Went to go see Saved tonight. We see American Puritanical Protestantism at its best (or scariest), a group unable to evangelize, unable to love. Some may blame this movie for being inaccurate, but it was shocking how familiar the characters were to me personally. Looking back on college years, these attitudes were encountered daily. Themes such as homosexuality, teenage pregnancy, even disability - we might like to ignore these issues, vote on them, pass resolutions, send our kids to rehab or military schools to save them. It is this attitude that all at once creates a house for AIDS patients. Get them out of our Churches, turn them away, we want to create perfection, but we ought to know that only grace can make us whole. Do we dare to be the sort of Christian community in which the outcast is truly cared for, in which girls know that if they get pregnant, the Church is still their home?

We have failed to match teaching with action. The great social action and community of the early Church has not yet been duplicated, at least in America. We might say that the

Does this necessitate a theological sellout? Why should it? Have we ceased to believe that repentance is possible? We must teach and we must believe that the Holy Spirit acts in the lives of youth. He certainly did in mine, and still does. The challenge is to uncompromisingly present the gospel. This means taking the social command of Jesus seriously, just as much as the moral command. I would argue that the moral position of traditionalism in American Anglicanism lacks this essential synthesis.

Saved shows us the Church when it is an elite club for the sake of protecting its members from the world - the Church when it fails to shed the light of Christ. It is a littly quirky, and certainly extreme, but extremes call us to question our future.

Should you see Saved? Absolutely.