November 14, 2006

The tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero is all but hidden in the basement of the national cathedral in San Salvador. Though the memorial was recently beautified to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1980 assassination, no signs point to its location. Of course, San Salvador is not known for being tourist friendly; it has few signs pointing to anything. But as my students and I stood before the tomb, we could not help wondering if Romero, whom many Christians across the world regard as a saint, is an embarrassment to the government and perhaps to the church.

Many Christians’ image of a labor leader is of a Jimmy Hoffa–like cigar-chomping political boss—a figure as morally suspect as the industry captains labor tangles with. I tended to have this image in mind too until I met some pastor-organizers and found them to be not only zealous for social justice, which I expected, but people who love the church and seek its good—like many of the workers they aim to organize. They might even be called evangelical for their idealism and their willingness to be fools for Christ.

In director Todd Field’s Little Children, adapted from Tom Perrotta’s best-selling novel, Kate Winslet plays Sarah, an intelligent, expensively educated woman who is raising a preschool daughter in the suburbs. Her husband, Richard (Gregg Edelman), has apparently lost sexual interest in her; up in his study he amuses himself with photos of an Internet seductress known as Slutty Kay.