the conflict at hand. And as the events following the fall of Jerusalem reveal, Balian at great personal sacrifice showered compassion on fellow Christians in dire need. Indeed, this kind of empathy is exactly what drove many crusaders to come to the Holy Land—it was in part the plea of the Byzantine emperor Alexios to Pope Urban II for help against belligerent Muslim Turks in 1095 that prompted the pope to call for the Crusades. In more than one way, the life of Balian helps us see the crusaders for what many of them they were—men of piety who felt the call of God on their lives even as they went to war.

Kingdom of Heaven has some serious problems—none the least Scott’s portrayal of Balian. But if Scott provokes Christians to take a closer look at the men and women of faith in medieval Europe, he’s done the public a service. Now I’m just waiting for a scholar to write the definitive biography of Balian of Ibelin.

For further reading:

Marshall Baldwin, ed, A History of the Crusades, Volume 1:The First 100 Years (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1969)

Francesco Gabrieli, ed. Arab Historians of the Crusades, (Univ of California Press, 1969). Baha ad-Din tells the story of Saladin conquering Jerusalem .

Regine Pernoud, The Crusades (Putnam, 1963). Pay special attention to the accounts of the fall of Jerusalem by Ibn al-Athir and Ambroise.

Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades: A Short History (Yale Univ. Press, 1987)

Jonathan Riley-Smith, Crusades: The feudal nobility and the kingdom of Jerusalem (Archon Books, 1973)

Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East: 1100-1187 (Cambridge, 1968)

Steven Gertz is assistant editor for Christian History & Biography. More Christian history, including a list of events that occurred this week in the church’s past, is available at ChristianHistory.net. Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine are also available.

- More from By Steven Gertz

Culture

Review

Monster-in-Law

Mary Lasse

Coming off a string of flops (Gigli, Jersey Girl, and Shall We Dance—OK, I admit it, Shall We Dance was one of my 2004 guilty pleasures), Jennifer Lopez hopes her new film, Monster-in-Law, will break that slump. Well, keep hoping, J-Lo, because besides Jane Fonda’s return to the big screen for the first time since 1990, there’s little else of note in this forgettable movie, directed by Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde).

Jennifer Lopez plays the lovestruck Charlie

Charlotte “Charlie” Cantilini (Lopez) is a thirtysomething woman who works odd jobs because life’s too short to not take advantage of variety. Charlie’s personality isn’t the only free-spirited thing in the film; so is her approach to religion. Within the first five minutes of the movie, Charlie references horoscopes, karma, and tarot cards in order to determine her destiny. As she reads her horoscope (something along the lines of “Love is right in front of you”), she looks up and sees Kevin Fields (Alias‘ Michael Vartan) running down the beach. They make eye contact and—voila!—Charlie’s horoscope seems to be right on the money.

After a short courtship, Charlie and Kevin decide to get married. Enter Kevin’s mom, Viola Fields (Jane Fonda), as the title character. As usual, Fonda looks great. She may be 67, but she’s got more vivacity and oomph than most 20-year-olds. With her beauty comes a grand elegance—and a style and grace that makes Lopez, by comparison, look like an amateur. And J-Lo’s been acting for nearly 20 years.

Jane Fonda steals the show in her first film in 15 years

But Viola’s not happy. She’s had some misfortune in her professional life and now she wants to reconnect with the only family that she has: her son, Kevin. What mother doesn’t know, though, could kill her! When Viola witnesses Charlie and Kevin’s engagement, she imagines smashing Charlie’s face into the teatime cake. She then asks Ruby (Wanda Sykes), her longtime assistant, to open a bottle of celebratory champagne. (Viola had sworn off alcohol, but turns back to drink in order to cope with the recent “good news” engagement.)

As the wedding draws near, Charlie and Viola’s antics get nastier and more underhanded. In order to give the girls some bonding/fighting time, screenwriter Anya Kochoff practically leaves Kevin out of the script. As Charlie and Viola duked it out, I grew more and more restless.

Michael Vartan plays Kevin, Charlie’s fiance

The movie didn’t take advantage of all the possibilities about a storyline involving a horrible mother-in-law. For such a rich premise, Kochoff produced a fairly lackluster script. Kevin’s character is forgettable. Viola is completely over-the-top and one dimensional for 99.9 percent of the movie. And, Charlie = Jennifer Lopez. Not that her acting chops (or lack thereof) rest solely on the screenwriter, but the writer didn’t make Charlie’s character very challenging. I could see several actresses in Charlie’s role. Lopez didn’t “make it her own,” as American Idol judge Randy Jackson might say.

If you miss Monster-in-Law, you aren’t missing much. If you want to check out Jane Fonda’s return to the silver screen, just make it a rental down the road.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

If you are married, can you relate to Charlie and Viola’s relationship? Why or why not?
How could Charlie and Viola have changed their relationship sooner? Why does it take them so long to make amends and decide to care for one another?
What does the Bible say about marriages and families? How do those Scriptures fit into this movie, if at all?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Monster-in-Law is rated PG-13 for sex references and language. There’s a scene of mating dogs. Charlie and Kevin have premarital sex. Charlie’s best friend, Remy, is gay. Viola’s character has been married four times. There’s lots of nasty sarcasm between Ruby and Viola. And the premise of the movie is played out with Charlie and Viola doing fairly horrible things to one another, all in the name of hostility.

Photos © Copyright New Line Cinema

What Other Critics Are Saying

compiled by Jeffrey Overstreetfrom Film Forum, 05/19/05

Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) directs Jennifer Lopez and the comeback-actress of the year—Jane Fonda—in Monster-in-Law, the latest in a trend of popular comedies about marriage and in-laws.

Christian film critics are saying Fonda could have chosen a better film for her big-screen return.

Mary Lasse (Christianity Today Movies) writes, “If you miss Monster-in-Law, you aren’t missing much. If you want to check out Jane Fonda’s return to the silver screen, just make it a rental down the road.”

Andrew Coffin (World) says, “Monster-in-Law is occasionally funny, but grows increasingly shrill and unpleasant as the battle between Charlie and Viola escalates. Add in some forced, crude humor (when did it become acceptable to use an obscene gesture as a stand-in for the one taboo profanity in a PG-13 rated movie?), and Monster-in-Law squanders what little appeal it may have held.”

Christopher Lyon (Plugged In) says, “Those who catch [Fonda’s] much-hyped return to the big screen will be nearly united in their disappointment with Monster-in-Law. It’s not for lack of trying. Fonda plays her whacked-out TV diva/mom so far over the top, most of the other actors seem to be standing still. In fact, she’s just too far over, delivering a grating, manic performance I kept wishing director Robert Luketic had turned down a notch or two. Add to that an above average amount of crude sexual content for a romantic comedy, and it’s tough to scare up any good reasons to catch this Monster movie.”

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) says, “No one will be mistaking the humor of Monster-in-Law as being that of a sophisticated wit. It’s as subtle as a slap in the face … an event which occurs repeatedly in the film. The film … relies too heavily upon cheap jokes, crude humor and the appeal of its stars. Only the latter gets anything close to a passing grade. The script by Anya Kochoff is barely passable—a formulaic, wafer-thin story that is as implausible as it is predictable.”

“I can understand Jane Fonda’s desire to return to the big screen, after a 15-year hiatus,” Ananbelle Robertson (Crosswalk) says. “But did she have to pick this movie for her big comeback? The plot of Monster-in-Law is nothing more than a female version of Meet the Parents or Father of the Bride. And it had great potential, playing off a cliché that sadly is more often true than not. But instead of amusing antics, we get tired truisms.”

Fonda’s comeback distresses many mainstream critics. One writes, “Fifteen years absent from the big screen, and this is what Jane Fonda comes back to? Catfights with J. Lo?”

- More from Mary Lasse

Culture

Review

Kicking and Screaming

Russ Breimeier

The clout of SNL alum Will Ferrell as a box office draw has only grown since 2003’s family friendly Elf, followed by the PG-13 rated Anchorman in 2004. So despite the title, you won’t have to drag kids (or adults) to Kicking & Screaming.

It also helps that the film subject is one of the most popular sports with children today. Yet despite coining the soccer mom demographic more than a decade ago, it’s taken this long to create a definitive movie focused on the enormous popularity of youth soccer. And despite regular news stories about overzealous parents who become more emotionally invested in the game than their offspring, it’s still a timely premise.

Set (but not filmed) in the Chicago suburbs, Ferrell plays Phil Weston, a mild-mannered vitamin salesman with his own health store. Despite a loving family and a successful business, we learn that he’s never lived up to the expectations of his fanatically competitive father Buck (Robert Duvall), the owner of a popular sporting goods store and coach of the Gladiators, the local champion soccer team.

Will Ferrell plays youth soccer coach Phil Weston

Because Buck is so focused on his team’s success, Phil’s 10-year-old son Sam (Dylan McLaughlin), a member of his grandpa’s team, spends more time warming the bench than he does running on the field. In an underutilized gag, Buck’s star player is his own boy Bucky (Josh Hutcherson), the product of his second marriage—and thus Phil’s 10-year-old stepbrother. When Phil implores for his father to give Sam more game time, he learns that Buck has already transferred his grandson to the Tigers (“You traded my son?” “Well, I didn’t actually get anything for him … “).

