Amazon.com Review
Raymond Teague's
Reel Spirit is the ultimate guide to spirituality in the movies. Teague, a professional journalist and elder in the Unity Church, combined his love of the silver screen with his joyful personality to compile this compendium of more than 400 metaphysical films, from
Cool Runnings to
Ben Hur. Each movie's plot and primary characters are described, and Teague explains the spiritual lessons that can be derived from each film, regardless of whether or not its creators had a spiritual intent.
Reel Spirit is also an excellent reference for parents who want their children to see films with positive values and minimal violence.
--P. Randall Cohan
From Publishers Weekly
Spiritual people are just as subject as their secular neighbors to the Blockbuster Effect: the amazing incapacity, when confronted by a video store's thousands of titles, to pick out just one film to watch tonight. Teague aims to guide the perplexed toward "metaphysical movies" that demonstrate "basic spiritual principles"--specifically, the principles of the Unity Church, a development of Christianity with affinities to, though a longer history than, the New Age movement. (Unity teaching includes the ideas that "the essence of God is within each person" and "we create our world and experiences using God-energy.") Teague, who was a journalist before joining the Unity Church's publishing arm, provides short summaries of the plots of 150 movies, along with a page-long commentary on each film's spiritual themes. Short synopses point readers to an additional 250 movies. Teague covers a wide range of Hollywood's output, from the 1950s to the present, focusing mostly on films with a strong positive message, from The Wizard of Oz to the Star Wars series. But he doesn't stray very far from the beaten path: there is no mention of the spiritually charged The Shawshank Redemption, much less notable films that missed the American mainstream, such as Searching for Bobby Fischer or Babette's Feast. Teague's selections mirror standard box office hits so closely that readers may have a difficult time discerning where Hollywood ends and Unity begins.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
