Presenting the First Ever Golden Steeple Awards

Movie Churches Award Night 2017

Award shows make you wait until the end of the night to find out the winner of the Big Awards, but we don’t do that here at Movie Churches. We’re going to tell you in the second paragraph the winner of The Golden Steeple of 2016 for the Best Depiction of Churches/Clergy/Faith in a Nominee for the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. This is the first year of the award, which honors the most attractive depiction of a Movie Church.

And the winner is… Hacksaw Ridge!

Now that you know who won, perhaps you’d like to hear about all the nominees (which just so happen to be the same films nominated this year for the Best Picture Oscar).

Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector during World War II who fought to go into battle as a medic. His church, Seventh Day Adventist, is seen only briefly. We see him doing chores at the church as the choir practices, but throughout the film Doss’ choices are made on the basis of his faith. And they are often difficult choices with hard consequences. Doss questions God and His Word, but continues to be faithful, resulting in a truly amazing work of grace. (It should be noted though, that the film gets one church detail very wrong. There’s no way a good Seventh Day Adventist of his time would go on a first date to the movies. That’s like a Southern Baptist of the time taking his sweetheart to a bar. Wouldn’t happen.)

Hidden Figures would probably be first runner up for the Golden Steeple. It’s another historical story; in this case, it’s about the African American women who played a crucial but previously unheralded role in the space race of the early 1960s. There are a couple of scenes in what seems to be a Methodist church which the women mathematicians attend. The pastor of the church is quite supportive of the civil rights movements from the pulpit, lauding the accomplishments of his congregants. Big bonus: the church is depicted as a great matchmaking location.

No mention of the Golden Steeple nomination?

Fences, based on the classic August Wilson play about troubled domestic life, also has a strong church presence. Hollywood is much more comfortable with churches in historical dramas. Churches are also much more likely to be shown in a positive light when the film deals with African American characters. Rose (Viola Davis), the wife and mother in the film, finds strength and comfort in her local church. Her husband, Troy (Denzel Washington), speaks reverently of Scripture but implies that pastors are money grubbing. The film also has a pious, almost saccharin, religious ending.

Moonlight also has an African American character that speaks well of the church and Scripture. Unfortunately that character, Juan (portrayed by Mahershala Ali), is also a drug dealer. In this coming of age story about Chiron, a bullied boy growing up gay, his friendship with Juan and Juan’s girlfriend provide him with rare glimpses of kindness and compassion.

No, Bridges does not play God

Hell and High Water, a story of brothers who rob banks to pay the mortgage, doesn’t have any scenes in churches, but we see the exteriors of churches often in the small towns where the story takes place. The two Texas Rangers pursuing the brothers discuss their faith, and the Native American Ranger surprises the Ranger played by Jeff Bridges with his orthodox Christian faith.

Lion is the true story of a Indian boy (not Native American), Saroo, who is separated from his family and then adopted by an Australian couple. As an adult, he searches for the family he lost as a child. We don’t see any Christian churches in the film, but as starving child, Saroo, finds nourishment from the food offered to Hindu idols. (I don’t think the Apostle Paul would have any problem with that.)

Arrival, the story of the reaction of nations to alien visitors from space, has a single reference to a church. The scientists attempting to communicate with the aliens hear a news story about the demise of hundreds in a “church” that is actually a suicidal cult.

Again, the Golden Steeples are snubbed

Manchester by the Sea has an interesting and mixed take on churches. Lee (Casey Affleck), the emotionally tortured protagonist in the film, explains to his nephew Patrick that as Catholics, they’re Christians just as much as Patrick’s newly “born again” mother. The Catholic Church is where ceremonies take place -- weddings and funerals. However, the Church seems to provide no spiritual comfort for Lee. And -- as often happens in current films -- it goes without saying that the Born Again Evangelical Christians (Matthew Broderick and Gretchen Mol) are judgmental jerks. Though Matt’s home is decorated with Christian bookstore knickknacks, he has no problem with “living in sin” with Gretchen.

And finally, La La Land, the probable winner of the Oscar for Best Picture, has no Movie Churches at all. The story of an actress and a jazz musician seeking stardom doesn’t seem to have any interest in spiritual things. As some have commented, the movie does seem to capture contemporary Hollywood’s values of placing personal fulfillment and fame over even romantic love (let alone God’s love).