Unfortunately, the Tigers are in last place, due to questionable talent and a coach so dispassionate, he ditches the team after the first game of the season. Determined to make his son happy, Phil volunteers to coach the Tigers, which of course ends up playing the Gladiators in his first game. It isn’t long before the athletically challenged father learns that he’s in over his head, but how to shape up the team in short time?

Simple. Mike Ditka—former coach of the Chicago Bears—happens to be Buck’s next-door neighbor and “mortal enemy”—developments like this only occur in comedies. The two have a viscous rivalry, so the legendary Ditka is all too happy to serve as Phil’s assistant and whip the kids into shape. Additionally, he helps recruit two Italian soccer prodigies from the neighborhood who immediately become the Tigers’ primary game plan: “Pass it to the Italians.”

Robert Duvall (left) plays Phil’s overly competitive father

Soon the Tigers are winning games, but at what cost? And as Phil gains a taste for competitive sports (not to mention caffeine), he begins to change as well. After a heated match of tetherball, father and son make a serious wager concerning their two teams, taking their competitive relationship to overenthusiastic levels.

Granted, originality is not one of the film’s stronger suits. Like so many other retreads of The Bad News Bears or The Mighty Ducks, Kicking & Screaming relies on the usual clichés: the training montages, the championship match, the unbelievable game-winning shot. It’s also got a few of those “Gimme a break” moments, like the kid who suddenly plays better when the coach realizes he just needs a pair of glasses.

But the big game in Kicking & Screaming is only part of the story. The familial relationships and themes of inspiring confidence are more central to the story. They add a new dimension to the final game, thus making it somewhat more unpredictable. You don’t want either Weston to win because it reinforces their bad behavior—something else has to give before we can root for one of them.

For better or worse, good comedy is rooted in reality. We’ve all experienced overzealous parents firsthand, or else heard horror stories about the lengths they’ll go to in order to live vicariously through their children. This isn’t just a movie about lovable losers trying to prove themselves. It’s also about the difference between winning at all costs and having fun. And it deals with parental expectations and reconciliation, both between Phil and Sam as well as Buck and Phil.

Da Coach, Mike Ditka, gives Phil a hand with the kids

Make no mistake, though. Ferrell is the primary draw, and it turns out to be a great (if not unremarkable) role for him. The idea was to have him in a movie that allows him to interact with kids. He’s good with them, and in fact became a first-time father during the filming. Ferrell is good at playing lovable and crazy, and he gets to play both in Kicking & Screaming—think Steve Martin’s humorous parental tone (Parenthood, Cheaper by the Dozen) evolving into Jim Carrey’s unleashed-though-grounded mania (Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty). In a film highlight, he also engages in some physical comedy, failing at varying sports in college during an opening flashback sequence.

It’s fun to see the nice guy gradually turn his repressed rage loose. Although Phil is such a nice family man at the start, it actually becomes a little unnerving to see him go over the top, becoming his father and pushing the kids too far. But that’s the point, right?

Ferrell still needs other good actors to play off of, and Duvall distinguishes himself in his first true comedic role since M*A*S*H* in 1970, with the possible exception of 2003’s Secondhand Lions. It’s no surprise that this excellent actor pulls it off, since we’ve seen hints of humor in his previous roles. He makes a convincing over-competitive father—essentially the villain and Phil’s cause of grief in the movie—yet he still manages to keep his character lovable.

The coaches rally their team for the game

The greater revelation is Ditka, who says he merely had to play himself. But he does more than give a clichéd guest performance. He makes a fine comedic foil, playing the straight man or the crazy man against Ferrell as necessary with fun and energy. An early scene showing him arguing with his wife over smoking a cigar shows that he’d even make a good Mr. Wilson in Dennis the Menace. There’s just something immensely satisfying in watching “Da Coach” inspire greatness by yelling at the undisciplined kids as if they’re professional football players.

Speaking of, many of these kids show dimension, developed just enough for us to remember and enjoy their personalities. Even though most of them are little more than caricatures, the screenwriters (responsible for both Santa Clause films) smartly give them just enough for us to care, keeping the focus on Ferrell and the central characters. The standout is Byong Sun (mispronounced in the movie as Beyoncé), played by Elliot Cho and sure to be the next breakout cute kid since Jonathan Lipnicki (Jerry Maguire). Plus, there are scenes where the teammates seem to bond together as real children would. The two Italian boys patiently try to teach some soccer moves to the others, while the rest help them with their English. No one is too overly bratty or ridiculous—they ring true.

Not to overanalyze such a simple comedy. Except for some ball jokes that will sail over the heads of young children (while causing dads to snicker), this is the rare live action comedy that’s appropriate for the whole family and still funny. Kicking & Screaming succeeds because it understands its target audience, refraining from playing it too cute or crude. Though predictable, it’s well executed, with the actors and filmmakers coordinating like a championship team … and having fun in the process.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

Early on, Phil struggles to make time for his son while juggling his job responsibilities. Being a good parent is paramount, but to what extent should a father sacrifice his job for a “game?”
Some parents live vicariously through their children in their extracurricular activities, be it sports, arts, or even grades. What are some ways parents can become burdens to their children? How can parents be supportive in their kids’ talents and activities?
Is it better to sit the bench on a winning team, or to play the game for a losing team? Self-esteem and pride play into both, so is one scenario really better than another? What lessons can kids learn from both situations? How can parents counsel their children in either case?
What does the Bible say about provoking children to anger? (See Ephesians 6:1-4). Is it possible to coach without riding the players too hard, or is some of that expected in sports? Conversely, how should kids respond to authority, parental or coaching?
Whether we want to or not, for better or worse, we often take on the traits of our parents. Is it possible to refrain from unwanted traits? How can we discern when we need to change?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Kicking & Screaming only uses a couple of profanities in the entire film. The crude humor refers to some ball jokes that will likely sail over the heads of young children. There is one (very funny) scene where a soccer team takes the field after spending the day at a slaughterhouse—though they’re smeared in blood, it’s played for laughs and not graphic or over the top. Also, one of the team members is the adopted child of a lesbian couple; the subject only comes up in one scene, handled with such subtlety that kids might ask questions to understand it. Otherwise, the film is refreshingly wholesome, suitable for family viewing.

Photos © Copyright Universal Pictures

What Other Critics Are Saying

compiled by Jeffrey Overstreetfrom Film Forum, 05/19/05

It’s not hard to imagine the conversation when somebody pitched the idea for Kicking and Screaming to Universal: “What if you put Will Ferrell as coach of a youth soccer team, and—” “We have a deal!!“

Ferrell is, to quote one of his own characters, “so hot right now.” Last year’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was a hit. He’s in Woody Allen’s latest—Melinda and Melinda. He’ll be in the upcoming Bewitched, a comedy called The Wedding Crashers, an animated version of Curious George, a remake of Land of the Lost, and there’s talk of Elf 2. In Kicking and Screaming, he’s the coach of his son’s soccer team and taking these young bad news boys up against a rival team coached by … his own father (Robert Duvall).

Russ Breimeier (Christianity Today Movies) says, “Granted, originality is not one of the film’s stronger suits. But the big game in Kicking & Screaming is only part of the story. The familial relationships and themes of inspiring confidence are more central to the story. They add a new dimension to the final game, thus making it somewhat more unpredictable. This isn’t just a movie about lovable losers trying to prove themselves. It’s also about the difference between winning at all costs and having fun. This is the rare live action comedy that’s appropriate for the whole family and still funny. Though predictable, it’s well executed, with the actors and filmmakers coordinating like a championship team … and having fun in the process.”

Bob Smithouser (Plugged In) says, “When I heard that the director of the raunchy, R-rated comedy American Wedding was at the helm, I feared we’d get a distasteful movie full of foul-mouthed children—The Bad News Bears in cleats. Not so. These are decent, generally respectful kids whose innocence plays beautifully against Ferrell’s manic insecurity. Unlike comics with an aggressive swagger and no fear of retaliation, Ferrell’s bombast always contains hints of an exit strategy. It makes this suburban dad … vulnerable and easy to sympathize with.”

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says it “offers a humorous critique of our hypercompetitive culture. But beyond its breezy ‘winning isn’t everything’ moral, the film imparts a more serious message about parental approval and the long-term emotional damage that can result when such validation is withheld. However, [it] deserves a penalty flag for its inclusion of a vulgar running gag involving Buck’s double-entendre sales slogan that is hardly appropriate for a ‘kid-friendly’ movie—though most of the objectionable elements will, like a soccer ball, probably bounce over youngsters’ heads.”

“[Director Jesse] Dylan does the best thing possible with a weak script,” says Michael Elliott (Movie Parables). “He turns the cameras on Ferrell and tries to stay out of the way. The result is a barely passable but sometimes amusing family comedy.”

Annabelle Robertson (Crosswalk) isn’t pleased at all. “If all you’re looking for is a film without objectionable content that you can take your kid to see, and you don’t care a whit about the message, this is it (with a few completely gratuitous exceptions). Otherwise, I’d run kicking and screaming out of this one.”

