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The nature of faith is an elusive concept. What it is, what it does, what it means, what it should mean are all nebulous at best…if you’re not a believer. The people in Let the Church Say Amen are all believers and for them faith is concrete. It is not an abstract notion made up of ultimately frivolous concepts of morality and philosophy that adheres and bends to the whims of academics, politicians and cynics. No, faith is a tool with which lives and further, communities are constructed, nurtured, maintained and rescued.
It is active, dynamic, courageous and tender. Ultimately, for the congregation of the World Missions for Christ Church in a ghetto of Washington D.C., faith is the mechanism by which the world works.
| “I’d rather be down by the railroad track in a renovated chicken coop where the presence of God is, than be in a big cathedral where the presence of God is not,” says the pastor Bobby Perkins early in the movie and you believe him. You see him in his tiny little church, with his tiny congregation, giving it everything he’s got. He preaches, hollers, sings, dances, crawls, screams and sweats to reveal the word of God to his people. Everything he gives, they give back. |
“Every need must bow. Every tongue must confess.”
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When they talk about the spirit moving them, it is not a question of belief. It is what has happened and we as the audience bear witness to this. What you don’t hear a lot of is quotes or readings from the Bible. Perkins calls on his own life experience and the will of God to show him what to say. A recovered drug addict, he believes his real work is in the streets with those who have been forgotten and neglected by the greater society around them. With the entire film taking place in the shadow of the White House, this mission becomes that much more poignant and meaningful. These are people who don’t have the same opportunities available to them, the same resources that so many others do, in this, the richest and most powerful country on the earth. They have to lean on each other, root for each other, fight for each other and console each other. And so they do. And this little church provides the bedrock upon which they build their community.
Let the Church Say Amen was filmed over a two year period and follows the pastor and some of the members of his congregation as they put their shoulder to the trials and tribulations of living in the ghetto. Their dreams feel small by movie standards – no one is searching for the Ark of the Covenant or blowing up the Death Star or traipsing around Italy, India and Bali learning its okay to eat. All these dreams have to do with holding their respective families together and safe. Darlene Duncan is going to school to become a nurse to help support her family of eight…but she can’t read at more than a sixth grade level. David Surles, homeless but now living and working at the church shelter, wants to own a four unit apartment building with a backyard and a tree so he can provide a home for his kids should they need it. Ceodtis Fulmore – or “Brother C”, a preacher in his own right, prowls the city streets with an evangelical fire in his eyes and struggles to keep his kids off the streets and save those who have lost their way with his music. Sometimes the setbacks they suffer are small, at other times they are devastating. When the obstacles they encounter become almost too much to bear they turn to each other and to their God.
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It is enormously difficult to make a film about religion with anything resembling honesty or integrity. It’s almost as though the process itself is corrupting. And nowadays, with the very concept of Christianity being perverted by the George Bushes and the Joel Osteens of the world conducting pre-emptive wars and/or making the world safe for they and their cronies to amass as much material wealth as they can, you wonder what integrity there is for Christianity to even hold on to. Let the Church Say Amen is a reminder that religion, any religion, derives its strength and its resonance not from the Pope or the Pat Robertson but from the quiet courage of every day people finding a common ground they can believe in and from which they can forge community.
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You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize and acknowledge that this tiny church in this D.C. ghetto is a powerful source of inspiration and fellowship to its parishioners. You don’t have to be religious at all to note how that inspiration comes from an entirely pure place that has nothing to do with the trappings or the politics that contemporary spirituality so often seems to drown in. The church begun by Joann Perkins and her family of twelve siblings is a church in the most fundamental sense of the word. The congregation pitches in to help fellow parishioners repair their cars, they conduct food drives, hold health fairs, steer people away from substance abuse, and basically offer support in every way that a church should help its community. As it should, their faith gives them something larger than themselves to believe in and gives them not just a purpose, but a spiritual engine. It does not insulate them from pain, hardship or hard work but it does give their lives meaning, which is more than a lot of people can say. Pastor Perkins, Darlene, Surles and Brother C do not walk around in a state of righteous anger about the state of being impoverished black people in a white man’s world. They work, they pray, they heal themselves, they work to heal their community. In a lot of ways, this church knows that it is the bulwark against a harsh and unforgiving world. “It’s a war,” says Brother C, “every day on the streets.”
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