The world around us seems to have become very thin-skinned in recent years, with the slightest word offending someone from one ideology or another. Often the most offended are those of us of faith. Context doesn’t matter, or even if a mistake was made.

It is in this environment that the character Deadpool, the so-called “Merc with a Mouth,” walks in Deadpool & Wolverine. Deadpool is no stranger to controversy and doesn’t mind mouthing off in a vulgar or irreverent manner.

Deapool & Wolverine has done very well at the box office. Deadpool frequently refers to himself as “Marvel Jesus,” perhaps as a way of saying he is there to save the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

On hearing those words, my concern was that some Christians would be troubled. After all, this is one of the more irreverent things Deadpool could say, and it is the height of arrogance to equate ourselves with the Lord.

My concern is that people’s ears might be closed to something miraculous going on amid this irreverence.

While the world around us has lost its thick skin, it has also tried to degrade our Lord’s name. The holy name of Jesus is meant to be a hope and a blessing to the world. Instead, it is often used as a curse, to the point that some children think it is a word you are not supposed to say.

At a crucial moment in this story, Deadpool steps up to the challenge of a global threat. He says this is the time for him to really be “Marvel Jesus.” He also says he’s not doing this for himself, but for the people of his world and everyone he loves. If that doesn’t show a true understanding of who Jesus really is, I don’t know what does.

Lest we forget Deadpool’s costar, Wolverine takes a similar journey. The version of the character featured in Deadpool & Wolverine let his entire world down. He has tried to make amends for his past inactions. That leads him to help Deadpool in his mission now.

Whether we are irreverent like Deadpool or seeking redemption like Wolverine, we struggle to do what is right in this world. Yet even in their fallen state, Wolverine and Deadpool are willing to risk themselves to save the world.

In the end, no matter how many times Deadpool troubles you, his ultimate actions should give you hope. If Deadpool can understand who Jesus is, then maybe we can too.

The Philadelphia Eleven recounts the story of the first 11 women ordained as priests of the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974. The film has debuted several months before the church celebrates the 50th anniversary of these ordinations, reminding us just how recently the ordination of women as priests was strongly opposed by both male clergy and laity.

Using archival footage and contemporary interviews, the 90-minute film traces the history of the 11 women: Merrill Bitner, Alla Renee Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Marie Moorefield Fleischer, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Jeannette Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. The film offers firsthand accounts by Heyward, Bozarth-Campbell, Bitner and Wittig — along with Cheek, who has since died. Also appearing in the documentary are the late Pauli Murray, the first Black woman to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church on January 8, 1977, and the late Bishop Barbara Harris, the first woman (and first Black woman) to be ordained and consecrated a bishop on September 24, 1988.

The documentary invites viewers into these women’s journeys— through roadblocks, threats of violence and death, and the admonition of priests, bishops, and a presiding bishop — along the path to ordination. Although the 11 women were diverse in background and age, they shared a sense or calling to the work of priests — and the film reveals the depth of their commitment to the belief in their calling and their willingness to suffer the consequences of that commitment. The documentary moves deftly between footage of more recent interviews with the women, recalling their determination on the road to the 1974 ordinations, and archival footage showing the women’s struggles leading up to their ordinations.

The year 1970 brought two events that began a sea change in the Episcopal Church: The first women were ordained as deacons, and the first women were seated as voting deputies at the church’s General Convention. Bitner made an impassioned plea for the ordination of women as priests. Although the measure gained traction, it was voted down. Three years later, when the measure was brought back before the next General Convention, it fell again.

Merrill Bitner states in the film that “the oppressor cannot be the instrument of the liberation of the oppressed.”

Bitner’s observation is duly noted: Persons who vehemently opposed the ordination of women were unlikely to become supporters in any way. But the ordination of women would necessarily require the support of male bishops and priests. The documentary introduces viewers to male clergy — bishops and priests — who stood in support of the ordination of women, even as other clergy and laypersons intensely disagreed, on theological and ideological bases.

By 1974, 11 women who believed they were called to the priesthood had been identified as deacons in good standing, with recognizable accomplishments in ministry — women who could otherwise be qualified to be ordained as priests but for their sex. Three retired bishops agreed to ordain the women: Daniel Corrigan, retired Bishop Suffragan of Colorado; Robert L. DeWitt, retired Bishop of Pennsylvania; and Edward R. Welles II, retired Bishop of West Missouri. The three retired bishops were joined by Bishop Antonio Ramos of Costa Rica.

The film shows another kind of courage and solidarity. The women’s ordination was held in Philadelphia — the same city in which Absalom Jones became the first Black man to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1802, by Bishop William White. The Church of the Advocate —a Black parish in Philadelphia — was the site of the women’s ordination.

Although no Black women deacons were identified as being ready to be ordained as priests at the time, the documentary shows how the Church of the Advocate was willing to stand in solidarity with the women, just a decade after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in the midst of nationwide conversation regarding the Equal Rights Amendment. The mixed-race crowd gathered at the ordination and shown in archival videos showed support for the women. The archival footage also revealed condemnation of the ordination.

