Friendly Persuasion (1956)

Barra and I watched the movie Friendly Persuasion yesterday. It's a delightful movie starring Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, and Anthony Perkins. Set in Indiana, it's about a Quaker family who are confronted by the realities of the Civil War.

In an early scene, a Union officer visits their Quaker meeting house in order to recruit some men to help protect the area from approaching Confederate marauders. This encounter results in the sides struggling with many difficult questions.

Jesus' message as expounded in the New Testament is a “thinking person's religion.” Jesus tells us that we are “set right” with God through love and forgiveness, and not the law. This is one of the most powerful concepts. Unfortunately, it gets largely ignored today.

Friendly Persuasion presents an uncomfortable yet ultimately more just way of dealing with difficult problems as opposed to the easy knee-jerk fundamentalist Christian approach.