Mainstream critics aren’t getting much of a kick out of it.

- More from Russ Breimeier

Culture

Review

Unleashed

Stefan Ulstein

The conventions of the martial arts movie are fairly straightforward. The bad guys spend the first part of the movie behaving abominably, so that we will cheer when the hero finally administers the merciless beating they so richly deserve. The hero is spiritual, and sexually chaste, while the bad guys are degenerate and evil. Plot and character development are contrivances that serve only to propel the action forward. Nobody thinks to shoot the hero with a gun. Done well, it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Jet Li is one of the best, and best known, martial artists working in film today. Now in his forties, he has been an international star since the 1991 Once Upon a Time in China. In his early Chinese films, which used no special effects, we see a marvelous athlete, a performer who blends martial arts, gymnastics, and ballet into a seamless, graceful spectacle. But Li wanted to work on a film that would transcend the genre constraints of the kung fu epic. He wanted a chance to act in a multi-dimensional role.

Jet Li plays the role of the slave, Danny

The results are mixed. Li’s Danny has been conditioned by sensory deprivation and behavioral conditioning to behave like an attack dog. He is kept in a cage and fed scraps. He cringes like a dog as he follows his master, Bart (Hoskins) on his loan shark collections. When Bart removes Danny’s dog collar Danny attacks with the single-mindedness of a pit bull, mauling those who are behind in their payments. When the carnage is complete he returns to his master, who replaces the collar. Once the collar is on, Danny is constrained and cowed.

For the character of Danny, Li chose to change his fighting style to reflect the way a dog would attack. Instead of dispatching multiple opponents with a punch here and a kick there, Danny focuses on one adversary at a time. Like a fighting dog, he latches on, oblivious of the others in the pack. Once finished with an opponent, he sets upon the next one. While the fight scenes show off Li’s incredible speed and skill, they seem at times bit too contained. None the less, it’s a clever variant.

Bob Hoskins (right) is the slaveowner who treats Danny like a dog

The opening scenes of Unleashed are brutal, as in most martial arts movies. In the gritty alleys and basements of the Glasgow underworld, Danny is unleashed upon gangsters who refuse to pay up. Bob Hoskins returns to a version of the cockney mobster that made him famous in The Long Good Friday. His Bart is a bit over the top, as befits the genre, but he’s a believably terrifying villain. The other bad guys are simple contrivances, and without Hoskins the evil side of this film would be no more compelling than a cartoon.

While on a job for Bart, Danny wanders into a basement where Sam, a blind piano tuner, is working. Sam (Freeman)is kind and patient as he tries to draw the autistic Danny into the world of music and conversation. Later on, Danny escapes Bart’s control and finds Sam, who takes him home. There, Danny meets Sam’s charming, vivacious step-daughter, Victoria (Kerry Condon), an enchanting innocent. She is the polar opposite of the brutal gangsters who have turned Danny into a killer. The color and texture of the film change from a cold, gray grittiness, to warm tones of oak paneling and comfortably stuffed chairs. The change is a bit extreme, and it as though we have left the movie to see another one in the adjoining theatre.

Hard-core action fans may not know what to make of this interlude where the terrified, introverted Danny is patiently coaxed out of his emotionally circumscribed existence. He hides in corners and under the bed as Sam and Victoria try to lure him with food and kind words. Danny behaves like an abused mongrel that has been rescued from the pound, which is the effect he was striving for. Without Morgan Freeman’s tremendous presence, these scenes would have fallen flat, but Freeman could read from the tax codes and move us. To his credit, he gives the role his all, and it shows. Taking their cues from Freeman, Condon and Li pull off this unlikely scenario fairly well.

Morgan Freeman plays a kindly blind piano tuner who befriends Danny

Bart and his evil minions could have left well enough alone at this point. But no! They just can’t let Danny be. Danny, who has forsworn violence, must eventually administer the requisite beatings. This theme has underpinned many a western. In films like Shane and High Noon, we could have it both ways. The hero is a peaceful, decent man who wants no trouble from anyone. We like people like that, but they aren’t very much fun to watch for two hours. When the bad guys just won’t relent, our kindhearted hero lets them have it with a vengeance. Then he goes back to being a nice guy again. At least that’s how it was before anti-heroes like Clint Eastwood turned the western on its head.

The traditional martial arts film has been more like High Noon than A Fistful of Dollars. The hero is usually a practitioner of some mystic Eastern religion that requires spiritual discipline—which just happens to make him one heck of a fighting man. Unleashed is the kung fu version. Danny is spiritual in his core, but that spirituality has been all but extinguished by abuse and conditioning. After the final outburst of cleansing violence, we know that Danny will be free to live a peaceful existence.

To appreciate Unleashed. we must work particularly hard at suspending our disbelief. Martial arts require great intelligence, focus, and discipline. It’s hard to imagine how Danny, being chained up most of the time and eating out of cans, manages to reach such a pinnacle of physical and psychological brilliance. The behaviorist John Watson believed that every child was a blank slate, and that a skilled psychologist could shape that child into any variant of a human being he wanted. The Chinese communists believed that they could condition prisoners of war, through brainwashing, to embrace Chairman Mao. History has proven them wrong. The Jesuits say, “Show me the child and I’ll give you the man,” but they do not believe that they can create the man, only that they can teach and nurture what God has made. It’s another way of saying, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Danny (Jet Li) knows how to do one thing well

Unleashed begins with an intriguing, if unfulfilled premise. It could have been an interesting film for teenagers who are wrestling with issues of meaning and destiny. The scenes with Freeman, Condon and Li could be seen as a metaphor for spiritual and psychological healing. It wouldn’t have been a great film, but it could have been a fairly good one. Unfortunately, this story of redemption is unnecessarily offensive. Bart tries to have sex with a prostitute while others watch. In a frantic final battle, Danny and a hired assassin break in on a woman taking a shower. It’s as though the filmmakers couldn’t quite decide what film they were trying to make.

Unleashed tries to create an original variant on an overworked genre. Morgan Freeman is better than his role, and Hoskins is a powerful presence. Li almost pulls off a psychologically complex role. But the in the end, Unleashed is a muddled film.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

How possible is it to remake the human spirit?
Can you think of examples where a person’s will has been completely broken?
How possible is it for a broken spirit to be healed?
Can the theme of a peaceful man, driven to violence and retribution, be compared to the concept of a just war?
Why do some filmmakers use a fusion of sex and violence to achieve a psychological mood?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The violence in Unleashed is stylized but the film earns its R-rating for language, degrading sexuality and nudity.

Photos © Copyright Rogue Pictures

What Other Critics Are Saying

compiled by Jeffrey Overstreetfrom Film Forum, 05/19/05

Danny (Jet Li) has been conditioned to work as a human attack dog, and when he’s Unleashed, you’d better watch out. But this martial arts movie aspires to be about more than action. It’s about a hyperviolent hero who yearns to escape his cruel past and become a peaceful, free human being. Of course, in order to break free from his current life, he’ll have to do a lot of damage.

Stefan Ulstein (Christianity Today Movies) says, “Unleashed begins with an intriguing, if unfulfilled premise. It could have been an interesting film for teenagers who are wrestling with issues of meaning and destiny. It wouldn’t have been a great film, but it could have been a fairly good one. Unfortunately, this story of redemption is unnecessarily offensive. It’s as though the filmmakers couldn’t quite decide what film they were trying to make.”

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) writes, “Stylishly directed with an intentional gritty look, themes addressed include the depersonalizing effects of cruelty, the healing power of love, the malleability of young minds for good or evil, and the nature of free will. It is precisely this depth that elevates Unleashed above the standard mindlessness of most action films.”

Tom Neven (Plugged In) says, “This might have been a poignant story. Leterrier would have needed a better screenwriter. Besson has loaded this story with improbabilities and absurdities … [and] has also made his characters utterly stupid when it’s convenient for the story. Unleashed can be easily summarized thus: Human kindness good. Hatred and violence bad. File under ‘Duh!’ and save yourself two hours of hokey storytelling and senseless mayhem.”

Mainstream critics are divided. Some think it’s “a watchable experiment” while others want to put Li back on a leash.

- More from Stefan Ulstein

Culture

Review

Mindhunters

Peter T. Chattaway

Mindhunters is not a particularly good film, but it’s the sort of movie that you might enjoy watching in a dorm with your college buddies. The film is about several FBI trainees who are left alone on an island as part of their training in the Bureau’s psychological profiling program, and who then discover that one of them is a bona fide serial killer. As the trainees are bumped off one by one, they must now apply their training to each other, to figure out which of them is the mastermind behind these deaths. The story keeps you guessing as to the killer’s identity—a character played by one of the film’s bigger stars is bumped off fairly early, which is always guaranteed to keep audiences on their toes—and the victims die in creatively gruesome ways. While that last detail is perhaps not the sort of thing Christian critics ought to applaud, I was reminded of how my Bible school buddies and I used to get a kick out of smart, violent B-movies like John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing.

