by David Keating
The Keating Files – October 21, 2020
Season 4 of FX’s anthology series Fargo offers some timely commentary on issues of crime in America, racial divides, the legacy of families, and faith.
Each season of Fargo provides a self-contained story with a new set of characters and locations loosely inspired by the tone and narrative style of Joel and Ethan Coen, who directed the original Fargo in 1996. While the television series has never been a ratings smash, it does give audiences something different in the crime genre.
The characters contained in the show are often more than just quirky, Coen-esque figures. Instead, they give voice to complex aspects of human life and experience through the lens of this darkly comic world crafted in the show.
One particular aspect of season 4 that interested me involved the role of faith and the family. In this season, the narrative focuses on two crime syndicates located in Kansas City, Missouri, as they vie for control over the criminal empire located there. The season begins a series of montages in which we see power transfer over the course of decades from The Moskowitz Syndicate, a Jewish crime family, to The Milligan Concern, an Irish crime operation. After some time, the balance of power transfers from The Milligan Concern to the Fadda family, an Italian group of immigrants. The viewer follows the rise of the Fadda family until eventually the Italian group comes into conflict with an African-American gang, known as Cannon Limited. The conflict that emerges between the Fadda family and Cannon Limited is the main focus of the show. The montage underscores how waves of immigration help form American history and culture.
In the close of episode 2, “The Land of Taking and Killing,” the audience is shown two separate dinner scenes. Loy Cannon (the patriarch of Cannon Limited, played by Chris Rock) sits down for dinner with his family and begins to pray. His prayer reads as follows, “Lord, we know the road is long. We thank You for that road because the journey makes us wise. We know the climb is hard, we thank You for that climb because climbing makes us strong. You made the land and the sea and You filled it with injustice so that we would have work to do and we thank You for that work. You made the meek so that the meek could inherit the earth and you made the mighty so that we could defend the meek.” At the end of this prayer, we transition to the Fadda family sitting down to dinner and their patriarch Josto Fadda (played by Jason Schwartzman) begins to pray.
What do I find so interesting about these two families and their prayer life? I think it gets at the tendency to see faith as something connected to the life and rhythm of the family. Prayer brings together and connects the individuals in the household to a greater cause and something outside of themselves. It unites brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers as they gather for a meal. Prayer brings together people who may have differences among themselves, and it has the ability to unite them in a shared identity. It helps to give voice to the struggles of a group as they present their thanksgiving, lament, and hopes to God.
That’s the benefit of prayer, but what’s the downside presented to us in this scene in Fargo? It underscores how ugly it can be when Christianity only unites inside the home, but remains silent outside of the household. Despite both the Faddas and the Cannons being religious households, they remain at war with one another. Their dispute leads to bloodshed and death both in their families and in their communities. When faith becomes nothing more than just about that sense of unity and familial bond, it can actually become a dangerous thing that creates tribal alliances and divisions. Faith necessarily has to be about more than just the legacy of one individual family or nationality. In other words, faith should force the individual to turn their gaze outside the self and outside the family, toward those around us.
This is, after all, St. Paul’s encouragement when he says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) The point here is that faith can be something that binds a family together in a common cause, but there are many other things that are able to do that as well. Things like duty, honor, or a care for one’s future descendants can create a common cause in the family unit. What Christianity does, or at least should do, is bring together people from very disparate backgrounds who normally would be at odds with one another into a common faith and a shared sense of identity. St. Paul pushed back against the idea that there were divisions along racial lines within the Church, and he would push back against the kinds of familial identities that divide Christians we see at play in Fargo. Is faith good for the family? Absolutely. But it never stops there, remaining as only a good for the family. Instead, the Christian faith actually branches out and seeks to bring together very different people from all different backgrounds, creeds, and ethnicities.
Think for a moment about global Catholicism. There are Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, Polish Catholics, African Catholics… the list goes on and on. Many of these groups would have nothing in common in a normal social situation, yet they all bear the name Catholic. The enmity which they may normally have for one another is erased by their shared religion. The same is true of global Christianity more broadly. Christianity is about far more than a familial identity. Instead, it is about a newfound family which is the Church. This family is founded not upon parentage, but instead upon a common confession about who Jesus Christ is and what he does for each individual sinner. It is through this new birth of faith that a global community and family is formed that is unlike any other social organization found in our day-to-day lives.
So, if we want a positive take away from these dinner scenes in Fargo, we can look to the fact that people, both audiences and creators, still see prayer as helpful in giving voice to our dreams and ambitions, our suffering and our hurt. But we should be reminded that prayer never exists for the benefit of the self alone. Instead, prayer always looks out for and seeks out the neighbor, those different than ourselves, in order to pray for their wellbeing and benefit as well.
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The Reverend David Keating is pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Curtis, Nebraska.
Previously by Pastor Keating…
“Death and Resurrection in Game of Thrones”
“Greta Gerwig’s Church Nostalgia: Why Does Hollywood Miss Christianity?”
“Interstellar: Love, Time, and Space”
“Mad Men - What is Happiness? Don Draper and St. Augustine”
“Zack Snyder’s Messy Super-Jesus”
“Short Message: How Do, or Should, Christians Witness?”
“Amazon’s ‘The Boys’ - Does Christianity Have a Culture Problem?”
“Reflecting on 9/11: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”
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