Rudy and Shirley Nelson have spent
most of their professional lives as writers and teachers, but a few
years ago they made an unforgettable documentary film called Precarious Peace: God and Guatemala. This film is truly
exemplary: one of the most balanced and sane
explorations of the way that religion has factored into the efforts to
overcome violence, poverty, and oppression in this troubled country.
Alas, it is a film with continuing relevance. We can't resist adding a
lighter note here: the Nelsons also started out their careers by working on a film—it was called The Blob. The 1958 version. But there is nothing amorphous about the Nelsons:
whether collectively or individually, they write with a paradoxical but
persuasive mixture of faith and clear-eyed skepticism. Just read
Shirley's Fair, Clear, and Terrible, a harrowing account of a
cult-like religious community. Or Rudy's study of the controversial and
troubled former head of Fuller Seminary, Edward Carnell, whose ideas
stirred both passion and protest at a time when evangelicalism was
changing in America.
To read their memoir about making Precarious Peace, from Image #44, click here.
To order the film, click here.
Rudy and Shirley Nelson's Current Projects
"No matter what writing projects we attempt, we seem to end up headlong in the chaotic mix of art and social concerns, and a struggle to keep the integrity of each without mutual destruction. Right now this engagement is taking place in two projects, the onset of a new documentary and the completion of a novel. The novel takes place in Central America in sensitive historical circumstances, tensions that require a special poetry of their own to be both factually and fictionally viable. The video tangles with the problems and opportunity facing North American churches with the rapid increase of cultural and ethnic diversity. The DVD is sponsored by Hartford Seminary, with start-up funds from the Louisville Institute."
Biography
Rudy and Shirley Nelson began their writing careers in radio and films. Both taught for ten years at Barrington College in Rhode Island as they raised their family, Rudy as chair of the English Department and Shirley as mentor
to creative
writing students.
Rudy, after
earning a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University in 1971,
joined the faculty of the University at Albany, retiring as Associate
Professor of English and Religious Studies in 1994. He is the author of
The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind: The Case of Edward Carnell (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Shirley earned her Masters Degree in English from the University at Albany following the publication of her novel, The Last Year of the War, by Harper and Row in 1978, winning the Harper Saxton Fellowship. Her second book, Fair Clear and Terrible: The Story of Shiloh, Maine, a narrative history of an apocalyptic community where her parents grew
up, was published by British American in 1989. Both books are being
re-issued by Wipf and Stock Publishers. As a free-lance writer, she has
published short stories, poetry, reviews and essays in a variety of
journals and anthologies.
In a recent return to the film genre, the Nelsons co-produced the documentary Precarious Peace: God and Guatemala, which Image editor
Gregory Wolfe, in his on-line review, called “a masterpiece of
documentary
filmmaking.” The DVD, completed in 2003, with funding by
The United States Institute of Peace, is being distributed nationally
by Vision Video and Maryknoll Productions.
“All our work is collaborative, in one way or another,” the Nelsons
say, with lots of in-put from imaginative and reliable resources. For
instance, Precarious Peace was co-directed by Dennis Smith, a mission co-worker (PCUSA) and
communications specialist in Guatemala. The present video is being
co-produced by filmmaker James Ault, creator of the award-winning
documentary Born Again. The Nelson's books and other writing
have been sometimes co-written, but are always subject, in their own
words, to each other's “toughest, meanest, and totally devastating
criticism.”
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