(Note: This essay contains spoilers)
Or maybe that’s just me. As a former fundamentalist Christian and missionary, I’m one of the few people in Chicago that may have needed something akin to a trigger warning in lieu of the otherwise G-rated trauma portrayed in The Christians. After reading a review, I nearly decided to skip it because of my personal connection to the material in a way that goes beyond the general theme of a evangelical church divided amongst itself. It isn’t mentioned in the promotional materials, but The Christians is almost a blow-by-blow theatrical dramatization of the real-life story of minister Carlton Pearson—a tale that had a profound impact on the personal struggles of my own soul.
I’m not sure I ever believed wholeheartedly in this mission, but I came to L.A. desperately searching for one—and this was the potential purpose that sat down in my lap. Instead, I’d find the opposite. My once robust personal faith had eroded slowly over the previous decade, suffering a death of a thousand cuts earned after escaping the Jesus-themed bubble I was raised in for a college life that exposed me to different people, different philosophies, different religions. My beliefs weakened further when—like in The Christians—my church in Missouri endured it’s own mini-schism. Some of our more conservative members felt alienated when some of our staff began adopting the theology of a brand of trendy kind of alt-evangelism known as the “Emerging Church” and jumped to other churches. I felt caught in the middle; unsure; doubting of everything.
And so a terrifying thought crossed my mind as I shuffled out of Steppenwolf Theater in a daze—alone and in the dark but for a cold street light on Halsted Street shining on me from above. The defining and oft-misunderstood paradox of Christianity is that the secret of happiness lies in renouncing your own right to be happy and surrendering yourself to others; to the eternally mysterious Other. What if—like Paul—I’m in a proverbial hell on earth I created because I refuse to renounce my own right to believe in the literal version.
