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Faith In America's mission might seem grand given the current state of the union and the power granted fundamentalists by our not-so-fearless leader, but plenty of everyday-Christians are tiring of the face fundamentalist Christians are putting on their faith. They don't like being seen as bigots with a political agenda, and they want to get back to the business of being good Christians — you know, helping people rather than attacking them. And Faith In America is stimulating them toward that goal pulling few punches.
Childers' ads speaks to Christians on their own turf, using pictures right out of Christian family albums — the portraits the faithful proudly show the world, as well as the images much of the world would rather forget.
While the snapshots of shame and raw, honest text will offend some, the Faith In America project has the potential to transform lives. Stamped with well-known faces and powerful historic images, the ads ask Christians, point blank, not to repeat history's most shameful, un-Christian hours. They also ask those who have survived what were once considered ‘unimaginable” events not to turn their backs on the gay community for the exact same reasons backs were turned to them.
These are potent messages made even more powerful because they remind even those who may have been lulled into a false sense of security by the word Christian, that history is stained with ‘Christians' who've had less than stellar motives.
Of the nine very powerful print ads that are available for viewing, four stand out.
The first, called “Supreme Injustice,” leads with the words “Offense Before God?” and a picture of Clarence Thomas with his second wife Virginia, a white woman. The text below the photo includes, “Today America is faced with the challenge of how to treat a group of its citizens fairly. We've been down this road before. We can't allow powerful people to use religion to justify their bigotry. It wasn't right for African Americans, and it's not right for gays and lesbians.”
The ad titled “Family” depicts a mother, father and son praying before a meal. The text below the photo includes, “We're being told that there's a culture war in America over the human and civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and that if we don't believe the way religious fundamentalist groups believe, we don't meet God's standard. When you get right down to it, any kind of war is about one side destroying the other side. That's not Christian.”
Ku Klux Klan members are featured in three of the ads, two complete with burning crosses. The most powerful of the trio is “Remember A Time”: “Remember a time when a symbol of love was used as a symbol of hate? … The Bible shouldn't be used to justify discrimination against any group, including gay people. That's just wrong. Looking back, it's pretty sickening isn't it?”
And last, but certainly least, is “That's Extremist.” Destined, I predict, to attract more complaints than all the others combined, this ad tells us, “Religious groups in some parts of our world are training young men and women to hate us …By saturating minds with hate, these young people may eventually come to believe the world would be better off if we were all dead. We could be talking about Jihad camps in Syria. Sadly, it's happening in America.”
If you think it's not happening here, you're certainly not the only person in history who didn't see a train a' comin' until it choo-choo-ed his skull. Nor will you be the last.
Remember the ‘train to Dachau' scene in Bent, where after listening to SS commanders brutally beat his lover Rudy (Brian Webber) in the next car, Max (Clive Owen) repeats over and over again, “This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't happening…”? Well, it happened, and not just in a movie.
History is full of ‘dancing one day, tortured or dead the next' stories — we've all heard them, we've seen Roots, Schindler's List, Hotel Rwanda, and the like. But movies, conversations, and even the nightly news leads haven't stopped us from killing each other and certainly haven't prevented some of us from ignoring both subtle and blatant bigotry here at home and worldwide. There will always be people who are more interested in power than in their fellow man, and who will repeat disgraceful history as a result, but what about the rest of us, especially the pious — what's our excuse?
That's not only a good question, but also a highly appropriate one. And FIA wants an answer.
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