Danny Alpert, the film’s executive producer, and four directors spent years with their subjects and whittled 1,400 hours of material into a four-hour film.
The film offers a peek inside the spiritual discernment process, showing the subjects deep in prayer, confiding their personal struggles to mentors, and wondering aloud if they have what it takes.
“The Calling” intercuts its characters’ stories from their first days of training, through years of study, and into their early practice as religious professionals. The film follows them within and beyond the walls of their schools, confronting the sacrifices they have made to pursue this path. We see them debate theology and philosophy, learn to deliver sermons, perform their first weddings and funerals, and counsel people in crisis. We also experience them as young people at the crossroads of their lives, struggling with dating, partners, family, and other challenges of “coming of age.”
“The Calling” also brings to light political and social issues.
An African American convert to Islam, Bilal Ansari, who ministers to prison inmates in Connecticut, finds his computer confiscated and his office cordoned off by police tape after a co-worker sees the words “jihad” and “terrorism” in a computer file. Ansari explains that the file was a lecture he was giving to inmates to emphasize the difference between the two ideas.
Ansari now serves in the federal prison system in Connecticut and is an interfaith clergy organizer for Universal Health Care. He continues to raise his voice against racism and Islamophobia and strives to serve as a bridge between the Christian world he was raised in and the Muslim life he chose.
Then there is Tahera Ahmad, who is well aware of her family’s South Asian cultural expectations and realizes she must seize the opportunity to travel and study Islam before settling into married life. She becomes a scholar and chaplain who upholds traditional Islam while demonstrating a tough-as-nails feminism that will turn the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman on its head.
Like Tahera Ahmed’s story, the documentary touches on the challenges of balancing family obligations with the demands of ministry in the Jewish and Christian traditions. New Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro strives to be the primary caregiver to his new baby when his wife returns to work. Jeneen Robinson, a single mother in Los Angeles, must find temporary sources of income while she searches for a full-time pulpit in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. For Reverend Steven Gamez, there is no balance. As a celibate priest, he will not have a wife or children competing for his attention, a reality he ultimately embraces but not without obvious struggle.
“If I could have my cake and eat it, too,” he says in the film, “I would love to be a married priest.” But, he adds with a sigh, “It’s not going to happen.”
Reverend Gamez is also seen in San Antonio counselling a family and having to dea with allegations by a sister against her brother. In a post-sex abuse scandal Catholic Church, the priest makes it clear that the era of cover-up is over. He alerts both church authorities and the police.
Other stories include that of Shmuly Yanklowitz, a rabbi convinced that rabbis shouldn’t “just sit and teach.” Yanklowitz travels to Iowa to investigate labor violations and mistreatment of cattle at a kosher slaughterhouse. He then delivers an emotional appeal to his Orthodox brethren to adopt stricter standards to protect workers.
As the documentary follows the seven people through their journey, we get the sense that they won’t simply be leading their particular faith communities but will help shape national discussions on faith, social justice, politics and other issues of serious import.
Alpert said he wanted to show the American religious experience.
“It’s about faith in the United States,” he said, adding that American Islam is developing its own identity within world Islam. “American Muslims are a … very fascinating experiment of what happens to Islam in this melting pot, in this multicultural society.”
But ultimately, for Alpert, the film transcends religion.
“We didn’t want to make a film that was preaching to the converted,” he said. “We wanted to make a film that could speak to secular audiences. … I think it’s about people and, in my mind, beyond denomination.”
Source: IslamToday