Ingmar Bergman is dead, dead, dead

Published: August 1, 2007, 10:35 am

Tags: film, academia, pop culture, mainline

During the Culture Wars era, the U.S. Supreme Court has been forced to wrestle with this question: Can a government-supported advocacy of “secular humanism” (scare quotes were the norm) become a form of religion? I think the more important question is whether government-supported advocacy of Universalism is a form of doctrinal entanglement, but the hot-button phrase “secular humanism” was what grabbed the headlines. The Supremes always answered this question with a resounding “no.” However it is hard to argue that there is no such thing as a religion of secularism — or at the very least, that there are no secular saints and prophets — after reading the mainstream coverage of the death of the gifted filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Consider this language in the tribute offered by Desson Thomson in the Washington Post. And what does it mean when we declare that Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish filmmaker who passed away early yesterday at 89, was the

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