Val Kilmer in the role of Jake Harris

The film is directed by Renny Harlin, who is best known for Die Hard 2 and was last seen in these parts when he reshot last summer’s Exorcist prequel practically from scratch; the original director, Paul Schrader, had failed to give the studio the bloody and sadistic horror show that they had been hoping for, so Harlin was called in to make things a little more grisly. Mindhunters was actually filmed before all that, and it is easily the better film, but for some reason it was withheld from theatres in its home country, while it spent the past year and then some touring various European, Asian and Middle Eastern territories.

Kathryn Morris as Sara and Christian Slater as J.D. Reston

The film’s here now, though, and in a year marked by high-profile disappointments, it’s kind of reassuring to see a smaller movie that actually succeeds within the parameters of its more modest ambitions. It gets off to a shaky start, as J.D. Reston (Christian Slater) and Sara Moore (Kathryn Morris) track a killer down and are far too easily caught off their guard. But it turns out we were watching a training exercise, and Jake Harris (Val Kilmer), their superior, promptly chastises them for missing all the obvious points. This is followed by scenes of friendly banter as the trainees sit in a bar and analyze the people around them; it’s all a bit reminiscent of how Sherlock Holmes and his brother used to compete to see who could deduce the most about passersby simply by looking at their clothing and mannerisms—except the Holmeses never tried to get a woman’s phone number.

Then comes the mission, as Jake sends his trainees to an island on loan from the Navy, for a training exercise that involves tracking down a killer known as “the puppet master.” Jake tells the trainees he is sending them to this island because they will be “isolated, alone, and forgotten,” and “that’s what it’s like to be in the mind of a sociopath.” To make things more complicated, the trainees are joined by an outsider named Gabe Jensen (LL Cool J), who is keeping an eye on them for more mysterious reasons. They don’t trust him, and they find his off-the-cuff analysis of their own personalities a little too spot-on for comfort.

LL Cool J as Gabe Jensen

Then bad things begin to happen, all of them preceded by the discovery of a clock or watch that predicts the time of someone’s death. As is often the case, the audience can sense something is amiss long before the characters do. One person sets a row of dominoes falling, and instead of trying to stop them—as anybody who has seen one of these movies might do—he or she just stands there and watches, with fatal results. In another scene, Harlin cuts to a shot of someone drinking coffee for no particular reason, so it comes as no surprise when, a few minutes later, everyone passes out because of something in that brew; and when they come to, it turns out that one more person has died.

One of these characters is a serial killer, but which one

More deaths ensue, and although each murder brings us one step closer to figuring out who the killer is—if only because there are fewer and fewer candidates left!—the script, by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) and Kevin Brodbin (Constantine), has enough clever twists to keep us guessing right to the very end. Intriguingly, one of the film’s running themes is that all of these traps are designed around the unique traits of their victims; as one person puts it, where there is a skill, there is also a weakness. So while the film may dwell just a little too much on the physical devices by which these characters meet their awful ends, the story’s primary focus is, of necessity, on the characters and what makes them tick.

Eventually it all comes to an end in one of the more interesting stand-offs of recent memory, in which two characters face each other underwater, their guns held just above the surface, and each person waits for the other to come up for air. There’s nothing particularly deep about this film—and Harlin’s efforts to jazz things up do occasionally go over-the-top, as when he sets a blood-analysis montage to an absurdly rhythmic beat—but moments like this are the sort of thing that keep late-night video parties buzzing.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

One person says, “Where there’s a skill, there’s a weakness.” Do you agree? Why or why not? How can our strengths become weaknesses? How can our weaknesses become strengths? What could these characters have done differently?
One person says, “You don’t confront your demons and defeat them. You confront them, then you confront them, then you confront them some more. Every single day.” Is it possible to “defeat” the things that trouble us in our lives, during this life? What should we do if we cannot “defeat” them? Should our focus be on “defeating” them, or do we only “defeat” them when we have focused on something else?
Jake says the most lethal weapon is not one’s firearm, but one’s brain. Do you think the movie supports this idea? Was the movie more interested in physical matters—such as all those grisly deaths—or in more psychological matters? Which of these things did it encourage you to focus on?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Mindhunters is rated R for violence/strong graphic images, language and sexual content. People die because of various traps—they are shot, speared through the neck, frozen and shattered by liquid nitrogen, and so on—plus there is a fair bit of mutual physical abuse between the last two or three people standing. In a few scenes, dead animals and humans are shown hanging from hooks. Plus, two people are briefly seen having sex in a shower.

Photos © Copyright Dimension Films

What Other Critics Are Saying

compiled by Jeffrey Overstreetfrom Film Forum, 05/19/05

Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) directed this action film before directing the second version of the recent Exorcist prequel, The Beginning. But Mindhunters, which stars Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, Patricia Velasquez, and L.L. Cool J., is finally here. And it’s likely to disappear quickly … just like that Exorcist prequel.

Mindhunters follows FBI trainees performing exercises on an island, and what happens to them when they discover one of their colleagues is a serial killer. It’s like Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians all over again, as the trainees are bumped off one by one. Who’s the killer? Or, perhaps a better question: Who really cares?

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) writes, “Mindhunters is not a particularly good film, but it’s the sort of movie that you might enjoy watching in a dorm with your college buddies. There’s nothing particularly deep about this film—and Harlin’s efforts to jazz things up do occasionally go over-the-top, as when he sets a blood-analysis montage to an absurdly rhythmic beat—but moments like this are the sort of thing that keep late-night video parties buzzing.”

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) says it’s “excessively violent. None of the characters is particularly appealing (intentional?), and you may find yourself rooting for which one gets knocked off next. There is a twist at the end, but after so many red herrings the payoff is only mildly surprising.”

Mainstream critics have readers “good review hunting.” Good luck with that.

- More from Peter T. Chattaway

Ideas

Something Noble and Good

Mark Galli

Columnist; Contributor

Professional sports is often boring, but real sports is not.

I find professional sports mostly boring. That may surprise you, since I’ve spent some space in this column showing how professional sports has those moments of transcendence: from the Kirk Gibson home run in the 1998 World Series to a routine but elegantly executed pass over the middle to the rhythm and story that are contained in every match-up.

But since starting this column I’ve tried to ratchet up the amount of time I spend with ESPN, Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, The Chicago Tribunesports page, and various and sundry books that now cross my desk. But I usually cannot muster enough interest to stick with any of these media for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

The problems of profession sports are legion—selfishness of players, greed of owners, rudeness of fans, the marketing and merchandizing, the gambling, the groupies, the steroids, and on and on and on it goes. A fan has to be a master of denial to block all that out to deeply enjoy a game, as a game, anymore.

Play has not only gone out of the games, it has gone out of reporting on the games. Pick up the daily sports page or the weekly sports magazine and what you get are articles about who is on the trading block, who is angry at whom in the clubhouse, who just signed a gazillion dollar advertising deal, whose arm is sore and whose attitude needs adjustment, and, oh yes, a little bit of reporting on the games of the day. But even then, few reporters take the trouble to craft an engaging narrative to put you in the game, to help you feel the tension and nuance of the key moments of the contest. It’s slapdash reporting with a large measure of gossip thrown in to keep the masses salivating. It’s People: Sports Edition.

Since play is an expression of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath a glimpse of the coming Kingdom, one wonders whether the principalities and powers the apostle Paul speaks of have managed to turn play into mere gossip, business, and entertainment. If I were the devil and I saw play threatening a culture, I’d be scared to death that someone might start thinking transcendent thoughts. I’d do my very best to corrupt it all so that it was anything but play.

Ah, but I speculate.

Still, Christ has hardly left the planet in disgust. So where exactly can the true spirit of play—Sabbath play, play that points toward the Kingdom—be found today?

It can be found, I think, on the golf course, when four friends gather for their weekly nine or eighteen holes. The game includes a fair amount of ribbing (“You can’t hit that shot!”), frustration (“I can’t believe I hit that shot!”), and astonishment (“I can’t believe you hit that shot!”)—and bunches of “if only” stories when afterwards they share a beer in the clubhouse.

It can be found in a pick-up basketball game I played last Monday. My 23-year-old son joined me and another 20-something, and a handful of 40-50 somethings, and we all tried to teach each whose court it really belonged to! Though fiercely competitive, opponents regularly congratulated each other on stellar plays, while cursing their own inability to stop the person they’d just praised. We older guys were limping and gasping by the end of the night, but the glow of the evening stayed with me the whole next day.

It can be found in a slow-pitch softball outfielder, Mike, who turns 60 next week. He continues to play, as he has for decades, with 20- and 30-somethings—none of this 50-year-and-older leagues for him. Mike’s arm is gone; he no longer feels the need to make spectacular diving catches—”that’s a young man’s game” he says. He has to stretch a lot before and after the games, and a bottle of Advil is his ready companion. But he still goes out and plays—and manages most nights to out hit the rest of his team (with that low, sweeping swing that, as accurately as a nine-iron, places the ball in shallow right). I admire him not only for his skill (he’s earned more than his share of MVP awards at softball tournaments), but also because he’s never taken himself or the game too seriously—though he’s one of the most healthily competitive people on the softball diamond. He just plays with a quiet and steady passion. I’m biased, of course, because he is my older brother. But that doesn’t change the fact that he exhibits as well as anyone I know the true spirit of play that I’ve been arguing for in these columns.

