Hacksaw Ridge: A Meditation on Creed, Calling, and Deliverance
I'm introducing a new series on the blog called The Witch Watches Series; where I'll be reviewing movies and tv shows related to American History & Spirituality. It's my goal to see the spiritual value in American History. That being said, here is my first review!
There are films that entertain. And there are films that demand something of you—that ask you to witness sacrifice so complete, so unflinching, that you cannot watch passively. Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge is the latter. It is the story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist medic who refused to carry a weapon into battle and still became one of the most decorated soldiers in American history. But it is also something more: a spiritual meditation on what it means to answer a calling when the world tells you that calling is impossible.
For conservative witches—those of us rooted in faith, tradition, and personal creed—this film offers a mirror.
Personal Creed as Spiritual Law
Desmond Doss arrives at basic training marked by his refusal: he will not kill, will not touch a weapon. Not out of cowardice, but out of conviction so deep it is indistinguishable from his soul. His creed is not a belief he holds lightly. It is the spiritual law he lives by.
The entire machinery of military power bends toward forcing him to compromise. Officers threaten him. Soldiers beat him. His sergeant (Vince Vaughn, brutal and magnificent) pursues him with relentless cruelty born of incomprehension. But Doss does not break, does not argue his case, does not proselytize. He simply says no, again and again, with a quiet certainty that cannot be shaken.
For conservative witches who craft our own spiritual path and answer to a personal creed, this is sovereignty. We understand that spiritual law is not negotiable. It is not up for debate. Doss's refusal models something essential: the knowledge of what you believe so complete, so rooted, that there is no ambivalence in you, no part that wonders if you should cave.
For those of us who hold unpopular convictions in spaces that demand conformity, this is recognition. We are witnessing someone stand alone without apology.
Land, Kin, Duty, and the War on Death
The soldiers who carried weapons were warriors fighting for their country, defending people who could not defend themselves. Their sacrifice is necessary and holy. But Doss's calling was different. While they engaged the enemy, he engaged the principality that war itself unleashed—the rotten death that consumed good men.
He crawled through that darkness searching for one rising chest. Again. And again. For conservative witches, land, kin, and duty are not abstract concepts. They are the foundation of practice. We are rooted in place. We are bound to family and community. We serve something larger than ourselves. Doss embodies all three: fighting for the land (his country), for his kin (his brothers bleeding out), and answering a duty so clear that it overrode every other demand.
He lifted his brothers because that was his calling. He answered the call to save lives while other men answered the call to defend them. Both were necessary. Both were holy.
Sacred in the Darkness
War in this film is not clean or noble. It is screaming, blood, bodies, senseless death. And yet, the film does not flinch from showing the sacred breaking through that darkness. When Doss stands alone on the ridge calling out to God in the midst of gunfire and explosions, he is clarified by the chaos, not diminished by it.
There is a spiritual dimension to his survival that the film treats seriously. When shells explode around him and he remains untouched. When soldiers he saved later attribute their survival to divine protection. The film does not dismiss these as coincidence. It treats them as omens—moments when the sacred breaks through.
For conservative witches, this is how we practice: in the midst of chaos, in real darkness, in conditions far from ideal. We recognize the numinous when it appears—not as a violation of natural law, but as an alignment of will and grace. Doss's unshakeable faith does not protect him from witnessing horror. But it changes the field around him. His conviction has power. It becomes a beacon in darkness.
His creed is not passive. It is active. It is magic.
The Calling Within the Calling
There is a moment when Doss, broken by the death of a friend, asks God directly: What do you want of me? The answer comes not as a voice from heaven, but as a cry—a wounded soldier calling out to God for help. Desmond answers. He becomes an instrument of the divine. An answer to prayer.
As a nurse who works in corrections, as someone called to heal in a place most people turn away from, I felt that moment in my body. We do not choose our vocations by comfort or approval. We choose them because we hear the calling and cannot not answer. We become instruments of something larger than ourselves.
Doss does not heal soldiers because he is kind. He heals them because that is what he was there to do. He aids his brothers. He even aids an enemy. There is no sentimentality in his calling, only absolute clarity of purpose. And in that clarity, he becomes unstoppable. He carries one more. And then another. Until his body gives out before his spirit does.
A Note on Faith and Mirrors
Desmond Doss reads the Bible. He believes in God. He would likely not agree with witchcraft or understand it as a valid spiritual path. That is not the point of this reflection.
To mirror his unwavering faith with our own spiritual practice is not to disrespect his faith. It is to learn from his example. What matters is not that we believe the same things, but that we understand what it means to believe deeply, to marry faith with lived practice, to refuse to compromise conviction even when the world demands it.
For conservative witches, this is urgent: it is okay to believe. It is okay to believe in God, or in nature, or in some unnamed Force. It is okay to have a sense of duty. It is okay to seek fulfillment in your vocation. It is okay to marry faith with folk beliefs. It is okay to doubt when the world says you shouldn't believe what you do—and it is okay to choose faith anyway.
Belief is powerful. And the Divine is ever present, even at war.
We do not experience what soldiers experience on the battlefield. We cannot claim that knowledge. But we can learn from them. We can learn about our country, about the values upon which our freedoms are founded—including religious freedom. And we can see, in Desmond Doss, what it looks like when someone answers a calling rooted in faith, without compromise and without apology.
That is a lesson every spiritual person needs to witness.
Desmond Doss stood alone and answered what he was called to do. He saved seventy-five men by refusing to become what the world demanded he become.
Watch It
If you are looking for easy entertainment, this is not the film for you. If you are looking for a portrait of unwavering spiritual conviction in the face of darkness, of a man who refused to compromise his creed and became extraordinary anyway—then Hacksaw Ridge is waiting for you. Watch the trailer and then watch the film with someone you trust. And afterward, ask yourself: what am I being called to do? And what am I willing to sacrifice to answer?
Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Directed by Mel Gibson. Starring Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, and Vince Vaughn.
Based on the true story of Desmond Thomas Doss, the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor during World War II.
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