Christian Traditions Film: Dogma

Dogma

Dogma is a set of principles labeled from authority to be the truth. In Christianity, dogma refers to the word of God, from God, or from those anointed from God. The movie, Dogma, portrays Christianity in an interesting light. An abortion clinic worker, Bethany, finds out that she is a descendent to Jesus. She must go to a church in New Jersey to prevent two fallen angels from becoming purified. If the angels became purified, they would be allowed to go back into heaven because they would be free from sin. Allowing these fallen angels to return to heaven would oppose the decree of God, therefore making God's decree no longer perfect. Along the way, she encounters people sent to help her on the quest.

Personally, I found the film to be fairly questionable. However, there was one part in particular that I think especially applies to the class. Fairly early in the movie, a priest attempted to change the way we see Jesus. The priest believed that Jesus was always portrayed as a serious man. Therefore, he held a ceremony to reveal the “new” face of Jesus. This new form of Jesus was smiling and rather comical. Briefly in class we have mentioned that in several paintings, Jesus was depicted as beardless. Perhaps this is because being beardless was a social norm in early centuries. This makes me wonder how and why the face of Jesus has transformed throughout centuries.

The genre of Dogma was rather comical. However, much of the comedy was superficial and lacked depth. For instance, there were jokes about God returning to Earth to play ski ball and being captured by demons. Likewise, a thirteenth apostle claimed to be excluded from the bible because of his race. In addition, the two prophets that were sent to help Bethany were rather unfitting. In one scene, they waited outside the abortion clinic to meet women. Generally, these prophets were inappropriate as they made sexual innuendos throughout the film.

One of the most interesting parts of the movie was the voice of God, played by Alan Rickman. The movie insisted that God’s voice was too powerful to be heard, and therefore an angel needed to be sent to portray God’s thoughts. This was interesting because every time God appeared in the movie, she was silent. God was able to appear in any form, and in this case, a female.

Overall, Dogma was quite interesting, to say the least. Perhaps there are some traditions that have inspired Dogma. Could there be traditions that view God as a female? Do some traditions believe that God has a voice that is too powerful for man to hear? I wonder what prompted the idea to create a movie such as this one.