After their ordinations, the 11 women initially were unable to serve churches or celebrate the Eucharist. Alison Cheek made history at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church in Washington, D.C., when she became the first woman to celebrate the Eucharist in an Episcopal church on November 10, 1974, having been welcomed there by the Rev. William Wendt. Cheek had been a married mother of four children before being ordained at age 46.

St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church made news again when four more women — Lee McGee Street, Alison Palmer, Betty Powell Rosenberg, and Diane Tickell —were ordained there on September 7, 1975. Bishop George W. Barrett, retired Bishop of Rochester, presided at that ordination.

Bishops Corrigan, DeWitt, Welles and Barrett were all censured by the House of Bishops for their part in the ordination of the first 15 women. Both Wendt and Peter Beebe, who invited Alison Cheek to celebrate the Eucharist at Christ Church, Oberlin, Ohio, on December 7, 1974, faced charges for having violated church canons by allowing Cheek to serve as celebrant.

Beebe was convicted, and although his conviction was overturned, he left the priesthood. If there is an honest critique of the film, it is that it doesn’t seem to give sufficient acknowledgment to the courage of the men who stood with the women, liberators of the oppressed and without whose support their ordinations and public ministry would have been impossible. The story of Peter Beebe’s conviction — and the attorney who represented him, John Rea, is especially worth noting.

Deputies to General Convention in 1976 voted to allow the ordination of women and to approve the ordinations of the women from 1974 and 1975.”As of 2022, 6,180 women have been ordained as Episcopal priests,” the film says. “Of those, it is estimated that 10% or 600 are women of color.” It adds, “As of 2022, 30% of all active Episcopal bishops are women and 40% of all active Episcopal priests are women.” The documentary celebrates the story of women priests, as it challenges viewers to consider other ways in which the Church may not be perceived as welcoming for all of God’s people.

Information about streaming rights for The Philadelphia Eleven, and showings in various locations, is available at philadelphiaelevenfilm.com. The first online screening is scheduled for March 8 on Kimema.

“We see signs everywhere saying ‘Love Wins’ … but doesn’t that feel a little naive, or even irresponsible?” In a polarized world where fear, hatred, and violence have exploded, is love dead?

Inspired by the teaching of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, A Case for Love goes after those questions, and makes its case, through a wide-ranging, engaging series of real-person vignettes and on-the-street interviews. They’re wrapped around moments of conversation with the bishop and reflections by other cultural voices, including Jon Meacham, Sam Waterston, Al Roker, rabbi Shoshanah Conover, peace activist Mohamed Elasnousi, Pete Buttigieg, John Danforth, and Kelly Brown Douglas.

Opening with brief problem-establishing clips of societal violence, racial and otherwise, the film moves quickly into a series of seven in-depth “chapters” — Being Dealt A Bad Hand, Love and Loss, Exclusion, Making it Easy, Answering the Call, Hope, and Love Is — that provide the framework for what is really an extended fluid, inviting — and entertaining — conversation.

To talk about entertaining, when referring to in-depth pieces about people who’ve survived sexual exploitation, racial injustice, refugee horrors, wartime trauma, bodily and personal rejections at the deepest levels — can seem like a poor choice of words. But director Brian Ide understands that we are a people and generations whose public media worlds center on entertainment. We have high visual and aural standards for what we’ll pay attention to, and go to a box office for, even if we can’t quite articulate them.

To tell and delve into such personal stories in a way that doesn’t turn an hour and 40-minute feature film into tedium, but rather pulls you along and into it, is a remarkable cinematic achievement. It offers a great choice of subjects, succinct pithy on-the-street comment captures, back and forth flow of stories and content that move easily in and out of themselves, and personable human beings who share of themselves in genuinely testimony moments in the best sense.

Eleven in-depth personal-story pieces, including part of Bishop Curry’s — woven roughly two to a chapter — articulate movements of love that changed otherwise dark and difficult stories into moments of light. And along the way they make the case for love.

“It was God that had me write a letter to the judge that made my life completely different 17 years later.” “My suffering has reason … we need to look out for others more.” “Don’t overthink it. … See an opportunity? Go for it. We decided we were just gonna love, and go with it.” “You don’t need to invest a lot to give someone else happiness.” “It pays to believe that you were put into the world to make a difference. We have agency … let’s do the something we can do.”

“When we talk about naivete,” Bishop Curry says, “we’re really talking about the ideals we don’t want to deal with. … It’s not complex. To bless and care for you also blesses and cares for me.”

Or as a young Black man raps in a kind of film coda: “Always showed me love / when I needed love / so when push came to shove / there was love.”

A Case For Love is a good film on a lot of levels. Well done.

