`Avatar’ leads the pack in Web site’s most `spiritual’ movies

(RNS) Movies about aliens, air travel, cooking, and the war in Iraq were all among the most “spiritually literate” films of 2009, according to the Web site SpiritualityandPractice.com Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, the Web site’s founders, say the 10 top spiritual movies all “raise our consciousness to a fuller engagement with our world” by […]

(RNS) Movies about aliens, air travel, cooking, and the war in Iraq were all among the most “spiritually literate” films of 2009, according to the Web site SpiritualityandPractice.com

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, the Web site’s founders, say the 10 top spiritual movies all “raise our consciousness to a fuller engagement with our world” by depicting characters searching for meaning and applying moral values to daily life.

The husband and wife duo are both members of a United Church of Christ congregation in New York, according to their Web site; he is an ordained UCC clergyman, while she is an interfaith minister.


James Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar,” which pits avaricious humans against pantheistic aliens, was “the spiritual surprise of the year,” said Mary Ann Brussat, for creating an alternate world where the “interconnectedness of all beings” is celebrated, and the natural habitat is revered. “Avatar” has already won Best Film at the Golden Globe Awards.

The nine other films on the SpiritualityandPractice.com list are:

— “Up in the Air”

— “Julie & Julia”

— “Amreeka”

— “Away We Go”

— “A Serious Man”

— “Precious”

— “Invictus”

— “The Hurt Locker”

— “The Messenger”

All these films “show characters dealing with a diversity of spiritual challenges and opportunities,” the Brussats said.

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