Silence, Apostasy and Religious Teaching
A Bahá’í perspective on missionaries
Liam Neeson in the movie ‘Silence’
November 16 2019
The most interesting movie I have ever seen on religion (with an honourable mention to the Life of Brian; Sublime meet Ridiculous) is Silence — directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver.
If you have not seen it (and, if you read this publication, it goes without saying that you must), it tells the story of two Christian missionaries who travel to Japan in the 17th century — a time when Christianity was being forcefully suppressed and Christians were largely in hiding due to the heavy persecution they faced.
Upon capture, the missionaries are put under immense pressure, including impressively creative torture methods, to renounce their faith. Crucially, it is not primarily the missionaries themselves who are tortured, but other prisoners: the missionaries are essentially forced to choose between their own spiritual steadfastness and the suffering and eventual death of innocent people.
As well as being a historical period piece, there are different contemporary themes at play in Silence. Various aspects of religious faith are questioned but not answered; there are some hardcore existential questions about the limits (even dangers) of emotional detachment; and the age-old paradox of the apparent ambivalence of God to suffering is explored.
Ultimately, I think Martin Scorsese (a faithful but fiercely questioning Christian) was trying to undertake a re-conceptualisation of his religion: specifically by challenging self-absorbed, self-serving interpretations of religious faith and its teaching.
The movie questions the expression of faith as superficial outward acts of virtue signalling to the Almighty, where ultimately one’s own spiritual journey and relationship with God are prioritised at the expense of others. Instead, I get a suggestion that true faith might be something that allows you to remain steadfast internally even as you make an external compromise that you deem able to relieve the suffering of others.
Slightly paradoxically, then, someone truly faithful can, as one would swallow their pride, also swallow their faith during times when teaching is judged to be undesirable, and to act seemingly in contradiction to ‘faithfulness’ — to apostatise — in service of something greater.
And it is really the concept of apostasy that this movie, for me, revolves around. Apostasy, as broadly defined, isn’t necessarily renunciation of God, or even a religion (although it can be, and this is its typical connotation in a Biblical sense), but the renunciation of a particular religious or spiritual principle or belief.
In Silence, the apostasy isn’t against God in any meaningful sense: at the risk of spoilers, it is made clear that those who apostatise outwardly by no means relinquish their faith internally. Rather, the apostasy is against a pre-determined idea of what it means to be unconditionally faithful to God: basically, to put the integrity of your own faith and how it is outwardly expressed ahead of the well-being of others.
In this sense, the film actually invites us to see the apostasies as profound acts of spiritual sacrifice: a brilliant and powerful subversion.
The main reason Silence resonated so much with me is that it addresses issues of faith and identity that I have been dealing with in my own life (yes, I am about to compare myself both to Martin Scorsese and the characters he has created).
I am a Bahá’í ‘pioneer’: that is, someone who moves from their home town to a more remote area to teach the Bahá’í Faith (there are numerous other reasons why I moved, but, for the sake of this story, let’s stick with this one for now).
“So…” you may or may not be saying right now, “you are a missionary?”. Well, yeh sorta. I would like to say they are completely different but the underlying reality is the same. You are travelling away from home to spread your Faith, and through it the Word of God, to people who (you believe) need it.
But pioneering also has to be different. A very wise Bahá’í recently said that one of the most challenging tasks in teaching our Faith is to re-conceptualise religion. The role of a pioneer is to challenge what we understand religion to be, hopefully but highly unlikely in the same way that Scorsese has done.
This inevitably requires teaching to and persuading those whose existing preconceptions of religion range from skeptical, to dismissive, to downright hostile.
While there are many reasons for such hostility (which I used to share to a large extent), I believe they stem from two main sources: either a lack of understanding of the unarguable positive influence of religion in historical societies; or completely logical responses to the unarguable negative influence of religion in contemporary society.
Hypocritical religious individuals who claim certain spiritual virtues while practicing the opposite; pious and holier-than-thou religious communities who condescend and shun rather than embrace and include those they see as morally inferior; toxic, corrupt and self-serving religious institutions — these are all preconceptions that must be overcome.
A key component of my pioneering is learning when to hold my tongue: in what situations do I ‘teach’, and what situations do I just be a normal human being. And it is here that I (perhaps slightly tenuously) see a link back to Silence and the concept of apostasy.
In doing this, I definitely don’t want to trivialise the potential seriousness of apostasy. It is worth mentioning that, like in Silence, the pressure to apostatise (or ‘dissimulate’ as it is also referred to) is a very real one, with life and death consequences in many religions including the Bahá’í Faith — particularly during its early days but also still in many countries today.
But nonetheless: the traditional conception of apostasy does seem a bit self-absorbed: a failing of an individual’s personal faith and belief in God, without any great consideration of its broader implications. Maybe it is useful then to take away its more dramatic and emotional connotations, and look at it, as in Silence, more pragmatically.
In this context, one of the key differentiating qualities of pioneering that allows it to break away from previous modes of religious teaching, or preaching, or of missionaries, is through conscious acts of (albeit very mild) apostasy.
Every instance of teaching is not a test of telling the Truth (phew, they slammed the door and I’ll probably never see them again, but at least I passed!), but a test of whether you genuinely have their best interests at heart; are you just going through the motions, or are you truly driven by the goal of increasing the well-being and unity of that community.
In fact, the truly subversive implication of Silence for pioneering is that just saying the Truth every time might actually be a bit of a cop-out. It relieves you of the burden of not having to go through the tedious process of seeking to get to know and understand each individual you come into contact with, including whatever is required of you to build that relationship so that you can eventually teach.
Of course, this could just be me having an ego trip, comparing Christian missionaries in Japan facing torture and crucifixion for spreading their religious beliefs to me pioneering to, of all the ghastly places in the world, Esperance, Australia.
Have you heard of Esperance? We have some of the whitest beaches in the world (scientifically proven). We have a lake called Pink Lake which, slightly awkwardly, isn’t actually pink anymore. We also (not even kidding) have a replica Stonehenge.
Although we do have sharks, which will do more to you than those poor souls in Silence were subjected to in the name of religion. So don’t tell me this isn’t a sacrifice.