Saved: Shit! Fuck! God Damn!

I got saved the summer before 8th grade, on the last night of church camp, as the youth minister spoke softly over the strumming of an acoustic guitar and my friends had their heads bowed, eyes closed, hands raised, and I thought about my mom’s prayer request list, the one I had found in her car, with my at-risk soul right at the top. I was the last of my siblings and the last of my church friends to ask Jesus that very special question, and it was now or some awkward Sunday school. I may as well seize the moment, I thought, while the candles are still offering the mood lighting and people may not notice me going up to the nearest adult and letting them know that I was ready. We did the special prayer, I got many hugs, and I was informed that I now had a second birthday: the day I was born again as a Christian. I made it official with a baptism a few months later, and as far as the church is concerned, I’ve got a ticket to heaven with my name on it.

I wouldn’t see it until a few years later, but that same summer, Saved! was released. Directed and co-written by Brian Dannelly, the satirical comedy nails (pun intended) so much of my experience growing up in a southern Baptist church. While seemingly caricatures, I found no exaggeration in any of the supporting roles: we have the over-enthusiastic Pastor Skip who’s definitely very cool and not at all out of touch with the teens; his son Patrick, the forbidden fruit PK (pastor’s kid, for you heathens) that we all knew and lusted after; and, of course, the ever-pious (and she won’t let you forget it) ringleader, Hilary Faye. Mary, our misguided protagonist, is where most of us can insert ourselves: trying so hard to do it all right, but despite the prayer circles and the bible study and the alt-rock worship songs, finding ourselves coming up short. We all knew, or was, a Dean, the kind boyfriend whose only sin is being gay; a Cassandra, the Jewish outsider who’s forced to attend a Christian school and is the target of relentless attempts at evangelism; and Roland, the wheelchair-using cynic who already sees through all of the hypocrisy thanks to a lifetime of being resented and treated as a charity case. 

I watched Saved! at a sleepover with my church friends in high school, about three years after that night at camp. We all shrieked with laughter at every joke that hit so close to home, throwing bibles at each other while shouting that they weren’t weapons, but inside, another chord was being struck. I felt seen. The thing is, those girls at the sleepover, who I had grown up in the church with and who I held hands with during prayer circle, who I shared rooms with on mission trips and step-clapped next to in Voice of Praise, were my bullies. I had my own Hilary Faye, and she had her sidekicks, and they were somehow always better Christians than the rest of us, placed on the highest pedestal (the one closest to God) that I could never reach, no matter how often I did my morning devotionals or lured friends to church with the promise of the Xbox and free soda they would find in the youth group room.

The reason this film gained traction after its initial theater run is because I was far from the only one who felt seen. Brian Dannelly, director and co-writer, made this film for the outsiders who felt the same ache: feeling like you don’t belong in the one place where everyone is supposed to belong. Jesus walked with the sinners, after all, but who’s to say any of us is actually more or less deserving of salvation? Dannelly’s script, which is mostly based on things he personally witnessed or experienced as a gay teenager, manages to weave together these painful feelings with some of the sharpest humor in any mid-00s teen movie I’ve seen.

“I try to remember that when God closes a door, he opens a window.”

“Yeah, so we have something we can jump out of.”

And while I can’t talk about this movie without relating it to my own experience, I also can’t skip over the fact that it is truly funny. The script is full of one-liners that would seem too on-the-nose to anyone that hasn’t heard them firsthand, with many of them coming from Pastor Skip, who walks out onstage in the kind of performance that my sister and I always called “Six Flags Over Jesus,” inviting the kids to “walk with the ultimate rebel” and reminding them that “good Christians don’t get jiggy with it until they’re married.” There’s the subtle visual gags, like how Mary’s single mom, Lillian, is dyeing her hair a different color every few months, or Hilary Faye’s JC GRL license plate, or Mary asking Jeeves about “gay” and then being redirected to GUYSRAMALOT.COM. There’s the incredible scene of Hilary Faye and her cronies attempting to exorcize Mary, brilliantly backed by the Halloween score. And, of course, there’s the premise itself, that a girl is so desperate to “fix” her boyfriend’s gayness that she believes that a hot Jesus has appeared to her and told her to sleep with him, resulting in an almost-immaculate pregnancy.

“You really learn a lot about a boy when you’re servicing the Lord.”

As Mary’s bump grows, so does her disillusionment, elevating the film from parody to social commentary. “I thought we had a deal,” Mary pleads with God; the hypocrisy that’s been played for laughs is now her reality. Isolated, with her own mother not even noticing her pregnancy, she rejects Patrick the PK and withdraws into giant sweaters and questions her faith. The funny thing is, of all of these Jesus freaks, Cassandra is the first to realize what’s happening. And while she’s been painted to be this aggressive, sinful, sexual deviant, she is the one person who embraces Mary without judgment or mockery. She may not accept Christ, but she’s the most Christlike of all of them. So many believers put blind faith into the idea that the broken can be fixed, if only they try hard enough; Patrick observes that places like Mercy House really exist for the people that do the sending. The film knocks everyone off of their pedestals, reminding us that what we really owe each other is the chance to exist as ourselves without judgment.

Whether you’re down with G-O-D or not, this movie’s worth a watch. I should note that at times, the movie does show its age: we hear the r-word more than once, and there’s the quintessential “the hot girl used to be fat!” reveal. But if you did grow up a JC freak, you most likely can find some part of your life reflected here. Without getting too preachy–after all, I don’t have Godflight here to back up my sermon–I can’t help but encourage you to recommit your life, not to Jesus, but to yourself, and remember that there’s a community for you, whether it’s in a church or in some other kind of sanctuary, whatever that may be; might I suggest a room full of people just watching great movies together?