Two historical Christian musicals are in theaters, but only one seems to have faith

While the Shakers’ devastating devotion is reflective of a real faith experience, there’s little to aspire to in Ann Lee and her attempt at a Utopian religious society, other than the perseverance and determination she possesses, detached from faith. Despite her transcendent visions, Ann Lee loses her four children, her husband, her home, her mind, and nearly her entire community. Fastvold makes clear the damage done to individuals and communities when faith is observed to the cultish degree of Ann Lee (or mindlessly adhered to, in a common, modern, Angel Studios kind of way).

Fastvold’s film exemplifies the tragedy of extreme religious devotion as a waste of some of humanity’s strongest and most impassioned people, who in the contexts of human rights or pursuits of law, justice, politics, education, or organization, could’ve been the next Gandhi or MLK, imperfect figures whose faiths were malleable and adaptable enough to take shape around the goal of humanitarian pursuits over inhumane religiosity. Cunningham and Dawes, on the other hand, don’t exhibit a single sticking doubt or ambiguity in their pursuit of extreme devotion through David.

As dueling musicals, the films’ vastly different depictions of faith are best exemplified through their approach to song. For both parties, singing is a profession of faith, but for Ann Lee and the Shakers, the more radical and impassioned their worship, the more violent their consequences and the more staunch their belief. Whether they’re breaking noise ordinances that piss off their neighbors (and, more importantly, the ruling, ecclesiastical Church Of England they want to differentiate themselves from) or spreading their neverending worship across the new American northeast, song results in suffering: prison, deportation, raids, church-burning, killing, and the like. There’s an exigence, a real meaning, to the worship songs of people living out that faith.

For David and his followers—who are enslaved by the Philistines that dwarf them—singing somehow inspires fear in their captors. In contrast, their songs are less passionate, more generic in what they profess, and somehow lead to the enemy’s sudden retreat, guaranteed by miraculous events surrounding their emancipation that parallel those that save them after David defeats Goliath. For the Israelites, sheepishly singing “I will not be afraid” stops swords mid-swing, dissolves the chains around their ankles, and is enough of a faith expression that the words themselves become a miraculous weapon to disarm their enemy.

There’s a weakness of spirit in David‘s songs, an empty simplicity and errant lack of praise that, up against the zealous fervor of Ann Lee’s worshipful community, asks the question: Which of the two parties actually finds meaning in their faith? Who—the Shakers or the Israelites—actually exhibits faith? That’s not to say the Shakers are an enviable breed. Their zealotry is nothing short of cultish. But there’s no questioning their faith, regardless of how one feels about it, or the meaning they find in life through God and song. 

The weak defeat the strong plenty throughout history, that’s no miracle. Angel Studios’ depiction of David slingshotting a rock square into the center of Goliath’s skull from a hundred yards away certainly assures us that it could happen. But the rest of Goliath’s giant army stands armored and poised to attack after Goliath’s death, a surefire impending loss for David. But the sudden arrival of David’s non-militant village people—with sticks for swords and pots for helmets—as an unconquerable force is pure miracle, played as Christian history that believers should find inspiration in. 

In contrast, even the alternate title to The Testament Of Ann Lee—The Woman Clothed By The Sun, With The Moon Beneath Her Feet, a direct quote from Revelation 12:1, which depicts a Mariological figure birthing the Son Of God in agony in the face of a Satanic dragon before retreating to a mythological wilderness (much like Northeastern wood the film opens on)—offers more to chew on scripturally and theologically than the entirety of David’s fundamentalism. As most venerated Bible scholars will tell you, of the Christian faith or not, the tales of Old Testament scripture are not to be read so literally. David likely existed, was King, and other such essential facts that give the stories a historical angle. But said tales’ grandiosity and instructiveness have been forged by the fire of Angel Studios-like storytellers over thousands of years, making them into fables.

If miracles rescued people from their darkest despair, their most hopeless moments, it would be easy to believe. There would be no need for faith. Who wouldn’t sign up for that existential protection if it were a certainty? That’d be like not having health insurance. But without something as obvious as miracles, the concept of faith must embrace ambiguity, doubt, and reality in order to exist. David and Ann Lee might tell dialectic stories of the religious experience, but, ironically, they inspire the opposite of their makers’ worldviews when it comes to finding meaning in faith—one shows admiration for its perseverance and lifelong difficulty, while the other presents it with certainty, a crutch that dismantles the concept of faith altogether. 

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