The Overnighters is a documentary about Concordia Lutheran Church’s titular ministry to help people, mostly men, who arrive by busloads in North Dakota looking for work in the suddenly booming fracking town until they can find a job and a home. Cue The Grapes of Wrath remix as locals resent the sudden influx of strangers and try to find new ways to criminalize homelessness in the name of safety and crime prevention. Only Jay Reinke, the pastor, speaks on behalf of the unwanted, but it soon becomes clear that the answer to what would Jesus do only matters if you have empathy, which leads to tension between Reinke, his congregation, the locals and the people that he is trying to serve. The implicit question, which is later answered in an unsurprising plot twist if you are familiar with American Christians, is what compels Reinke to feel empathy with people who are not like him.
If any one documentary could predict the rise of Presidon’t and the corruption of American Christianity for those who like the idea of Jesus, but are uncomfortable with the reality of His teachings, The Overnighters would probably be it, but it also offers valuable lessons in accountability for those who want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps as Reinke did, but are not God, who also did not meet everyone’s needs on Earth so cut yourself a little slack. It captures the peculiarly American phenomenon of not recognizing when a problem is systematic versus individual so a person’s flaws cannot explain the origin of the problem. One of the newcomers has a sign on his van that says, “Socialism is un-American,” obviously not outraged that even a person who is trying to get work has no safety net and maybe there should be a solution to that.
The overarching problem presented in this documentary is that the main response to this enormous problem is coming from a private organization, a church, and depends on individuals’ willingness to provide charity. When people say that churches and individuals, not the government, should help people, The Overnighters shows how impossible that would actually be in the real world. Even Reinke panics, “Oh crap. Look at all these people getting off the bus. Lord, please don’t let them call me.” Because individuals, including churches (if corporations are people, then let’s call churches people too) are incapable of meeting the needs of so many because of limited resources, and there is no systematic organization between various churches and individuals who want to help, instead of responding to the obvious need, it becomes a question of who deserves charity, and eventually the answer will be no one as the definition of who is unworthy expands so charity never has to be given.
How do you make others unworthy of food and shelter? By falsely distinguishing themselves from the newer arrivals, they other them, and one of the newcomers says, “I feel like I’m being treated like an illegal.” Reinke tries to change local attitudes, but is met with hostility, verbal and physical, and he is a local and a pastor. Reinke correctly observes, “Here’s a gentleman just called them ‘trash.” Not to judge people by appearances, a man with no teeth, living with his daughter, calling other people with needs ‘trash.’” The locals think that these newcomers are worse than the locals because these people are unemployed instead of seeing themselves as temporarily fortunate to be living in the right place at the right time, which will probably not last considering how blissfully unaware they are of what fracking will do to their environment and health. Would you like flames with your water? It becomes apparent that adherence to the law through local ordinances will trump charity in order to stop Reinke’s effort to help others.
The Reinke family shows a Christ like spirit. He roams the halls of the church singing hymns to wake up the church’s temporary residents in the morning. They open up their own home. He is tireless in his individual interactions even as those in need begin to respond to his reasonable requests with increasing hostility. As his congregation shrinks, and the local paper, the Williston Herald, criticizes his ministry, it becomes obvious that his ministry is not long for this world. His daughter wisely points out that ending his ministry won’t erase the problem. For a few brief moments, The Overnighters show us what it looks like for a church and a pastor to do what Jesus did, but His will will not be done on Earth as it is in heaven. One man feels honored to be treated with respect and consulted regarding the ministry’s decisions. The Reinkes generally offer dignity, respect and love to everyone.
The Overnighters shows profiles of some of the people who benefit from Reinke’s charity, and Jesus be a fence because the majority would appear next to confirmation bias if phrases were in the dictionary. Most of them have interesting moments of selective amnesia or perhaps downplay their criminal past. One man indignantly expects Reinke to treat him with solicitude instead of being angry when Reinke discovers how their past will harm the ministry and negatively affect those dependent on it. It is an interesting phenomenon that people expect understanding for their shortcomings, but cut him no such slack when he responds humanely and imperfectly. With that said, Jesus never conducted background checks when meeting requests except for the wealthy guy. Their past does not decrease their need, but the Reinkes have to adjust the target of their outreach to try and respond to the backlash. “Jesus doesn’t have our neighbors.” Well, maybe He had worse neighbors because remember that unfortunate for Him, awesome for us, cross incident.
So while the locals and the newspaper’s motivations may be fear based, Reinke probably should have given others who were less directly involved in outreach the responsibility of creating criteria for whom the church should help, and he should have only administered the charity. Reinke’s overwhelming empathy and naivety clouded his judgment and helped him fall into the pit dug for him by those who opposed him.
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The big plot twist is that Reinke is gay and had a same sex extramarital affair so at 57, he loses his job and becomes like the men that he helped. My first thought was, “How did he find the time?” For me, it was tragic, though beneficial for others, that he felt overwhelming empathy with drug addicts, sex offenders and mentally troubled people because he saw himself as one of them. Reinke believes that he is a sinner deserving condemnation, but saved by Jesus’ mercy and wants to reciprocate that dynamic to the newcomers, which is correct, but not because he is gay.
I was brought up fundamentalist, and the American Christian generally sees homosexuality as an abomination, one of the worst sins. We are not taught other passages in the Bible that counter this prevailing notion. We do not apply our historical perspective and adjustments to earlier negative views on race and gender to issues of sexuality because many still believe those negative views, and homosexuality is distinguished as different and worse than them. For some Christians, there is no room for debate. If you ask them what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was, most people will incorrectly respond that it was homosexuality, not inhospitality as shown by the locals desire to rape the visitors, who happened to be angels, which also happens in Judges 19 within Israel. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned they did not help the poor and needy.”
American Christians have set up a dynamic that guarantees that people like Reinke will always lose and feel condemned, which is wrong. If you are a homosexual and decide to have a heterosexual relationship, and it works for you, live your life, I am happy for you, and I wish you nothing but the best. If you are a homosexual and decide to have a heterosexual relationship because you feel like you should, but are not able to, stop torturing yourself and putting you and your spouse in a position where both of you are not fully living and receiving God’s abundant love and no condemnation. It pains me to think that Reinke believes that he deserved to be punished and ostracized when it is the people around him who are the spiritual Sodomites and are happy to other him like they do the newcomers so they don’t have to love him or his family or more importantly, listen to Reinke’s wise counsel regarding charity.
When men like Reinke are ostracized and punished whereas men like Presidon’t are held up as the Christian standard, we may be taking the wrong lessons from King David’s heart for God, which did not lie in his heterosexual sexual indiscretions, but his willingness to consult God regarding his actions and his willingness to accept correction when he did wrong. Reinke deserved better while also needing to be more transparent and take advice regarding his charity outreach. If he is reading this review, I hope that he knows that there are Jesus centered churches that love him for who he is.