Protestant Pacifist: War and Pacifism in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge

Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, about the World War II career of soldier Desmond Doss-Seventh-day Adventist, pacifist, and improbable Medal of Honor winner-is the most overtly Christian war film produced in America since the Vietnam era. This chapter seeks to understand why Gibson, a Catholic, became attracted to this Protestant hero’s story and to what extent Hacksaw Ridge remains a Protestant story in Gibson’s retelling. Integral to answering these questions is the issue of how a war film, conventionally focused on training for combat and killing in combat, can effectively address the conscience of a religious pacifist. For an instructional parallel, the chapter compares and contrasts Hacksaw Ridge to the Oscar-winning classic Sergeant York (1941) in order to demonstrate that Gibson takes Doss’s pacifism and his biblical reasons very seriously, even if Hacksaw Ridge never implies any critique of militarism or the American civil religion that justifies it.