Bill Maher's 'Religulous' is distributed in the UK by Momentum.
Bill Maher, a well-known American comedian, satirist and religious sceptic has added this comedy-documentary to the growing number of voices challenging the rationality of religious belief. Filmed as an on-the-road journey, Maher travels across America as well as visiting Amsterdam, London, Egypt and Jerusalem.
The film’s title, created by combining the words ‘religious’ and ‘ridiculous’, gives a strong hint of the type of documentary this will be and provides little hope for a genuine dialogue with believers.
The tone of the documentary is confirmed early on, as Maher comments,"I certainly, definitely believe that religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity," and goes on to bemoan the stupidity of people who believe "things they know can’t be true".
He then sets out on his mission with the words, "I have to find out, I have to try." This statement is not clarified, but it very soon becomes clear that he is not setting out to discover whether people have reasons for their beliefs; rather he wants to find out why people believe things that are obviously irrational and untrue.
It becomes obvious that Maher strongly doubts the historical existence of Jesus, but nonetheless has a high view of his character and teachings. One particular issue he raises is that of wealth and possessions. When standing outside the Vatican in Rome, he asks a Catholic priest if he thinks that, "A giant palace . . . is anything like what Jesus had in mind", to which he receives the unexpected reply that "it is obviously at odds with Jesus’s message".
He also looks at American ‘televangelists’ who preach a message of prosperity in health and wealth, if only their viewers will send them large sums of money ‘in faith’. Maher interviews one of these preachers, a man called Jeremiah Cummings. During the interview, Maher comments on the quality of Cummings’s clothing - a very expensive suit and lizard-skin shoes, to which Cummings replies that the congregation expect a minister to be well dressed, and that Jesus "was not poor . . . he was a well dressed man" who wore "fine linen".
When Cummings remarks that "money comes, money happens", Maher responds sharply that "money happens for you, because they’re giving it up to you. You’re not giving it up to them!"
This shameless exploitation of people for financial gain deserves condemnation, but Maher then goes on to make a rather shocking and inappropriate link. During their interview, Cummings mentions some advice he gave to a young man who was "going crazy over a woman" to the point of wanting to commit suicide. Cummings says he told him to, "turn that passion to God and then see what happens"; words that are immediately followed by footage of a car-bomb exploding somewhere in the Middle East!
It is hard to see the logic in this as, although there are religiously motivated bombings in some countries, they are in no way linked to American televangelists or indeed to Christianity at all. Such underhand tactics - it was obviously done without Cummings’s permission - succeed only in undermining Maher’s claim to rationality.
Early on in the film, Maher visits a ‘trucker’s chapel’ in North Carolina, to question them about their beliefs – a rather bizarre choice for interviewing; only one incident is worth much comment. As Maher’s challenges come out, one of the truckers speaks of his personal experience of coming to Christianity. He says that for his whole life he had been involved in Satanism, was a Satanist priest for six years, and his life was taken up with "being addicted to drugs, running prostitutes and women and everything that goes with that."
He then adds, "I gave all that up when I got saved."
