A Film review by Edward McNulty

Rated PG-13. Running time: 2 hours 5 min.

Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like the noonday.
Psalm 37:5-6

Largely financed by George Lucas, this fact-based but fictional story of the Tuskegee Airmen chronicles just part of the fight on the ground required for the African American pilots to get the right to fight in the sky. It skips most of the ground battles against the racist Army heirarchy fought back in the US, so well told in the HBO filmThe Tuskegee Airmen, although Clarence Howard is shown as the Washington-bound black officer who fights the military bureaucracy and prejudiced congressmen for his squadron's right to fly and fight. (The HBO film depicts well Eleanor Roosevelt's role in making sure that the black squadron would receive a green light.)

This film focuses instead on the action in the skies where the pilots protected the B-17 bombers flying over Germany. The Germans had been able to lure away the fighters piloted by whites that were supposed to protect the bombers that the bomber attrition rate had climbed to an alarming rate. Ordered to stay with the bombers rather than engaging in dogfights, the Tuskegee pilots gave far better protection, and yet still managed to shoot down a great many enemy planes. The Airmen, the tails of their fighters painted red, performed so well that the once prejudiced bomber crews changed their views concerning African American pilots’ skills. (One wonders whether any of those white flyers ever questioned racist practices after the war when they returned home.)

The film succeeds far better as an action film than as one exploring the depths of racism. The computer generated aerial combat scenes overshadow the shallow dramatic ones, almost turning what could have been a sociological film into a comic book action movie. Indeed, with its stereotypical characters—there is the pipe smoking commander; a hot shot pilot who loves to show off his flying skills, a can-do maintenance man able to patch up a damaged plane overnight; a pilot with a drinking problem, a religious pilot with his picture of “Black Jesus” taped to his control panel, and a snarling Nazi airman whom we cannot wait to see going down in flames. There is a bit of flag-waving, so that the film reminded me a lot of those I enjoyed as a boy, films such as God Is My Co-Pilot and Flying Fortress. In such films here is never any doubt that God is on the side of Americans killing Germans, nor is there any qualm raised about thethousands of civilian deaths caused by our massive bombing attacks.

Cuba Gooding, Jr., who plays the desk-bound major in charge of the squadron also starred in the far better 1995 film mentioned above. To discover the enormity of the racial barrier faced by the squadron at its very inception I urge you to see it. In Red Tails, when one pilot enters into a liaison with a local Italian beauty, there is not a ripple of criticism from her family or from the Air Force brass. This romantic interlude might have been added out of concern for women viewers, but it brings into question the filmmakers' hold on the reality of the times. Despite this and other shortcomings, the film does a service by bringing to a mass audience a little known episode in the long march toward racial equality.

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

Last week I wrote about my friend Caroline Simon’s new book, Bringing Sex into Focus. I quoted Carol in her description of chastity, “the virtue that helps us focus our sexual energies on committed relationships.” Chastity also enables “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being.” When we are chaste we are able to use our “sexual powers intelligently in the pursuit of human flourishing and happiness.”

Carol has several cool charts in her book, and I found a pair of them quite helpful. Aristotle, she says, taught that states of character range along a continuum. He believed there was a difference between (1) being virtuous and (2) being well behaved, which usually means a person has to struggle to live according to the values they hold dear. Some others, further along the continuum, (3) may struggle but fail. And, with respect to any virtue, there will (4) be yet others who don’t try to live by that particular value.

