An Evangelical case against alcohol

Magazines like to publish articles that present something in a different light. So when Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical periodical, published its June issue with these words on the cover: “The Case for an Alcohol-Free Life,” the underlying assumption was that most evangelicals use alcohol. Or at least a significant enough number of them do to make being alcohol-free new and different. Times have changed.

The writer of the article, called “Why I Gave Up Alcohol,” is D.L. Mayfield, a 30-year-old Evangelical woman who with her family serves with InnerCHANGE, a Christian order among the poor.

She grew up in a pastor’s home where alcohol was a nonissue. As a young adult, she became “an occasional drinker, a social imbiber, free to live my life in a way that glorifies God.”

Then she and her husband joined a Christian order among the poor. “Our first shock when we moved into our low-income apartment in a Midwestern inner city,” she writes, “was the amount of substance abuse that surrounded us.” She describes the abuse in detail.

Spiritual discipline: After a year of living there, she writes, “I gradually just … stopped. I dreaded going to the liquor store, imagining the faces I would see there.” Eventually she realized she could abstain from alcohol entirely, and this became a spiritual discipline for her.

Mayfield goes on to reflect on Christians of previous centuries who stood against alcohol’s effects. “Temperance movements,” she writes, “often founded and organized by women, were a direct reaction to the perceived social evils of alcohol in the 1800s and 1900s.”

In the 19th century, alcohol was tied to spouse and child abuse, and women had little to no rights in regard to property and possession. Thus women, especially Christian women, writes Mayfield, “started to organize and lobby against alcohol, starting from within their homes and gradually moving into the political sphere.” The temperance movement, while focusing on alcohol, became associated with women’s rights, including suffrage.

Mayfield sees that movement as a model for us today. She writes: “Just as we currently have no problem denouncing slavery, prostitution and, to a lesser extent, gambling—all for the ways they harm persons and communities—we’d be wise to reconsider the valid and pressing reasons why so many Christians before us chose to give up alcohol completely.”

Clearly, she is providing a different reason for giving up alcohol than was used in previous decades for Evangelicals, to be unstained by the sin of the world. She notes that many Christians view drinking as a rite of passage out of “the perceived fundamentalism of our past.”

She sees young people and women in particular embracing alcohol as a sign of liberation. And many of her peers celebrate drinking. She wonders, “Isn’t anyone friends with alcoholics?”

Given that about 1 in 6 Americans has a drinking problem (defined as excessive drinking or alcoholism), they probably do know someone who has a drinking problem.

Evils of the world: Mayfield’s argument is less about purity than about justice. “I didn’t give up alcohol because I wanted to flee the evils of the world,” she writes. “I gave up alcohol as a way of engaging the evils of the world.”

Who we relate to affects our perspective on this issue, Mayfield writes. She has been changed by her neighborhood.

“I am not calling on everyone to become teetotalers,” she writes. “But I am asking us to consider temperance as a valid and thoughtful option.”

Echoing the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, she says we are free not to drink because of our relationships with those who struggle, when “love tempers our actions.”

A story about classism and racism

Amid the superhero movies or raunchy comedies, the Cineplex occasionally sneaks in a quiet, “inspired by a true story” film. Such is Belle, which is based on the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mabatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral.

 

As I’ve written before here, many of these “true” stories stretch the truth quite a bit. Such is the case here. The film is actually inspired by a 1779 painting of Belle beside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray. It was commissioned by William Murray, who was at the time Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.

But I don’t mind so much. Belle tells an engaging story and conveys information about a key moment in England’s history and in the history of the movement to abolish slavery.

After Belle’s mother dies, her father brings her to England to be cared for by his uncle (Tom Wilkinson), Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, at his estate. Despite the social mores of the time, they raise Dido as an aristocrat alongside her cousin Elizabeth.

When the girls reach the age to “come out,” the family looks for a good match for Elizabeth. Dido, however, has received a large inheritance from her father and doesn’t need to marry wealth. But Mansfield doesn’t want her to marry beneath her either.

As with almost any British show you can name, we’re dealing with classism. We’ve seen this before—the desire of a young woman to marry for love rather than money. Read Jane Austen for a wonderful examination of this issue. Added to the mix here is racism.

Also new here is the introduction of a famous slavery case, Gregson v. Gilbert, that is key in the annals of the abolitionist movement. Mansfield is to rule on the case, which has to do with a ship that jettisoned its “cargo” of slaves and wants payment from its insurance company for it losses.

Belle meets a young lawyer, John Davinier (Sam Reid), who wants Mansfield to rule against the ship’s owners. This case, often referred to as the Zong massacre, was also the basis of an episode of Garrow’s Law, an old BBC show, where I first heard about it.

There’s not much suspense about the outcome—both of the case and of Belle’s relationship with Davinier. And while the historical elements are interesting, I feel some caution about films like these.

Belle deals with the racism that existed then, and we view it with a self-righteous disdain for their backward ways. But it doesn’t confront us with our own racist structures today. I realize that’s not the film’s purpose, but I raise the caution for those of us who view it.

The film includes a cast of excellent English actors, including Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton (of Downton Abbey).

Rated PG, Belle is a refreshing way to encounter some English history, think about racism and enjoy a good story.

A portrait of spiritual and psychological struggle

Director John Gray channels Dostoevsky’s ghost in his film The Immigrant. While the plot is relatively simple, the film is a portrayal of spiritual and psychological struggle. 

It’s 1921, and two sisters arrive at Ellis Island from Poland. Ewa (Marion Cotillard) is distraught when her sister Magda is quarantined because her lungs are bad. Threatened with being deported, she is rescued by Bruno (Joachin Phoenix), who takes her to his apartment and introduces her to his “girls.”

'Low morals': Ewa suspects that he is not to be trusted, but she is desperate to get her sister out of quarantine and recognizes that Bruno is likely her only chance, especially when she sneaks off one night and walks to her aunt and uncle’s house, only to be turned away because she did something on the voyage over that showed she was of “low morals.” (We learn later that what she did was get raped.)

Bruno is a pimp, and Ewa becomes a prostitute in order to make enough money to gain her sister’s freedom. Bruno, meanwhile, is in love with her and doesn’t want to part from her.

Passion: The performances of Cotillard, one of our best actresses, and Phoenix, are outstanding. Cotillard shows Ewa’s ferocious will and dignity, while Phoenix portrays Bruno’s calm demeanor exploding at various times into anger and passion.

The cinematography uses a sepia wash to give the film the feel of a lost age, and the sets depict the crowded, grimy and gloomy streets of the Lower East Side of 1921. Several scenes reference older films, and the entire piece feels like an old Hollywood film.

The story plays with clichés, like that of the innocent prostitute, but Cotillard’s performance and the screenplay mostly avoid this, so that the characters feel real.

Religious themes: More than most films, it includes religious themes that are handled well, skirting, for example, the mean priest. (Ewa is harder on herself than he is on her.) And, like The Railway Man, which I reviewed her recently, The Immigrant is a powerful film about forgiveness.

Dostoevsky often portrayed men who do evil but are torn by love to do good. He also portrayed the innocent fool, who believes in the goodness of humanity in spite of great suffering. Gray is not of the caliber of the great Russian novelist (few if any are), but it’s nice to see a well-made film that explores these themes.