If atheists and humanists wish to push back against religious fundamentalism, perhaps the best tool for doing it is pop culture.
Jeff Jackson, an LA-based atheist filmmaker, is spearheading a film project that’s aiming to do just that. It’s a romantic comedy with a deliciously subversive secular twist. It’s about a young bride who tries to hide her fiancé’s atheism from her very Catholic mom until after the wedding. It’s all going according to plan until the groom has a candid chat with their novice priest and inadvertently talks him out of the priesthood. It’s hilarious, inclusive, and life-affirming — and it just might open a few minds among the growing millions who’ve become uncomfortable with religion but have yet to embrace atheism.
Jackson has already produced and directed a short film version of it, and he’s raised about half of the money to produce it as a feature-length movie. He’s running a crowdfunding campaign to raise the rest of the funding. You can read all about it on the film’s website here.
As a child, I was always told, “Mixed marriages never work.” As an adult, I find that those may be the only marriages with a real chance of success, because their relationship would likely be based on existential criteria, not social roles and social norms.