"The Ordinary Radicals" directed by Jamie Moffett

I watched a film last night and I’m struggling with how to write about it. I really wanted to like it, but I walked out feeling frustrated and confused and somewhat alienated.

It was called "The Ordinary Radicals" and it examines what the director calls a movement of “revolutionary Christianity. One with a quiet disposition that seeks to do small things with great love.”

Sounds intriguing right? I had read and enjoyed “The Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne, co-founder with Jamie Moffett of the “Simple Way” community in Philadelphia, and one of the main characters in the film.

I loved the “simple” approach to living out his faith and making a difference, that Claiborne describes, from making his own clothes and reducing his environmental footprint, to coming alongside a group of homeless people about to be evicted from an abandoned church they have turned into their home.

Claiborne lives his life in a radical way on the front lines, in community with a group of like-minded people.

So TOR is basically a documentary following Claiborne and the film’s director Moffett and some of their other friends (there are a lot of players and most aren’t properly introduced) as they tour around the U.S. with the new book “Jesus for President.”

The film’s Toronto premiere was at the Bloor Cinema, and the place was packed.

So the film follows the group as they travel across the U.S. – in a cooking-oil-fuelled bus -- on their tour. They visit churches, community groups, a music festival, promoting their message that living like Christ goes beyond political affiliation or your stance on abortion, but really means living for others, in love.

On their road trip they highlight people who are doing that, from an advocate and activist who lives in an old bus to be close to the homeless, to some guy who won two cars on The Price is Right but sold them to go to Uganda, to a soldier who left the army because God told him to.

Some of these people are really inspiring, but there are so many, and there’s so little depth to each story, that my friends and I found it hard to really connect.

Claiborne and Moffett have been living this way for a long time, and at parts I felt like they felt obligated to tell the story of everyone they had ever met who is making a difference. In short, there was way too much information and it was way to scattered. And it was too long.

It seemed like there was no real narrative that wove through the film – and as a result the many anecdotes felt disconnected and disparate.

I would have preferred if they had focused in greater depth on a few stories. The Amish group that offered real forgiveness to a murderer who devastated their community – sharing that they were ready, in advance, to offer forgiveness, intrigued me and I wanted to know more.

I was fascinated by their explanation that “forgiveness means being willing to give up your right to revenge.”

Another paradox of this film is this: Though the group seems focused on building bridges between Christians and non-church people, it seems as my friend Jared said, to alienate almost everyone. The Christian Right, especially, seems to be the big bad guy and there seems to be an assumption that everyone would agree with that.

I didn’t like that perspective and it seemed to run contrary to their message of building bridges and promoting love.

Weird.

I also can’t imagine a non-religious person connecting to the film, which also seems to go against their goal of breaking down barriers. I mean really, there’s so much Christian-ese in the film, I think anyone without that context would walk out going ‘what the…???’

But I will say this – my friends and I spent more than an hour discussing the film afterwards in a pub over beer. At times we were ranting, and we all found things we disagreed with.

But somehow we were all inspired by parts too. Not by the film in general, I would say, but by a few of those stories about real people making a difference in their world.

I was going to end the blog there, but I just remembered one other thing that annoyed me. The very last line of the movie is from this woman, who like many people in the film just seems to appear out of nowhere, says: “We are the change we have been waiting for!”

That’s an Obama campaign slogan, and I thought it really discredited their non-political message to that point.

Argh! So brutal.