Religulous
A Tract for Secularism

By guest columnist Kevin Hamilton, assistant professor of art and design at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. He also is chair of their New Media program.

Directed by Larry Charles, with Bill Maher

(DVD release date February 17, 2009)

I can't recommend the comedic documentary Religulous as a finely crafted film, nor as an important, emblematic piece of pop culture. It's a flawed documentary that caught some positive reviews and a little controversy when released in the theaters; it will likely soon fade from collective memory. As essentially a feature-length illustrated stand-up act from comedian and TV talk show host Bill Maher, it's also a source for more than a few hard laughs at others' expense.

But Religulous is still worth viewing, especially with some tolerant friends who are up for some spirited discussion. It’s not that the religions portrayed in the film get a fair shake – far from it – but in the end the film unintentionally reveals more about secularism as a system of beliefs than we usually get to see. Secular approaches to social and political life usually treat religion as the aberration, and unbelief as the neutral norm, so it’s hard to see the secular as a defined collection of habits. In Religulous, however, secularism is revealed to be every bit as specific as the religions Maher parodies and derides.

As a tract for secularism, Religulous treats religious faith as irrational, undependable, and therefore unwelcome in the public sphere. The makers of Religulous would prefer you keep your religion to yourself, limited to the realm of private thoughts. This is an increasingly difficult stance to maintain, since plenty of states and peoples in the world have adopted modern economic, scientific, and technological habits without abandoning their allegedly retrograde religiosities. Even established secular states are having to come to terms with how agnostic approaches to justice and representation don't always serve everyone equally.

This sort of thing really worries Maher. After 90 minutes of jovial globe-trotting, Maher turns abruptly serious at the movie's end to warn us of the dangerous implications of accepting modernity's technological power - the atom bomb - without rejecting as sentimental or psychotic our faith in a divine being or grand narrative. In an emotional concluding sequence, we see quick clips of suicide bomb attacks, suffering children and bleeding adults, interspersed with views of the rapturous faithful of all colors and faiths. When Maher finally urges the faithful to "grow up, or die," he seems convinced that if the religious don't catch up with the more enlightened members of the human race, we're all doomed to self-destruction.

The film is divided up into neat segments, one for each of several categories of “delusion” - Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Judaism, Scientology. For each faith, we see one or several interviews in which Maher catches the faithful saying things that are dumb, incriminating or funny. This is often accomplished through interrupting people before they can finish their arguments, or through editorial comment in the form of subtitles, sound effects, and archival footage (of which there is plenty). To be sure much of this makes for good adult-rated stand-up comedy, but viewers shouldn't even bother examining the ethics of the piece. It's all a set-up, in which the interviewees rarely expect Bill Maher to show up and then can't say no once they're on camera. Some, like the Rev. Joe Copeland of the Truckers' Chapel in North Carolina, have said in subsequent interviews that they enjoyed the experience. Others, like geneticist Francis Collins, are less sanguine about how they were represented.

So what safe alternative to the idiocy of religion does Religulous offer? Maher and Charles' critical agenda is never hidden, but their own alternative mode of living takes some closer observation to discern. In Religulous, a secular life of peace seems most at home on the inside of a moving car, analyzing in safety the recent antics of the faithful. The student of the secular, in the form of director Larry Charles, spends hundreds of hours poring through archival footage in order to produce an emotionally coercive montage. The secularist looks for truth first in the words of the faithful, and not in their deeds.

If this strategy reveals the folly of those whose faith is built more on words than deeds, it also demonstrates where the secularist and the groundless believer share something in common. Impatient to reach the punchline, both the false evangelist for God and the evangelist for a false god use language as a blunt instrument for prying out desired responses. Both Maher and his easiest target, a Latino pastor who claims to be Christ returned, rely on language to achieve an emotional response. In so doing, they construct not only an argument, but a way of life, an ethic for the treatment of others.

Of course Maher doesn’t spend any time examining his own ethic - to do so would take more time, and probably result in less humor. A repeated hurry to the punchline sets the pace of Religulous’ secular liturgy; and so we see one way of life embodied just as other ways are skewered.

 Rated R for some language and sexual material.

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