Werner Herzog
1981
40 minutes
This is a Werner Herzog documentary which consists mostly of footage of a sermon by a pastor in a primarily African-American church in Brooklyn. It looks little like most of the church services you have ever attended. Most of the services you have attended in your life have been either Catholic or Orthodox masses, depending on who you were dating at the time and usually connected to weddings or funerals, parental visits, or major holidays. You were personally raised atheist/agnostic. You would tell most people you were agnostic since atheist was such a Bad Word around where you grew up, and you caught enough flak just not belonging to any church at all.
Being around religious people was always a little unnerving for you. Their religion ostensibly taught them to be "good" people, but on the other hand it also sometimes taught them that people like you were heathens and unbelievers and this status made it okay for them to fuck with you. It wasn't even so much about whether you believed or not; the mere fact of belonging to some out-group made you fair game. You were not one of God's "made men", and people were always ready to make sure you knew it.
William S. Burroughs said it best: "If you are doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit, not with the good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal!"
Time to choose something different: