Author James Carroll is an idiosyncratic Catholic, a former priest who still celebrates his faith yet rejects the very roots of its doctrine, viewing Christianity's promise of eternal life as "destructive" and the cross as a symbol of Roman Emperor Constantine's lust for power.
This unorthodox perspective drives "Constantine's Sword," a documentary premiering Sunday at the Los Angeles Film Festival about Carroll's personal discovery of anti-Semitism in the Catholic church and its influence in today's evangelical Christian movement.
The film, based on Carroll's 2001 book, uses his spiritual journey as a guide and his naivete as a cautionary tale, detailing the violence committed by the church over the centuries in Christ's name. In the end, Carroll warns ominously that the same brand of us-versus-them Christian dogma that dominates America today also led to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
"If you think of religion as a great lake," Carroll says in the film, "it's a lake of gasoline and all it's going to take is someone to drop a match into it for a terrible conflagration ... that's what the world of weapons of mass destruction means. And when you put religion into that context, as a source of hatred and violence, the worst catastrophe of all is possible. Every religious person has to be responsible for every way their religion encourages intolerance, suspicion, hate and envy of each other. We have some very clear reckoning to do."
Carroll's interest in turning his book into a documentary came shortly after the 2004 release of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," which was criticized for what some saw as its depiction of Jews as Christ killers. The film set box office records and demonstrated the enormous cultural influence of conservative Christians, convincing Carroll that he urgently needed to reach a broader audience with his research.
He sought out director Oren Jacoby just as Jacoby began filming "Sister Rose's Passion," a short documentary nominated last year for an Oscar, about a nun who helps remove anti-Semitism from Catholic teaching materials.
Jacoby said he was moved by Carroll's "special kind of intelligence and sensitivity."
"He was passionate," Jacoby said. " 'Tortured' is too strong a word, but it's close. He was someone who was in a real crisis because of his concerns about this religion he cares so deeply about. But more importantly, he was concerned about America and the line that was being crossed between church and state."
