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Pelosi movie and Evangelical culture

Any of you planning to watch the Alexandra Pelosi movie about Evangelicals tonight on HBO? Me no got HBO, so me no watch. But I'm real curious to hear what you think. Here's the review from today's NYTimes. Excerpt:

“You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group,” Mr. Haggard waggishly told a documentary filmmaker a few months before his secret came out. On “Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi,” which will be shown tonight on HBO, Mr. Haggard coaxes a member of his congregation to say how often he has sex with his wife (“Every day. Twice a day.”) and how often she climaxes (“Every time”).


Let me stop right there and say that if my pastor asked me in front of a TV camera, or at all, that question, I'd punch his lights out. Back to the review:

Ms. Pelosi stays off camera and out of the way in “Friends of God,” and we only occasionally hear her voice. “So explain to me the concept of this Biblical mini golf,” the filmmaker says to a man who putts on a paper-and-glue parted Red Sea. (The ninth hole is a papier-mâché miniature of the Holy Sepulchre.)

Mostly, Ms. Pelosi lets pastors, creationism teachers, Christian stand-up comics and rockers and the founder of the Christian Wrestling Federation speak for themselves.


I've read interviews with Pelosi in which she's expressed a genuine affection for her subjects. I believe her. You don't win friends in Alexandra Pelosi's social and professional circles by saying this to the New York Times:

''I believe in the culture war,'' she said. ''And you know what? If I have to take a side in the culture war I'll take their side,'' meaning the Christian conservatives. ''Because if you give me the choice of Paris Hilton or Jesus, I'll take Jesus.''


The thing is, I really don't understand much about Evangelical popular culture. I know cultural stuff that's totally normal to Catholics (as I was until recently) totally mystifies Evangelicals, for innocent and understandable reasons. I get that, and I never was defensive about it as a Catholic, or at least tried not to be, when Evangelicals would express genuine puzzlement at this or that aspect of Catholic culture. What I'm trying to get at is that not understanding a certain culture does not necessarily imply hostility to it. All of which is to say I think what I don't get about Evangelical culture (as distinct from Evangelical faith and theology, which I'm a lot more comfortable with) can be summed up in one word:

TestaMints.

 
 
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

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