We are wise, therefore, to give measured allegiance to professional sports. No question that it is a pleasure to watch the finest athletes in the world compete with one another. But there is so much that has gone wrong in professional sports. It is no wonder that so many of us watch professionals always with a twinge of sadness, as if we remember that once the game was noble and good.

In the meantime, through sciatica, breathlessness, sore arms, and bad knees, we manage to find something noble and good at the local golf course or softball diamond or bowling alley. And I do believe we know more moments of joy than professional athletes, who so often find themselves trapped in a world of principalities and powers, while we get a Sabbath foretaste of the freedom and joy that knows no end.

* * * *

A few weeks ago I announced that I would be offering a column every other week. However, my duties as managing editor at Christianity Today are shifting, and it’s going to be impossible for me to meet even that schedule. I still have a number of things I’d like to say about the underlying theological nature of modern sports, but I will have to continue doing so on an occasional basis. Nonetheless, I appreciate the many emails I’ve received about how this column has helped people think more deeply about sports.

Mark Galliis managing editor of Christianity Today.

Related Elsewhere:

Galli’s previous Play Ball columns include

The Lovely Paradox of NFL Draft Day | It’s an event of biblical proportions—and wisdom. (April 29, 2005)

Negotiating Sunday Sports | This culture war was lost long ago. Now what? (April 15, 2005)

The Prodigal Sports Fan | There is hope for the idolater. (April 08, 2005)

The Thirst of the 24/7 Fan | Understanding the idolatry in sports. (March 01, 2005)

March Madnesses | The layers of insanity know no end—thank God. (March. 18, 2005)

Spectating as a Spiritual Discipline | For those who have eyes to watch, let them watch something more than highlight films. (March 11, 2005)

The Grace of Sports | If Christ can’t be found in sports, he can’t be found the modern world. (March 4, 2005)

Baseball Isn’t Entertainment | The sooner we stop thinking sports are about the spectators, the more enjoyable the games will be. (Feb. 25, 2005)

Rooting for T.O. | Why Terrell Owens irritates most of us most of the time. (Feb. 11, 2005)

Freedom Between the Goal Posts | Sports is much more important than our culture lets on (Feb. 4, 2005)

Salt and Light in the Arena | It’s going to take more than a few good Christians to clean up sports. (Feb. 18, 2005)

Rooting for T.O. | Why Terrell Owens irritates most of us most of the time. (Feb.. 11, 2005)

Freedom Between the Goal Posts | Sports is much more important than our culture lets on (Feb. 4, 2005)

Play Ball: From 2005 to 2007, “Play Ball” examined the relationship of sports and faith: sports is important precisely because it is a form of play, that is, a manifestation of the Sabbath. Contributors included Mark Galli, Collin Hansen, Mark Moring, and others.

- More from Mark Galli

Theology

Deeper into Chastity

Lauren F. Winner

It was the failures of my sexual history that brought me to see it as sin.

My own history with chastity is nothing to be proud of. I first had sex when I was 15, with a guy I met at summer camp. We dated for three months and had sex, but gradually our relationship dissolved—he went away to college, we wrote letters occasionally, but things fizzled out. A year later, I started college myself. And even though I was part of an observant Jewish community, I kept having sex. My freshman year, I dated a stunning man (he looked like an Armani model), and we had sex a few times. Then I began dating the man I now think of as “my college boyfriend,” and we had sex too. None of this behavior was sanctioned by my Jewish community, so I kept it pretty quiet.

As I graduated from college and moved from New York to England for graduate school, I got pretty serious about Christianity. I was going to church regularly by then, praying to Jesus, thinking about him as I walked down the street, believing with a certainty that surprised me that he was who he said he was: God. I did some of the things you might expect from someone who believes that Jesus is God. I got baptized. I started spending inordinate numbers of hours hanging around with other Christians. I read the Gospels. I prayed the Psalms. I wore a small silver cross around my neck, proclaiming to passersby that I am part of this tribe whose allegiance is to Jesus.

But there were other things that you might expect a Christian to do, and I did not do them. I didn’t forswear sex. I didn’t tithe. I didn’t especially enjoy going to church on Sunday mornings; in general, I had to grit my teeth, silence my alarm clock, and drag myself there.

I knew, dimly, that Christianity doesn’t look kindly on premarital sex, but I couldn’t have told you much about where Christian teachings about sex came from. It would not have been too difficult, of course, to get more clarity on this sex issue. But I didn’t do that for one principal reason: I didn’t really want to get more clarity on Christian sexual ethics, because I wanted, should the opportunity arise, the option of having sex.

Instead, I settled for an easy conclusion: what God really cared about was that people not have sex that might be harmful in some way, sex that was clearly meaningless, loveless, casual. I more or less managed to abide by that. I didn’t have sex until that truly committed relationship came along, and then when it did—when I met a man I’ll call Q.—I did. Once, during the Q. months, I broke my own pledge, to God and to Q., having sex one night with an ex-boyfriend and then lying to Q. about it. I began to have some twinges of misgiving.

The twinges continued (even after the “committed relationship” with Q. ended and another “committed relationship” began). Eventually I went to a priest. I was there to confess a long litany of sins, not just sexual sin. When I came to the confession of sexual sin, my confessor said, gently but firmly, “Well, Lauren, that’s sin.”

And in that sacramental moment, kneeling with another Christian whose sole task was to convey Christ’s grace and absolution to me, something sunk in. I knew that this priest had just told me something true.

I wish I could say that at that moment I abandoned all that smacked of sexual sin and never looked back; but that’s not true. But I did begin what has been a sometimes-halting movement, deeper into chastity.

Related Elsewhere:

Sex in the Body of Christ | Chastity is a spiritual discipline for the whole church.

Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

Our sister publication, Books & Culture, reviewed Real Sex.

Another excerpt from Real Sex, along with an interview with Winner, is available from Beliefnet.com.

An article about Winner and her book appeared in The New York Times, and also ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Associated Press also ran a review.

More CT articles about Lauren F. Winner include:

The Dick Staub Interview: Lauren Winner’s Faith Still a Bit Jewish | The author of Girl Meets God discusses the Jewish habits that inform her Christianity (Jan. 20, 2004)

Christ via Judaism | Lauren Winner’s spiritual journey is an invaluable—and, to some, unsettling—reminder of where we came from. (July 07, 2003)

Christianity Today articles by Lauren F. Winner include:

meetingGod@beliefnet.com| I thought the high-powered, heady world of dot-coms—even dot-coms devoted to religion and spirituality—was far removed from my own walk with Christ. (Nov. 16, 2001)

Solitary Refinement | The church is doing better than ever at ministering to single people. But some evangelical assumptions still need rethinking. (June 4, 2001)

The New Ecumenists | At the Vine, emerging Christian leaders are reinterpreting the meaning of church unity. (Feb. 5, 2001)

Policy Wonks for Christ | At Civitas, grad students learn to think Christianly about public life. (Nov. 16, 2000)

The Man Behind the Megachurch | There would be no Willow Creek—no small groups, no women in leadership, no passion for service—without Gilbert Bilezikian. (Nov. 6, 2000)

Good News for Witches | Every Halloween, thousands of Wiccans descend on Salem, Massachusetts—and local churches reach out. (Oct. 27, 2000)

The Weigh & the Truth | Christian dieting programs—like Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down Diet—help believers pray off the pounds. But what deeper messages are they sending about faith and fitness? (August 25, 2000)

Something Old, Something True | With The Story of Us, released on video today, Hollywood offers a rationale for sticking with marriage. (Feb. 14, 2000)

T. D. Jakes Feels Your Pain | Though critics question his theology, this fiery preacher packs arenas with a message of emotional healing. (Feb. 7, 2000)

Eavesdropping: An Open-Door Policy | Is meeting alone with a member of the opposite sex dangerous? Is taking steps against it sexist? (Nov. 8, 1999)

Eternal Ink | A growing movement of Christian tattooists is leaving its mark on both body and soul. (Oct. 4, 1999)

Death, Inc. | What the funeral industry doesn’t want you to know. (April 26, 1999)

Whoa, Susannah! | It’s great music, but its portrayal of Christian hypocrisy will make you wince. (Oct. 4, 1997)

More Sexuality & Gender article are collected on our website.

- More from Lauren F. Winner

Cover Story

Sex in the Body of Christ

Lauren F. Winner

Chastity is a spiritual discipline for the whole church.

A word like chastity can set our teeth on edge. It is one of those unabashedly churchy words. It is a word the church uses to call Christians to do something hard, something unpopular.

Chastity is one of many Christian practices that are at odds with the dictates of our surrounding, secular culture. It challenges the movies we watch, the magazines we read, the songs we listen to. It runs counter to the way many of our unchristian friends organize their lives. It strikes most secular folk as curious (at best), strange, backwards, repressed.

