I had many qualms about buying tickets for The Christians when I was on vacation earlier this month. It was difficult
to discern, from the brief description I read of the drama, if it would offer a
skeptical and/or politically correct view of traditional Christian belief.
Moreover, the uneven record of the Chautauqua Theater Co. and its
penchant for unusual fare meant that I could not be sure if I would see
something fascinating or something experimental strictly for its own sake.
To my relief, after sitting through 80 minutes of
material that went by in a flash (and without an intermission), I could not
have been more pleased by Lucas Hnath’s drama, which closed last weekend.
At Chautauqua Institution—a lakeside Victorian community which originated as,
in effect, a summer program for Sunday school teachers—theatergoers like me
found an examination of faith searching in intellect and yet filled with not
only emotion, but anguish.
The setting is contemporary—a rapidly expanding
evangelical megachurch—but the conflict is as old as Protestantism itself: the
clash between a minister who wants to reinterpret the Bible in a new manner and
a congregation reluctant to go along with a vision that diverges from one of
their core longstanding beliefs.
Toward the start of the sermon that begins his
crisis, Pastor Paul recounts the handwritten note he used to introduce himself
to his future wife on a plane: “I have this urge to communicate, but the
distance between us is insurmountable.”
The distance between him and his
congregation, seemingly minuscule as he begins, widens considerable, as his
desire to commit the church to rejecting the concept of hell is met first with
consternation, then with outright opposition. In the process, Pastor Paul’s
position and even his marriage is endangered.
It would have been natural simply to depict Pastor
Paul as a martyr to intolerance. But Hnath renders the conflict with full
appreciation for the flawed but unmistakable humanity of both sides.
While
sincere in wanting to assure salvation to non-believers, Pastor Paul has also
refrained from telling his church about his changing feelings about this
subject until after fundraising for the building expansion project has been
completed, and he uses the issue to force out Associate Pastor Joshua, whom he
has come to regard as too conservative and youthfully impulsive. (In other
words, as Paul’s wife bluntly puts it later, he has used intolerant means for a
tolerant end.)
Director Taibi Magar used some nice touches
to sharpen the conflict, including:
*featuring the Chautauqua Choir—a group accustomed
to the kind of hymns used here—first as musical accompaniment, then later as a
kind of silent “Greek chorus” to the events taking place;
*accentuating the discomfort of Paul’s listeners by
having the choir walk out, single file, after one member confronts Paul;
*using Paul’s increasingly rumpled look to suggest
the decline in his fortunes and, perhaps, his increasing lack of interest in
worldly things.
As Pastor Paul, Jamison Jones carries the
dramatic load with aplomb. He transfixes the audience in the opening monologue
by modulating his tone, from heartiness to earnestness—and, by play’s end, to a
supplication he never thought he’d face.
The dilemma faced by Pastor Paul and his followers
features what may be the most emotionally fraught war in Christendom: who
deserves salvation? Pastor Paul may
begin on relatively safe ground by invoking the case of a blameless non-Christian,
but he provokes many congregants by blurting out that even Hitler will not be
denied Heaven by a forgiving deity.
Hnath’s script does not shy away from the
undercurrents in Pastor Paul’s dispute. Before his attempt to change the church’s
direction, for instance, he has not solicited his wife’s views or considered
how it might affect their standing in the parish.
Furthermore, he aims for an
inclusive objective by resorting to exclusionary means. (In maneuvering out
Associate Pastor Paul, for example, he argues for, in effect, a smaller but
purer church—a stance that Pope Benedict XVI took in leading the Roman Catholic
Church.)
The sympathy of Hnath lies overwhelmingly with
Pastor Paul. But, in the manner of George Bernard Shaw, he does not shortchange
the minister’s opponents, giving them dialogue and arguments that make their
case with maximum effectiveness.
That is particularly so with Associate Pastor
Joshua, and Ricardy Fabre gives the younger man a charisma and
conviction that make him a formidable, even dangerous, threat to Paul’s
leadership. And as Paul’s wife, Stori Ayers—after spending of the first
part of the play listening silently to the man she has followed, growing
gradually more dismayed—performs similar wonders when she is finally allowed to
vent her own feelings about the situation.
I doubt that anybody at a performance of The
Christians has come away without its thought-provoking recounting of different
faith journeys continuing to reverberate for far longer after they leave
Chautauqua’s Bratton Theater.
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