ILLINOIS
Chicago Reader
By Albert Williams
Lucas Hnath’s intriguing 2014 drama The Christians, now receiving its Chicago premiere in a finely acted production at Steppenwolf Theatre, is unlike any play I’ve ever seen about religion. There’s no nun boldly overstepping her authority to expose a suspected pedophile priest; no charismatic hypocritical preacher bilking the gullible faithful; no philandering phonies or self-hating homos, preaching traditional family values while pursuing their own illicit lusts. Instead, The Christians concerns a basic question that might seem better suited to a scholarly lecture: Is God’s love for humanity so great that it encompasses everyone, not just Christians?
This is the question that the play’s protagonist, Pastor Paul, proposes to his flock on the particular Sunday morning on which Hnath’s 80-minute one-act takes place. Paul is the leader of a modern American megachurch, which he has built over two decades from a small storefront into a sprawling complex thanks to the prayers—and donations—of his thousands of followers. Now, having paid off the debt incurred erecting this magnificent edifice, Paul preaches a sermon of “radical change.”
Speaking softly and humbly into his handheld microphone, Paul explains that after having a heart-to-heart talk with the heavenly father, he now sees that Christians must break down barriers separating them from the rest of a world torn by violence. He recounts the story of a non-Christian boy in an unnamed foreign country who gave his own life to save his sister from a terrorist attack. Should that boy not receive salvation just because he hasn’t been baptized as a Christian? Should belief in the divinity of Jesus determine whether one goes to heaven or to hell? And then Paul drops the other shoe: there is no hell.
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