Chastity is also something many of us Christians have to learn. I had to learn chastity because I became a Christian as an adult, after my sexual expectations and mores were already partly formed. But even many folks who grow up in good Christian homes, attending good Christian schools, and hanging out with good Christian friends—even these Christians-from-the-cradle often need to learn chastity, because unchaste assumptions govern so much of contemporary society.

I am not an expert on chastity. I am not a theologian or a member of the clergy. I’m just a fellow pilgrim. I offer only a flawed example, a few suggestions, and the reminder of why, as Christians, we should care about chastity in the first place.

Two-Thirds Unvirgin World

One reason we should care right now is because of the unchaste culture we find ourselves in. About 65 percent of America’s teens have sex by the time they finish high school, and teenage “dating” websites that boast millions of members encourage teenage patrons to select not prom dates but partners for casual sexual escapades. A 2002 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 41 percent of American women aged 15 to 44 have, at some point, cohabited with a man. According to the 2000 census, the number of unmarried couples living together has increased tenfold between 1960 and 2000, and 72 percent between 1990 and 2000. Fifty-two percent of American women have sex before turning 18, and 75 percent have sex before they get married. According to a 2002 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Seventeen magazine, more than a quarter of 15- to 17-year-old girls say that sexual intercourse is “almost always” or “most of the time” part of a “casual relationship.”

Christian communities aren’t immune to the sexual revolution. Three surveys of single Christians conducted in the 1990s turned up a lot of premarital sex: Approximately one-third of the respondents were virgins—that means, of course, that two-thirds were not.

True Love Waits, a popular Christian abstinence program with roots in the Southern Baptist Convention, was founded in 1993. The program asks teens to make the following pledge: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” In 2001, a study of 6,800 students showed that virgins who took the pledge were likely to abstain from sex for 18 months longer than those who did not take the pledge. Abstinence advocates touted this as good news, but actually it is troubling—it means simply that a lot of abstinence pledgers are having sex at 19 instead of 18. This is hardly a decisive victory for abstinence.

As one reporter summarized the findings, “The pledge was more effective among 16-year-olds than 18-year-olds; there was no entirely conclusive evidence about its effectiveness among 15-year-olds; and it was only effective among those surveyed so long as less than 30 percent of their classmates took it. It had to be popular, but not too popular. Pity the poor policymaker who’s supposed to act on these findings, navigating the incomprehensible logic of high-school cliques and identity politics.” The study, which was conducted by sociologists at Columbia and Yale, also showed that students who broke the pledge were less likely than their non-pledging peers to use birth control—presumably in part because the use of birth control implies that you thought about sex beforehand; you planned for it. The culture among Christian singles dictates that the sin is somehow less grave if you got swept up in the heat of the moment.

In 2003, researchers at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Of the remaining 39 percent who kept their pledges, 55 percent said they’d had oral sex, and did not consider oral sex to be sex. (Anecdotally, a roughly equivalent percentage of self-identified evangelical college students I recently spent the day with said they don’t consider anal intercourse to be sex.)

Luke Witte, an evangelical Presbyterian pastor at Forest Hill Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, says he asks engaged couples to cease having sex before their wedding. “I won’t marry a couple that is sexually active,” he insists. “There are biblical reasons. We’re asked not to fornicate.” But Witte, interviewed for a 2002 New York Times article, acknowledged that he has to have the chastity talk with most of the engaged couples that ask him to marry them. “More often than not,” he says, “there’s a sexual relationship” before the couple ties the knot.

In 1992, Christianity Today surveyed more than one thousand of its readers. Forty percent said they’d had premarital sex. Fourteen percent said they’d had an affair. Of those who had cheated on their spouses, 75 percent were Christians at the time of the affair.

I wanted to get a sense of how the struggles of single Christians to stay chaste were playing out in my neighborhood, so I spoke to Greg Thompson, a campus pastor with Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Virginia. Charlottesville is, in many ways, a pretty conservative place. I thought if any corner of the church would exemplify chastity, it might be here. It seems I was wrong. Greg said that with one exception, every dating couple he has counseled has “talked about sexual failure.” Most of these dating couples, he said, are “having serious problems understanding what to do and what not to do with their sexuality. … I consistently have conversations with Christian students who are either having sexual intercourse, or having oral sex, or taking their clothes off and masturbating each other. Every college pastor I’ve talked to about this says the same thing: Their students, even those in their leadership groups, people leading Bible studies and so forth, are sexually out of control.”

All this suggests to me that our usual strategies for helping people cope with sexuality are not working. Repeating biblical teachings about sex is simply not enough. Urging self-discipline isn’t enough. Reminding people of the psychological cost of premarital sex or infidelity is not enough. What we need is something larger and deeper: a clear vision of what chastity ultimately is and the most important context in which it is practiced.

Discipled Sex

What is chastity? One way of putting it is that chastity is doing sex in the body of Christ—doing sex in a way that befits the body of Christ, and that keeps you grounded, and bounded, in the community.

Sex is, in Paul’s image, a joining of your body to someone else’s. In baptism, you have become Christ’s body, and it is Christ’s body that must give you permission to join his body to another body. In the Christian grammar, we have no right to sex. The place where the church confers that privilege on you is the wedding; weddings grant us license to have sex with one person. Chastity, in other words, is a fact of gospel life. In the New Testament, sex beyond the boundaries of marriage—the boundaries of communally granted sanction of sex—is simply off limits. To have sex outside those bounds is to commit an offense against the body. Abstinence before marriage, and fidelity within marriage; any other kind of sex is embodied apostasy.

Chastity, then, is a basic rule of the community, but it is not a mere rule. It is also a discipline.

The language of spiritual discipline, an ancient idiom of the church, has come into vogue again. In the 1970s and ’80s, two books on spiritual disciplines, now rightly considered modern-day classics, were published: Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Foster and Willard called readers to deepen their Christian lives by incorporating ancient practices of the church. These books struck a tremendous chord, and Christians of all stripes began exploring habits and structures like liturgical prayer, fasting, solitude, simplicity, and tithing.

The spiritual disciplines are things we do; they are things we practice. They are ways we orient our whole selves—our bodies and minds and hearts, our communities and rhythms and ways of being in the world—toward God. Thinking of spirituality as something we practice or do strikes some people as odd. Isn’t the point of Christianity that Jesus saves you regardless of what you do? No, doing spiritual practices doesn’t get you into heaven. Rather, practicing spiritual disciplines helps align your feelings, your will, and your habits with God’s will.

Discipline is a modern term for what the old church would have called asceticism, which comes from the Latin word ascesis, meaning exercise. And, indeed, the spiritual disciplines are, in part, exercises that train us in the Christian life. Thinking about physical exercise, actually, can help us understand spiritual exercise. Serious runners run at least three or four times a week, rain or shine, whether or not they feel like it. Even on the days you don’t enjoy your jogs, you know you are maintaining your skills and strengths so you can go for that run on the beach when you want to. Spiritual practices form in us the habits, skills, and strengths of faithful followers of Christ. Committing myself to a discipline of daily prayer, for example, teaches me how to be a person of prayer. Committing myself to tithing, even when it pinches my budget, turns me into a person who understands that all is a gift, that all belongs to God. As Willard explains in The Spirit of the Disciplines, spiritual practices “mold and shape” us. They are activities “undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his kingdom. … To grow in grace is to grow in what is given to us of God and by God. The disciplines are then, in the clearest sense, a means to that grace and also to those gifts.”

Chastity, too, is a spiritual discipline. Chastity is something you do; it is something you practice. It is not only a state—the state of being chaste—but a disciplined, active undertaking that we do as part of the body. It is not the mere absence of sex but an active conforming of one’s body to the arc of the gospel.

The disciplines of Christian sexuality can be seen, too, when we look at sex between married people. Here the discipline of sex is twofold. Fidelity is a discipline: Just as most single people want to have sex, period, so married people (even really happily married people) find themselves wanting to have sex with someone other than their spouse. And restraining those impulses is itself a discipline. (Indeed, it is worth pointing out that practicing chastity before you are married trains you well for chastity after you are married; it stands to reason that those who are promiscuous before marriage may be more likely to cheat on their spouses once married.) But so too is having sex with your husband or wife a discipline. Sometimes we have sex with our spouse because we feel desire, because we want to express the intimacy we feel, because we feel turned on; but sometimes a husband and wife have sex precisely because they don’t feel desire or intimacy. We recognize that sex can do good work between a husband and wife, that it can do the work of rekindling that desire and intimacy, that bodies have something to teach us, and that sex is not about spirits communing, but about persons being bodies together.

The Web of Disciplines

Speaking of spiritual discipline seems to elevate chastity from gritting-my-teeth- and-stonily-avoiding-sex to something lofty, noble, and spiritual. But when I speak of chastity as a spiritual discipline, I also mean something eminently practical. Speaking of chastity as a spiritual discipline immediately connects it to the other disciplines. In the spiritual life, these disciplines cannot be severed from one another.

Prayer—fixing on one’s contact and communion with God—is the bedrock discipline. All the other spiritual disciplines, like fasting and chastity, depend upon prayer and are, in fact, forms of prayer. My pastor is always reminding me that prayer and Bible study must precede, accompany, and support any other spiritual exercises.

