The Greater Good

This post contains spoilers about the movie Hot Fuzz.

I have had a post rolling around in my head for a long time. I watched the movie Hot Fuzz a few months ago, and especially at the beginning, I found myself thinking of the book A Church of Her Own. The movie is a hilarious spoof of the cop genre, done by some of the same folks as Shaun of the Dead. It begins by establishing that the main character is great at his job as a policeman in London, but it turns out he is too good. He's making the rest of them look bad! So the higher-ups ship him off to a tiny, sleepy town in the country. He learns that the crime rate is extremely low, though the accident rate is curiously high. Eventually, he discovers that the neighborhood watch has been killing people who make the town look bad, mostly for absurd reasons like building an unsightly house, acting badly in community theater, or even just having an annoying laugh. These people put the town's standing as Village of the Year in jeopardy. The murders are all made to look like accidents, which is why the accident rate is so high. The refrain throughout is that everything is for "the greater good" (which is always echoed in agreement by at least one character, never said just once in this movie). At the end he is able to persuade the rest of the police officers to think differently about "the greater good" and save the day. It's great and you should watch it, preferably a bunch of times, because it gets a lot better with each viewing.

A Church of Her Own is a nonfiction work about women in ministry. It is full of discouraging, disheartening anecdotes about senior pastors (men and women) belittling, ignoring, or undermining female associate pastors, as well as congregations and communities that don't know what to do with a pastor who's a woman. Story after story made me hang my head. People were fixated on women pastors' appearance and clothing, commenting on that instead of the sermon--even if she was wearing a robe or alb, people often talked about her shoes, nail polish, hair, or jewelry! If I needed any confirmation that women are often seen as objects to be beheld, not people with something to say, this book provided it. It ends on an uplifting note, with a few stories of exciting work women are doing in ministry. I recommend it to anyone who has a vested interest in churches.

Here's what made me think of the book while I watched the movie: the main character was treated a lot like the women in the book. Not objectified, but often ignored or waved away as a naive newcomer or an overachiever who was not appreciated for pointing out what others had missed. As I said, it's been months, and specific examples aren't coming to me, but this is a blog, not a dissertation. One day I'll go back and read the book and watch the movie and bring in some quotes. The idea is that he disrupted the status quo by trying to do the right thing, like looking into accidents that seemed suspicious. What he was doing, what lots of ministers of any gender do, is for the greater good. There's nothing inherently wrong with comfort, routine, the way we've always done it. But when someone comes along who doesn't know the code or doesn't care to follow it, or who asks questions that unsettle us, or who wants to dig deeper when we prefer to stay on the surface, or who has a different perspective, let's listen to them. Let's not dismiss them as not knowing anything because they're not like us. Let's not pat them on the head and tell them not to worry. Let's take them seriously. Let's welcome them into our lives and communities with genuine care and curiosity about who they are and what they are about. Let's not be like the village or like some of the churches and individuals in the book. Let's take a chance and turn our faces outward from time to time. For the greater good.