Today, it can be argued, a different type of prophetic witness is emerging that is perhaps as radical and countercultural as those of the 1960s, given the current polarized climate. It asks people to consider how to be good global citizens amid pluralism—a pluralism that includes fundamentalists and atheists.
Beasts is a transcendental film that enables the viewer to swim through a child’s memories, witness a hurricane and flood, watch a man die, see a home vanish. But is the imagery too transcendent and romantic?
It goes almost without saying that mainline Protestantism is in an extended period of at least numerical, if not spiritual, decline, and many commentators have taken the occasion of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church—still an important symbol of normative American religiosity—to mark the beginning of the End Times for liberal Christianity and perhaps religion in general. Others have strained mightily to see glimmers of hope even in the confusion and controversy that swirls such gatherings. We of course have no idea how it will all play out.
As the AIDS crisis progressed and believers interrogated their faith, journalists reported their questions: Was God a God of love or judgment? Were biblical injunctions against homosexuality cultural artifacts or eternal truths?
