Ungrounded faith

The Birth of a Nation tells the story of Nat Turner and the slave rebellion he led in 1831, and it has much worth honoring.

Despite an R rating for extreme historical violence and several brief shots of nudity, Birth insightfully illustrates some of the most difficult elements of Christian theology. Even movies specifically marketed as Christian rarely treat the Bible so earnestly. Taught to read, Nat becomes a preacher to his fellow slaves and takes his role as shepherd seriously. When every established church shuns a broken, repentant white man for the sin of child molestation, Turner, knowing the wrath it could bring down on his head, agrees to baptize him.

In this and other ways the story forces believers to look at how cultures then and now twist isolated verses to rationalize what is biblically indefensible. But this makes it all the more disturbing when the story, like the slaveholders it indicts, seems to bend Scripture to its aims.

Writer/director Nate Parker seems to argue that the abuse Turner and his fellow slaves suffer entitles them to engage in murder. It is clear from the facts of history (though slightly less clear from the movie) that Turner’s motive was wholesale slaughter. His revolt spared no one with white skin, whether man, woman, or child. The movie reduces the butchering to a single woman, but still, the sense of vengeance rather than self-protection is palpable.

From the first, Christ’s followers have endured violence and abuse of the most degrading sort, as our Savior did. Yet Jesus and the church fathers instead commanded us to love our enemies. While recognizing certain conditions exist for just wars, how can we reconcile Jesus’ teaching with the film’s image of a slaveholder’s hacked-off head held up to a crowd in triumph?

Birth is a powerful, thought-provoking film, and Christian filmmakers would do well to study its treatment of spiritual questions. One hopes, however, that when they hold up a historical figure as a hero of the faith, that faith is grounded in the gospel.