Prayer and Bible study are basic, but I think fasting can be a good companion to chastity as well. I say this as one who is not a big fan of fasting. In fact, I began fasting only fairly recently, and only because my pastor more or less insisted. So now, once a week, I give my day over to this discipline. I drink fruit juice, but I don’t eat. (“Isn’t chugging V-8 Splash sort of cheating?” I asked my pastor when he first suggested protein-enriched juice might be allowed. He chuckled. “Just try it. All the juice in the world won’t make you feel like you’ve bitten into a hamburger.”) I know in advance, now, that I won’t be as good a writer or teacher on the days that I fast. I know I might get headaches. I know that by late afternoon I might be short-tempered with anyone who crosses my path.

But I’m beginning to understand some of the benefits of fasting; I’m beginning to see that I recognize my dependence on God more clearly when I’m hungry; I’m beginning to chip away at some of the stupor that comes with always being sated. I’ve not achieved that highly advanced state where I look forward to it. I wish there were an easier, less annoying way to reap the fruits of fasting, but I don’t think there is. Fasting is slowly teaching me the simple lesson that I am not utterly subject to my bodily desires. I’ll admit here that cheese is my favorite food. I especially like sharp white cheddar cheese. I would eat it at every meal if I could. One day I realized I’d done just that; I had eaten cheese at the last six meals. So I decided I’d take just three days off, eat no cheese until Thursday (when I had plans to meet a friend at the pizza parlor). This seemingly small gustatory sacrifice was a mini-revelation. On Tuesday, for example, I found myself at a cafeteria for lunch, and there was yummy-looking mac and cheese. The world would not have ended if I’d eaten some. I don’t think God was sitting in heaven jotting notes to himself about my cheese intake. But in passing up the cheese, I got the inkling of a lesson. I am not captive to this desire. I can pass up the mac and cheese. I can say, Nope, today I’m fasting from cheese.

Francis of Assisi famously called his body “Brother Ass.” It is fasting, I think, that helps us say to our body, You are Brother (or Sister), but you are also Ass. Fasting, in other words, is the practice that most obviously helps us learn to discipline our physical selves. A woman of the early church known as holy Syncletia taught that “bodily poison is cured by still stronger antidotes; so fasting and prayer drive sordid temptations from us.” I have a happily married friend who puts that in a modern idiom. He says that when he wants to have sex with someone other than his wife, he fasts. In remembering that he can discipline his desire for food, my friend reminds himself that he can discipline his desire for sex, too.

Of course, premarital abstinence is different from fasting, because when you fast you know you will eat again. Premarital abstinence is different from keeping vigil, because during your vigil you can be confident that you will sleep again. Unmarried Christians have no guarantee that they will ever get married. They have no guarantee of licit sex. Thus to practice premarital chastity is at times to feel as if you are being forever forbidden the satisfaction of a normal appetite.

Understanding chastity as a discipline helps us quiet that nagging voice in our heads that says, “I’m being made to give up something that is totally normal and natural!” Of course, the desire for sex is normal and natural, but many spiritual disciplines—the so-called disciplines of abstinence—center on refraining from something normal. One who keeps vigil is abstaining from sleep in order to abide with God; one who fasts is abstaining from food in order to see that one is truly hungry for God; one who spends time alone forgoes the company of others in order to deepen a conversation with God; one who practices simplicity avoids luxury in order to attend more clearly to God. And the unmarried Christian who practices chastity refrains from sex in order to remember that God desires your person, your body, more than any man or woman ever will.

With all aspects of ascetic living, one does not avoid or refrain from something for the sake of rejecting it, but for the sake of something else. In this case, one refrains from sex with someone other than one’s spouse for the sake of union with Christ’s body. That union is the fruit of chastity.

Lauren F. Winner is author of Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity (Brazos, 2005), from which this article was excerpted. She is a CT contributing editor.

Related Elsewhere:

Deeper into Chastity | It was the failures of my sexual history that brought me to see it as sin.

Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

Our sister publication, Books & Culture, reviewed Real Sex.

Another excerpt from Real Sex, along with an interview with Winner, is available from Beliefnet.com.

An article about Winner and her book appeared in The New York Times, and also ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Associated Press also ran a review.

More CT articles about Lauren F. Winner include:

The Dick Staub Interview: Lauren Winner’s Faith Still a Bit Jewish | The author of Girl Meets God discusses the Jewish habits that inform her Christianity (Jan. 20, 2004)

Christ via Judaism | Lauren Winner’s spiritual journey is an invaluable—and, to some, unsettling—reminder of where we came from. (July 07, 2003)

Christianity Today articles by Lauren F. Winner include:

meetingGod@beliefnet.com| I thought the high-powered, heady world of dot-coms—even dot-coms devoted to religion and spirituality—was far removed from my own walk with Christ. (Nov. 16, 2001)

Solitary Refinement | The church is doing better than ever at ministering to single people. But some evangelical assumptions still need rethinking. (June 4, 2001)

The New Ecumenists | At the Vine, emerging Christian leaders are reinterpreting the meaning of church unity. (Feb. 5, 2001)

Policy Wonks for Christ | At Civitas, grad students learn to think Christianly about public life. (Nov. 16, 2000)

The Man Behind the Megachurch | There would be no Willow Creek—no small groups, no women in leadership, no passion for service—without Gilbert Bilezikian. (Nov. 6, 2000)

Good News for Witches | Every Halloween, thousands of Wiccans descend on Salem, Massachusetts—and local churches reach out. (Oct. 27, 2000)

The Weigh & the Truth | Christian dieting programs—like Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down Diet—help believers pray off the pounds. But what deeper messages are they sending about faith and fitness? (August 25, 2000)

Something Old, Something True | With The Story of Us, released on video today, Hollywood offers a rationale for sticking with marriage. (Feb. 14, 2000)

T. D. Jakes Feels Your Pain | Though critics question his theology, this fiery preacher packs arenas with a message of emotional healing. (Feb. 7, 2000)

Eavesdropping: An Open-Door Policy | Is meeting alone with a member of the opposite sex dangerous? Is taking steps against it sexist? (Nov. 8, 1999)

Eternal Ink | A growing movement of Christian tattooists is leaving its mark on both body and soul. (Oct. 4, 1999)

Death, Inc. | What the funeral industry doesn’t want you to know. (April 26, 1999)

Whoa, Susannah! | It’s great music, but its portrayal of Christian hypocrisy will make you wince. (Oct. 4, 1997)

More Sexuality & Gender article are collected on our website.

- More from Lauren F. Winner

Kansas Voters Reject Gay Rites

Mark Stricherz

But federal courts are expected to strike down state bans.

Continuing a national trend, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly approved amending the state constitution in order to ban homosexual marriage.

The April 5 measure passed 70 percent to 29 percent. While the margin of victory was similar to those in Hawaii, Nevada, and Missouri, the Kansas amendment goes further than those efforts. It prevents Kansas from acknowledging Vermont-style civil unions for gay couples.

Terry Fox, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, helped lead the drive. Fox said Christians throughout the state united to support the amendment. “I think one of the keys to our success was the coming together of [evangelicals],” Fox said. “Then we got the support of the Catholic Church, and overall we had 1,200 churches behind this.”

Fox had lobbied the Kansas legislature last spring to put the amendment on the November ballot. In May it fell five votes short in the House.

In approving the measure, Kansas becomes the 18th state since 1998 to define marriage as solely between one man and one woman. At least five other states—Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee, South Dakota, and Wisconsin—are scheduled or likely to put similar measures on the ballot in 2006. In April, Oregon’s high court invalidated 3,000 marriage licenses issued to homosexual couples.

Despite Kansas’s lopsided vote to ban gay marriage, the leaders of two national organizations said federal courts will check such measures.

Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage, which opposes homosexual marriage, said, “I absolutely guarantee you that the federal courts and the Supreme Court will strike down marriage laws.” Daniels said that federal judges and supporters of same-sex marriage are trying “to subvert popular opinion through the courts.”

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, agreed. Foreman predicted that the courts would strike down bans against gay marriage as they did bans of interracial marriage and divorce. “There’s a context in which all these decisions are happening: It’s the equal protection clause of the Constitution. … A majority should not decide human rights for a minority.”

Conceding his cause lost seven votes in last November’s election, Foreman said gay-marriage opponents are still 12 Senate votes short of the number needed to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, which requires two-thirds support. Daniels, however, characterized opposition to the amendment in the upper chamber as “softening.”

Related Elsewhere:

Our full coverage of the same-sex marriage debate is available online.

