New film 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye' captures televangelist couple on the big screen
Plus: how Turkey's Armenian Christian minority is safeguarding their ancient liturgy
Hi ReligionUnplugged readers,
Heading to the movies this weekend? "The Eyes of Tammy Faye” releases on Friday and has already stirred think pieces. Starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield, the movie tells the story of Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, the celebrity televangelist couple who built their own multimillion-dollar network and empire in the 1970s before it came crashing down amid a sexual affair and financial fraud.
Culture critic and filmmaker Joseph Holmes writes that though Hollywood this time empathizes with evangelicals, the film ultimately fails to hold the Bakkers accountable for their faults or explore their redemption.
The Armenian Antasdan service, performed many times a year on feast days, is one of the Armenian Apostolic Church’s most dynamic surviving services. Dr. Christopher Sheklian writes on the importance and beauty of this ceremony, particularly as it’s performed outside the small brick chapel of Surp Pırgiç, Holy Savior, in Istanbul.
The rich liturgic life of the Armenian Apolistic Church, he says, is important to keeping Armenians in Turkey visible after the 1915 Armenian Genocide. This strategy manifests itself as a cry and demand from the people.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you back here next week.
‘The Eyes Of Tammy Faye’ Is Loving But Uninsightful Portrait Of Evangelical Celebrity
Turkey’s Armenian Christian Minority Is Safeguarding Ancient Liturgy by Dr. Christopher Sheklian
(ANALYSIS) For the Armenian religious minority in Istanbul, a practice based on ancient tradition serves as a strategy of visibility, a cry and demand, a claim to the minority right to the city for a people scattered and decimated by genocide more than 100 years ago.
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