So even if Mel Gibson, Andrew Garfield, and the rest of the cast and crew of Hacksaw Ridge are overlooked on Oscar night, they can take comfort in being the winners of the first ever Golden Steeple. (And whenever they want to come to Fresno to collect their award, I’ll construct one and roll out the red carpet.)

Viewed on the Small Screen in Montana

Little Big Man, (1970)

Let’s get this out of the way. The make-up for Dustin Hoffman as a 120 year old man in 1970’s Little Big Man is pretty awful. But they don’t have to make up the location setting of the Custer’s Last Stand Battlefield, because the filmmakers used the actual setting in Montana.

The film is based on the novel by Thomas Berger, a fanciful retelling of history through the perspective of a man who lived both as an Indian and a white man in the Old West. A boy, Jack Crabb, is rescued from a Pawnee massacre by the Cheyenne, who raise him as their own and rename him Little Big Man. Crabb rejoins white culture and lives as a medicine salesman, a gunfighter, an army follower, and a drunk. But most important for this blog, he lived for a time with a minister and his wife.

Jack is “rescued” from the Indians by the army and given to the Reverend Silas Pendrake and his wife, Louise. The Reverend tells Jack that since he’s lived with heathen that know nothing of God or moral right, he is going to have to beat morals and Christian love into him. Mrs. Pendrake has another approach to training Jack, giving the teenaged boy a bath, personably scrubbing him while singing  “Bringing in the Sheaves” and “Shall We Gather at River.”  

Mrs. Pendrake tries to teach Jack the Gospel, saying, “Jesus is your Savior, you do realize that Jack?” When Jack protests he knows the importance of Jesus and Moses, she explains, “Moses was a Hebrew but Jesus was a Gentile like you and me.” She also tries instruct him on the importance of good morals, “You are good looking, Jack. All the more reason for you to receive complete religious instruction. We all must resist temptation. Purity is its own reward.”  

Jack says, “I didn’t know anything about a thing called sin,” but he learns. He eventually gives in to temptation of young women in town, and when the Reverend catches Jack rolling with a young woman in the hay, the Reverend beats him.

We see the Reverend’s congregation momentarily, singing “Amazing Grace.” Jack is forcefully baptized in the river; along with the traditional “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” Pendrake says the baptism makes Jack “white again.”

But Jack’s “religious period” ends when he goes to town with Mrs. Pendrake and catches her making love with the man who runs the dry good store. (Years later, Jack comes across Mrs. Pendrake using a different name in a whore house.) Toward the end of his life, Jack tells the interviewer that he hasn’t sung a hymn in 104 years.

And may I repeat that Little Big Man was not only set in Montana, but was filmed there (and in California and Canada).

There have been other Westerns set in Montana (such Open Range, perhaps the best Western of the 21st century), but most weren’t actually filmed in Montana. But 1954’s Cattle Queen of Montana did film in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a woman with the awesome name of Sierra Nevada Jones (but none of the film was shot in Nevada). As great a star as Stanwyck was, she is not the biggest name in the film. The film also stars a future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

A cattle rustling film set in modern times was 1975’s Rancho Deluxe, starring Jeff Bridges in his twenties. Much of the film was shot in another National Park located partly in Montana, Yellowstone. The rest of the film was shot in the small town of Livingston, Montana, where we stayed a night. Another contemporary Western/heist film was 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Michael Cimino, which was also filmed totally in Montana (Lewis and Clark National Park, Great Falls, Choteau, Augusta, Fort Benson, and Hobson).

Robert Redford directed and starred in a modern Oater, The Horse Whisperer, about a man with a special affinity with horses. It was filmed in Livingston and other Montana locations, as well as New York and California.

I love most of the films of Steven Spielberg, but there is one film I’ve tried to watch a couple of times and quit both times part way through because of boredom, 1989’s Always. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws) plays a daredevil pilot who takes one risk too many and must spend much of the film dead. As most of the film is dead. But it did film in Bull Lake and Libby, Montana (and also in Utah and Idaho).

One of my favorite books, one I’ve used quite often as a sermon illustration, is Young Men and Fire, written by Norman Maclean. It is the true story of fire jumpers in Montana. Maclean also wrote a novella, A River Runs Through It, to great acclaim. Robert Redford directed the adaptation of that novel in 1992. The film was one of Brad Pitt’s first starring roles as the rebellious son of a stern minister (Tom Skerritt). I should write up the movie church in that film more fully sometime, but this is enough for today.