More CT articles on homosexuality include:

Cheated by the Affirming Church | Contrary to what some churches teach, it is homosexuality—and not its suppression—that enslaves people like me. (Feb. 17, 2005)

My Path to Lesbianism | It was hatred of women that drove me there, and Christ in community that led me out. (Feb. 17, 2005)

Thirteen Bad Arguments for Same-Sex Marriage | Why the rhetoric doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. (Aug. 26, 2004)

Why Gay Marriage Would Be Harmful | Institutionalizing homosexual marriage would be bad for marriage, bad for children, and bad for society. (Feb. 19, 2004)

‘Get Mine, Get Yours’ | Sexual swagger and slang do not mask a generation’s loneliness. (May 07, 2003)

Stretch Pants, Beer, and Other Controversies | A New Testament professor discerns the relative from the timeless in biblical texts on slaves, women, and homosexuals. (July 08, 2002)

No Easy Victory | A plea from a Christian husband and father who, day by day, resists his homosexual desires. (March 08, 2002)

Ex-Gay Sheds the Mocking Quote Marks | The retiring head of Exodus says gay transformation ministries are more respected and effective than ever. (January 7, 2002)

Walking in the Truth | Winning arguments at church conventions is not enough without compassion for homosexuals. (Sept. 4, 2000)

Building a Bridge | A gay journalist and evangelical pastor correct their mutual misperceptions. (July 13, 2000)

The Jerry We Never Knew | He hangs out with liberal pundits and gay activists. Is this the same Jerry Falwell who founded the Moral Majority? (May 2, 2000)

Sex and Saints | A new vocabulary for an oversexualized culture. (Apr. 3, 2000)

Building outreach and friendship with the homosexual community | What Jerry Falwell really said at the Anti-Violence Forum. (Nov. 5, 1999)

Just Saying ‘No’ Is Not Enough | How should Christians address homosexuality? (Oct. 4, 1999)

- More from Mark Stricherz

U.S. and Vietnam Reach Agreement on Religious Freedom

Compass Direct

Hanoi promises privately to lift restrictions on Christians.

On May 5, John Hanford, U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom, announced an agreement with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam regarding issues of religious liberty. The details of the agreement, outlined privately in an exchange of letters, have not yet been made public.

Hanford initiated negotiations with Vietnamese officials in early February during a lengthy visit to the communist country. On March 8, the Cong An newspaper quoted Deputy Minister of Public Security General Nguyen Van Huong giving the ambassador the standard government line that Vietnam holds no religious prisoners and no prisoner in Vietnam has ever been mistreated.

But negotiations in the following weeks produced some changes, as Hanford announced during a May 5 news conference that 12 religious prisoners were released as part of a special amnesty.

Compass has learned that six Hmong Christians were among those prisoners freed in connection with the April 30 amnesty. Mua A Chau had been sentenced to three years for “resisting an officer doing his duty.” Ly Chin Seng, Ly Xin Quang, Vang Chin Sang and Vang My Ly, four men of the Hoang Su Phu District in Ha Giang province, were serving sentences from 26 to 36 months for “disturbing public order” by holding worship services in their homes.

The other Hmong Christian, Sung Seo Pao, regained his freedom just 17 days before completing an 11-year sentence on similar charges.

In September 2004, the U.S. named Vietnam a “country of particular concern” (CPC) because of its record of religious liberty offenses. The 1998 Law on International Religious Freedom allows for sanctions to be imposed on a CPC that does not improve its religious rights record.

Alternatively, a CPC may negotiate an agreement with the U.S. to avoid sanctions. The new agreement with Vietnam marks the first time the U.S. has achieved this type of accord. If Vietnam takes corrective actions and satisfies U.S. concerns for religious freedom, it could be removed from the CPC list later this year.

In announcing the agreement, Hanford stated that Vietnam has shown progress on the legislative front by promulgating the Ordinance on Religion in November 2004. (Implementation guidelines were not published, however, until March 2005.) In conjunction with Hanford’s Vietnam visit last February, Prime Minster Phan Van Khai issued unprecedented “special instructions” for Protestant Christians.

The instructions explicitly prohibit the forced renunciation of Christian faith, a common government practice used against ethnic minority Christians. Despite the decree, however, Human Rights Watch reports that forced renunciations are still taking place.

The instructions also make provision for Christian congregations to obtain official permission from local authorities to carry on religious activities, even though the larger church organization to which they belong has not yet acquired legal recognition from the central government.

If this provision were implemented, it would mark a sea of change in the way Vietnam has treated Christian groups. Nevertheless, Compass sources are not aware of any congregation that has received official permission to operate in the two months since the prime minister’s instructions were issued.

According to Hanford, another evidence of progress is the government’s promise to reopen churches that have been forcibly closed. Many hundreds of Montagnard congregations affiliated with the Evangelical Church of Vietnam-South were disbanded by government officials, mostly in 2002 and 2003. So far, the government has granted legal recognition to fewer than 40 of these churches, though it published a promise in December 2003 to expedite registration.

“What is worrying is that no one knows if Vietnam’s general ‘promises’ will translate into concrete commitments and action,” one source told Compass. “With only about three months remaining before the U.S. must evaluate whether Vietnam has met expectations and decide the CPC issue for 2005, Vietnam should be required to make dramatic progress in terms of actual numbers of churches registered and denominations given legal status.”

Some observers suspect Vietnam officials of making promises merely as a tactic to achieve objectives such as more trade with the U.S. and membership in the World Trade Organization.

The United States Commission for International Religious Freedom, which monitors the State Department’s compliance with religious liberty legislation, also called for substance to replace promises in a May 9 news release.

A clear-cut test case of Vietnam’s inclination to comply with the promises it made to the U.S. involves the Vietnam Mennonite Church. The wife of Nguyen Hong Quang, the denomination’s imprisoned general secretary, wrote to the prime minister on her husband’s behalf to ask if his “Instructions Concerning the Protestant Religion” would allow the Mennonites to complete official registration with the government.

On May 1, Ho Chi Minh City officials responded to Mrs. Quang’s inquiry by conducting yet another police raid on the Quang family home, asserting that the Mennonites conduct illegal religious meetings there.

Among those detained at police headquarters for questioning in that raid was Mennonite prisoner-of-conscience Le Thi Hong Lien. The young woman, one of the 12 religious prisoners included in the special amnesty, had been released from prison just three days earlier. According to witnesses, the experience left Lien “exhausted and terrified.”

According to one source in Vietnam, the government may have a harder time convincing its own local officials to make changes in religious policy than it has convincing American diplomats of its good intentions. To address the problem, Vietnam has apparently promised to educate public officials—from the highest to lowest echelons of government—about the proposed changes.

“This will not be an easy task, because for many years the official dogma—believed and taught from the top—is that Protestantism is an American religion bent on overthrowing the communist revolution,” the source told Compass. “As such, it was commendable policy to discriminate against, harass and persecute Christians.”

Related Elsewhere:

Compass Direct earlier Vietnam coverage includes more articles about arrests of Christians in Vietnam:

Officials Break Up Mennonite Meeting, Arrest Christians | After just two days of freedom, Vietnamese prisoner-of-conscience Ms. Le Thi Hong Lien was arrested for attending a Bible study with other Christian believers on May 1 at the home of imprisoned pastor Nguyen Hong Quang. (May 3, 2005)

Le Thi Hong Lien Released | Unexpected freedom comes two days before special amnesty. (April 29, 2005)

Court Denies Mennonite Pastors’ Appeal | Christians hold silent prayer vigil outside the courthouse. (April 13, 2005)

Reports on Vietnam from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom are available from their website.

CT’s full coverage of Vietnam includes:

Distress, Harassment Continue for Vietnam’s Montagnards | U.N. relief workers airlift 198 refugees to Cambodian capital. (Aug. 18, 2004)

Lip Service | Vietnam’s guarantees of religious freedom are not fooling anybody. (April 06, 2004)

Christmas in Vietnam | A missionary writes about this year’s bleak holiday in the Dak Lak Province (Dec. 26, 2002)

Vietnam’s Hidden Tragedy | American church leaders manipulated as communists cover up abuse of tribal Christians. (Sept. 20, 2002)

Proposed Repatriation of Vietnamese Tribal Christians May Be Flawed | The government continues to persecute believers while giving a guarantee for the safety of returning refugees. (Jan. 29, 2002)

Empty Legal Rights | What you can do to help persecuted Christians in Vietnam. (Jan. 15, 2002)

Activist Christian Pastor Arrested In Vietnam | Public Security Police have busted up Mennonite services four times this year. (August 24, 2001)

Christians Targeted in Vietnam’s Highlands | Crackdown follows massive anti-government protests. (June 26, 2001)

Viet Nam Protestants Call Conference ‘Miraculous’ | But tribal minority Christians fear future persecution. (Feb. 14, 2001)

Vietnam Protestants Call Conference ‘Miraculous’ | But tribal minority Christians fear future persecution. (Feb. 14, 2001)

‘We Are Always In Persecution’ | Vietnam’s Christians are arrested, tortured, and fined, even though the government claims to promote religious freedom. (Jan. 10, 2001)

Vietnam Jams Hmong Christian Radio Broadcasts | Government tries to curb spread of Protestant Christianity along Chinese border. (Sept. 1, 2000)

Authorities Destroy ‘Church’ in Vietnam | Crude structure in Ho Chi Minh City slum had been erected only hours earlier. (July 27, 2000)

- More from Compass Direct

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Two-Thirds Unvirgin World

Discipled Sex

The Web of Disciplines

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