Educational Media Reviews Online

Beginning with an evocative passage from Ezekiel (“Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD,” Ez. 37.4), this series intends to explore the cultural and psychological influence of Christianity in Western culture and its potential for the future. In addition, it opines that individual sacrality is something to be encouraged and explored if Christianity is to flourish.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Part 1) discusses evil as symbolized by the role of the devil, offering personal reflections from psychologists, musicians, clergy and scholars as they consider how “the dark night of the soul” brought them to a more personal renewal and awakening of spirituality in their lives. Using Jungian categories like “the shadow,” interviewees talk candidly about how the church failed them in facing down the darkness within and how the journey of renewal is a journey of self, apart and away from denominational oversight. We are, says one young man, out of touch with our values and therefore, ourselves and it is up to us as individuals to overcome the moral despair of the shadow.

Christ’s return (part 2) encourages a dialogue regarding finding Christ’s love within ourselves. Again, utilizing Jungian categories to analyze personal reflections, this portion contemplates the crisis of identity current within Christian communities. The call is to fuse with the revolutionary Christ, the one that connects to people in times of crisis in order to transform and regenerate us anew. As one individual notes, to find the revolutionary Christ, people must move to the periphery in order to encounter Him.

Though the intentions are good, the results are chaotic. Psychobabble permeates the dialogue here. The narrator suggests at one point that “the revolutionary Christ comes to us through the welling up of non-meaning in our lives,” that “our difficult task is to find Christ’s regenerative issues in our lives.” Further, it is unclear who the intended audience is for this mish-mash of talking heads with museum masterpieces shown for transition and sacred choruses underpinning the commentary. Unless one is comfortable dealing with personal spirituality apart and away from Christian categories, church-going viewers might find the lack of Christian grounding disquieting here.

Most troubling is the lack of strategy. Although Anglican clergy from the Diocese of Toronto figure prominently in this piece (it is partially produced by the Anglican Centre for Theology in Canada), certainly no portion of these videos discusses the ways in which individual journeys of spiritual discovery can be fostered by the Church, encouraged by clergy or incorporated into a fuller expression of Christian belief and witness. Especially in an era troubled by global terrorism and unrest, the need to reincorporate a grander, richer spirituality into Christian belief and practice is called for. However, this work offers only criticism and nebulous ideas of how others have done it. In the end, it fails to fully explore what, if any, role the Church can play in this.

While the piece starts with a clarion call from Ezekiel and posits a Christianity in transition, its objective seems far less prophetic: rather, it seems to clamor for all folks to develop a personal spirituality which ultimately may have little if anything to do with Christianity at all. Recommendeded only for the most general spirituality audiences, with all the reservations above.