6 Great Movies That Criticize Religious Faith

A throwback to a time when Kevin Smith used to make really good movies, Dogma is another terrific example of taking religious ideas and stretching them until they collapse beneath their own absurdity. Here we have a Catholic church celebrating how out of touch it is, trying to appeal to new generations with cheesy slogans and turning Jesus into a cheery mascot. Then there’s some requisite blasphemy, mostly in the orthodox sense, since a lot of the claims make perfect historical sense, such as Jesus being black (it’s at least fairly certain that he wasn’t white) and having a wife and children.

The main point of the movie is actually one that’s well taken, though. This is partly because it’s not actually that antagonistic towards Christianity in general, but toward the rigidity that inevitably skews so much of organized religion. The premise of the plot, that two disgruntled angels found a loophole in God’s law that could potentially undo all of creation, is precisely the kind of logical nonsense that trying to apply rational things like law and order to something that’s ultimately a supernatural mystery leads to. It’s a nicely made piece of work maintaining a kind of reverence to the possibilities of faith but a dismantling of the human attempt to systematize and explain the unknowable. Also, there’s a demon made of feces and other hilarious things.

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