A general chart looks like this (p. 74 in Carol’s book):

• Virtue – habitually acting well and enjoying it
• Continence – successfully struggling to act well
• Incontinence – unsuccessfully struggling to act well
• Vice – habitually acting badly and enjoying it

If we believe that chastity is a virtue worth pursuing, Carol writes, then “it is an aspect of character that a person can aspire to, achieve, stray from, regain.” She presents a chart laying out the four stages related to chastity (p.75):

• Chastity – an integrated sexuality resulting in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being as well as respect for other’s sexual integrity
• Sexual Continence – successfully struggling to act chastely
• Sexual Incontinence – unsuccessfully struggling to act chastely
• Lustfulness – Sexual dis-integration resulting in habitual enjoyment of treating others as collections of sexual body parts

Why does this matter? I had never considered the difference between chastity and sexual continence. As a married woman, I have been sexually faithful to my husband, Dave. Sometimes I’m attracted to other men, sometimes I’m not. I thought my goal was simply to be faithful to Dave, whatever the attraction I’m feeling. And, in one sense, I suppose that’s true. But what about “the successful integration of sexuality within a person that results in inner unity between bodily and spiritual being”? For me, most issues related to unity between my body and my spirit relate to overeating and struggles with my weight. But I’d like to start praying for “successful integration” in other areas including sexuality.

For people who aren’t married as well as those who are, this way of thinking about a virtue can be very helpful. Carol cites the young woman who had had sex one time. She looked at it as having given away her virginity, and then figured since she had lost that pure state, she might as well keep having sex. That emphasis on virginity makes the issue into an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Carol writes, “Celibate chastity is the ability to happily dedicate all of one’s life, including one’s sexuality, to the service of God.” This clearly could apply to someone who is technically a virgin and to someone who is not. Adultery could be viewed the same all-or-nothing way – I’ve done it once, why not keep doing it? Aristotle’s virtue continuum leaves room for anyone, no matter what they have done, to grow in wholeness and spiritual health by moving further along the continuum towards a place where chastity is a contented state and even a source of joy. This sounds to me like the grace of the Gospel in Jesus Christ.

Very thought provoking. Very helpful.

Carol is blogging regularly about sexual issues on the Psychology Today website. This post relates to what I’ve written here. You can see a list of her recent posts here. 

A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles

        Some time ago during one of the many presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul suggested that the foreign policy of the United States would do well to follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The response of a significant portion of the audience in the hall, most of them, I would hazard to guess, Christians, was to boo.
        It is shocking to hear the Golden Rule booed in any context.  
        My own belief is that the crisis of our time and place is not a lack of faith in Jesus, but rather a lack of belief that Jesus is ‘up to the job’ – I think, without meaning to, we have somehow rewritten our understanding of just who Jesus is and what Jesus does and can do.  And so we believe we have to act in the ways we do, because Jesus just isn’t up to the job.  
        An example: on the eve of the Iraq war, I coincidentally happened to attend a church meeting as a student observer.  The minister asked his Session to reflect on what Jesus would do when it came to the decision whether to go to war or not.  
        The folks had many and varied answers; they were all thinking seriously on it; they were all taking their faith and their understanding of God and God’s word into account, including one gentleman who just couldn’t contain himself; the words literally burst from him: If you’re asking me if Jesus would ride into Baghdad on top of a tank, well, of course he wouldn’t.  But Jesus would be wrong!  
        The silence that followed his outburst was, as you might imagine, stunned.  I don’t know how he and his church family dealt with that in the days, weeks, months and years after I left.  But his statement has never left me.  
        What was going on in his heart, I cannot know.  But I can tell you what I thought then and what I think now: I think the man is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, but that somehow, over time, he has stopped believing that Jesus really is the Savior, the Messiah, the Rescuer.  Somehow, he has come to believe that Jesus just doesn’t understand what we face; that somehow, Jesus isn’t up to the job.  
        I don’t know what else to call that except a crisis of faith.  So it’s my own guess that too many in the debate hall the night Ron Paul invoked the Golden Rule may suffer the same problem: believing that Jesus is a nice enough guy, that Jesus is a good model to follow for our kids; but when it comes to the world of grown-ups, when it comes to the serious ‘business’ of the work of nations, Jesus is just too darned naive to be considered, let alone believed or followed.
        If I am right; if this is so, more’s the pity.