The Rev. Len Freeman is adjunct clergy at St. David’s Church in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

A young mother dies and the father, Augie Steenbeck, a war photojournalist, takes three weeks to tell their four children that she’s gone. Not only that, but he’s waited until they’re on a trip to do so. Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) sits with his children at a small motor court in the bare-bones desert town of Asteroid City somewhere in the American Southwest. He explains to Woodrow, the “Brainiac” teenager, and the three precocious triplets — Pandora, Andromeda, and Cassiopeia — that their mother isn’t coming back from the hospital. “Let’s say she’s in heaven,” he says, deadpan, with a Tupperware container of his wife’s ashes on his lap, “which doesn’t exist for me, of course, but you’re Episcopalian.”

This pivotal scene happens early on in Asteroid City, the latest creation of filmmaker Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom). The trailer, with its glimpses of aliens, atomic bombs, and doomsday, creates the expectation of a summertime sci-fi blockbuster. The film’s oddly bright colors, deliberately offbeat cinematography, and A-list ensemble cast add to that impression. However, like any truly good genre film, Asteroid City crosses multiple boundaries, exploring the anxieties and the questions surrounding human existence, taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources. 

Many of these sources can be found in a promotional pre-show flick called The Road to Asteroid City: Atmospheric Inspirations as Noted in the Book DO NOT DETONATE Without Presidential Approval. The extra materials, including previews for movies such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Some Came Running (1958), Hot Rods to Hell (1966), and The Misfits (1961), a commercial for a 1950s toy horse, and some original videos of songs from the soundtrack, lend charm to the moviegoing experience and important clues to what Anderson hopes to express.

Without giving too much away, because the joy of revelation is paramount in watching this film, the story follows Augie Steenbeck and his children to Asteroid City, which consists of a café, a filling station, a scientific/military installation, and a motor court, and through which one paved highway runs, crossed at one point by a railroad track. Mesas and saguaro abound, and there is a huge crater formed by an asteroid that struck the Earth in 3007 B.C. Other people have come for a convention, as five gifted, nerdy teenagers, including Woodrow Steenbeck, are being honored for their inventions as part of the town’s celebration of Asteroid Day. The group gathers in the crater for the ceremony and to view an astronomical event. It’s then that they experience an extraterrestrial visitation, complete with a glowing green flying saucer. The search for answers begins.

It’s 1955 America, and Anderson creates an eccentric, exaggerated mise en scène to lure the audience into his mind. He’s filled Asteroid City with Easter eggs and tropes from beloved science-fiction films. Every shot has purpose; the soundtrack adds to the movie’s allure and depth. Even the road runner has significance. The film’s cast is, like that of Some Came Running, “as big as its story.” The lavish ensemble — including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrian Brody, Jeff Goldblum, and Bob Balaban — provides minimalist performances that give the characters auras of the ordinary in an extraordinary space. 

Aside from the lines about being Episcopalian (or not), this is an excellent film for seekers, no matter where one is in the journey. Anderson blends laugh-out-loud comedy with solemn moments of vulnerability that are often black and white rather than in color to create a film that explores faith and finding meaning in a world where death is always present, possibly imminent, and often out of our control. Through its emphasis on make-believe and playful storytelling, Asteroid City explores themes of loneliness, otherness, grief, and love. The movie becomes a hopeful apocalypse taking place in a “cosmic wilderness,” lifting the veil for a moment to assure the viewer that we can live within the mystery of life, that love matters, that we shouldn’t close ourselves off from each other. Like Anderson, we need to keep telling that story.

Imagine also this woman as one who longs for all of her grandchildren to be baptized and grow in their faith. She clears her schedule with evangelistic gusto and heads over to pick up her grandson. She is surprised and delighted when his sisters, two cute and peppy elementary students, ask to come along. Will this movie spur opportunities for catechesis, or even more? After all, the film will focus on the entry of the infinite into the finite for a full 138 minutes.

The woman was my mom, and those grandchildren were my nephew and nieces. I admit that I have mixed feelings about Son of God. It will surely bless many, but it could have been much better. The scenery often strays from the corresponding geography of biblical accounts. The computer-generated imagery, especially of the Temple and Jerusalem, is lame, while the Blessed Virgin Mary’s nose seems plastically perfected. The narrative is choppy, presumably because many of the scenes were pasted together from an earlier television rendering, and the seams remain visible.

But the film commendably alights on the Johannine motif of Jesus as a heavenly Son, placing it in the “high Christology” school. And viewing the life and ministry of Jesus within the larger narrative of the Apostle John, finally from Patmos, telescopically situates the work of this heavenly Son beyond his public earthly ministry. In other words, the film underlines and animates the divinity of Jesus Christ.

I probably won’t see the movie again nor take my youth group or college students to see it. I’m more inclined to take them to Noah or The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. But I am glad Son of God was released. It delivers the gospel basics and will, I am sure, serve the kingdom in countless ways around the globe. Even if it only made a difference in the lives of three little kids I’m fond of — which, by the way, it did — it would be worthwhile.