As usual, there was not an abundance of God-talk or religion in this year's Academy Awards ceremony. In fact, the only religious reference I can recall was a "Thank you, Jesus" from one of the artists responsible for the Oscar-winning theme "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"—a song the Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards somehow managed to overlook. Jesus' role as muse for the Three 6 Mafia aside, until the long-range impact of films such as The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia can be assessed, we may continue to ask, "What hath Hollywood to do with Jerusalem?"

Nevertheless, one might make a case for a degree of religiosity at the Oscars, in form if not in content. Specifically, I am thinking of the prophetic role Hollywood plays in our society. Now by this I do not mean how accurately Roger Ebert is able to predict the outcome of the award presentations. Rather, this year's Oscar show and the movies it honored self-consciously drew attention to the ways in which cinema has historically pushed the envelope with regard to difficult social issues.

During his acceptance speech after being awarded the first Oscar of the evening, first-time winner George Clooney commented that Hollywood has always been "out of touch" with society, confronting issues such as AIDS, civil rights, and racism when the rest of the culture was either too timid or too complicit to do or say anything about it.

In his introduction to a montage of socially significant films, Samuel L. Jackson commented that movies have historically "challenged our beliefs" regarding such issues as poverty, homelessness, war, genocide, racism, and intolerance. Naming such films as On the Waterfront, Philadelphia, and To Kill a Mockingbird, Jackson concluded that "the boldest of these films were more than entertaining. They were confrontational. They were passionate. They made us think about who we are as a people and, as a nation." Indeed, according to Jackson, these films "helped change our country."

Following this montage, host Jon Stewart added a note of realism by sarcastically quipping, "And none of those issues was ever a problem again." Yet there was an overall sense of social activism at the Oscars, peppered throughout the night's acceptance speeches and embodied in the subject matter of the films nominated for awards—for example, racism, sexuality and gender, journalistic integrity, corporate greed, Realpolitik, violence, and poverty.

While there has been much speculation that perhaps the Academy was not progressive enough to name a movie portraying a homosexual love story the best film of the year, this should not detract from the merits of Paul Haggis's Crash, nor its potential prophetic impact on a society enmeshed in a culture of racism and intolerance.

This potential has been realized in countless screenings and discussions of Crash throughout the country. On the Friday before the Oscars I showed the film to a gathering of about twenty adults from our overwhelmingly white and affluent suburban mainline Protestant congregation. A significant portion of the group felt that the movie's portrayal of racism was so over the top that it could not be an accurate reflection of our society. This opened the door for other participants to share numerous stories of racism, prejudice, and hatred right in our own backyards, seemingly worlds away from the volatile Los Angeles setting of Crash. It created a real dialogue that opened the eyes of many who had been blind to such pain and suffering.

For me, despite a few attempts at redemption and the intrusion of the infamous "Hollywood ending," the overall tone of the film is devastatingly disheartening and gut-wrenching. It renders the cheery hopefulness of films like Glory Road saccharine at best and cruel mockery at worst. This is a movie of despair. It is without clear solutions or easy answers. It empathically draws viewers into an experience of death—startling us into an awareness of our own mortality, and bringing to consciousness the possibility of the death of our society.

And yet, in this embrace of pathos and invitation to grief, Crash perfectly embodies the first moment of prophetic ministry as articulated in Walter Brueggemann's classic work, The Prophetic Imagination. Like the biblical prophet Jeremiah, Crash brings us to a point of despair and thereby frees us to imagine a new alternative, without giving us that alternative just yet.

Such an energizing alternative is the next moment of prophetic ministry—a sequel, if you will, that we are still waiting to realize.

John W. Vest is a Ph.D. student in Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School; Pastoral Associate at Community Presbyterian Church in Clarendon Hills, Illinois; and Adjunct Professor of Theology and Religion at Elmhurst College.