FW: ARTICLE

[Andrew Koppelman]

Rick Garnett is a smart guy, but this piece is typical campaign
puffery.  It comes close to saying that Lieberman believes in God, but
since God is on Bush's side, he ought to support Bush.  But one comment in
it approaches our list's topic.

Garnett casually assumes that contemporary Hollywood is guilty of contempt
for religion (and therefore that Lieberman ought not to accept campaign
contributions from "Hollywood moguls").  It appears to me that there is far
more genuinely religious filmmaking, containing serious Christian themes,
today than there has been at any time that I can remember.  "In the Company
of Men" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" both argue for damnation as a moral
reality, and show how it happens.  Last night I saw "American Beauty,"
which, if it is about anything at all, is about the importance of dying in
a state of grace.  These are all terrific films, starkly contrasting with
the cynicism about religion manifest in, say, DeMille's The Ten
Commandments, which treats God and Moses as cardboard melodrama figures and
the audience as a bunch of gullible circus rubes.  Another recent example
that comes to mind is Dogma, although it is a less successful film, marred
as it is by the author/director's painfully sincere religiosity, which
induces him to preach when he should simply demonstrate.  I'm not a
Christian, but it seems to me that the case for Christianity is made more
powerfully by the first three films I discussed than it is by the
sentimental pap that critics of "the coarsening of our culture" are so
nostalgic for.

As I said, this comment is skirting the edges of our discussion topic, or
rather has probably just fallen off.  Responses should probably be offlist.


At 03:00 PM 11/2/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Our friend Rick Garnett, who teaches at Notre Dame, has
>written a terrific piece
>on Lieberman's views on religion and public life.  You can
>read it by clicking
>below.  As usual, he's right on the mark.
>
>
>http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment102600a.shtml
>
>Carl H. Esbeck


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Andrew Koppelman
Associate Professor of Law and Political Science
Northwestern University School of Law
357 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL  60611-3069
(312) 503-8431
mailto:akoppelman at northwestern.edu
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