Faith On Film

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from, The Guardian, September 20, 2006, with a headline:Hollywood Finds Christ As Fox Faith Plans a Series of Religious Movies.The following are excerpts:Fifty years after Charlton Heston, as Moses, descended the mountain in Cecil D. DeMille’s Ten Commandments, Hollywood made its most direct appeal to Christian audiences yesterday with a launch of a new brand dedicated to producing films on religious themes.Fox Faith, part of the home entertainment division of Rupert Murdock’s movie studio plans to produce as many as a dozen new films a year.At a time when Christian programming is taking up a greater share of the U. S. air waves and sales of Christian DVD’s, CD’s and books account of 4.34 billion dollars a year, the move by Fox Faith is the bonus for a “buy Hollywood” into what was once seen as hostile terrain.Evangelicals and traditional Christians have long been alienated from Hollywood.Fox began courting Christian audiences two years ago, soon after Hollywood was taken by surprise by the runaway commercial success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.The box office power of the faithful became more apparent this year with The Chronicles of Narnia.Other studios moved to cash in with new line cinemas scheduled to release The Nativity Story this December and a forthcoming film version of Milton’s Paradise Lost.The Passion of the Christ has grossed 612 million dollars world wide since it’s release in 2004, largely because of its appeal to evangelicals and conservative Christians.Last year, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, made 745 million dollars.Even films eschewed by conservative Christians had box office appeal despite being panned by critics and shunned by religious leaders, The DaVinci Code has brought in 754 million dollars world wide.

Tom:

Dave, to me this is sort of a scary item.As you know, my background is in film, television, and I worked for 20th Century Fox for a number of years, but when I see a company owned by Rupert Murdock for one, but any secular company, now is going to help out, supposedly Christian families by producing good, wholesome films, and so on, you have to wonder.I mean, money has always been the object of the film business, and ethics, morals and so on--Well, look at what Rupert Murdock does.On the one hand he has this program in development, but on the other hand he has Fox TV, which has brought some of the worst programming in the history of television.

Dave:

To destroy the family, now isn’t that nice!So, this is like the force, dark and light side, amoral, who cares?We don’t have any morals, if we can make money we’ll play both sides of the coin.Tom, it frightens you, it is frightening because when Hollywood gets its finger in--oh, this is going to be evangelical!I mean, Tom, you wrote a book about The Passion of the Christ, that that deceived so many pastors into praising it as biblical when it was not biblical.It was as far from biblical as you could get, but we’ve talked about that in the past.But now we’re going to have Christian programming!Well, what’s the whole purpose of Christian programming?Tom, you and I wrote a few scripts for major feature films and what was our aim?To get the gospel in there, and what was our fear?Well, we could sell those to Hollywood.What are they going to do with them?They would destroy the message.So, somehow, we had to get some money, which we’ve given up long ago to produce them ourselves, all right.But this is not Christians producing this, this is Hollywood producing Christian films.You can imagine what’s going to happen to the truth, it’s going to be trashed in order to make sales.Okay.

Tom:

And Dave, I’ve had some second thoughts about even our approach to this because of the medium, what I know that it does, how it works, because of my training in it and my experience in it, and I’m greatly concerned, because of the medium, it’s a medium that manipulates the emotions.That’s why we like movies, we like to laugh, we like to cry, we like to throw popcorn at the screen, you know, those kinds of things, but when we are trying to introduce truth in a medium that falsifies almost everything, and its basis is to manipulate. I wonder.Now, as you point out, the second problem is who is going to produce these films?What will be their view?Will they take really a biblical view?Will they under the gospel, and then they have to come to grips with, can the gospel, can biblical stories truly represent what the Scriptures are about?I don’t think so.

Dave:

Yeah Tom, as you recall, what we were trying to do was to present the truth, the gospel, in a way that those who were not moved by the Holy Spirit wouldn’t understand, so it wouldn’t turn them off, they would just be so exciting and intriguing that they couldn’t avoid it.On the other hand, those who were in tune with Lord, who were willing to accept the truth would get the truth.That was a tough job!But Hollywood is not going to do that, they have no interest in that.

Tom:

Right, Dave, you know, no matter how you cut it thought, as I mentioned earlier, we’re talking money here.The Passion of the Christ grosses 612 million.When I would recognize an audience, and certainly Mel Gibson, I have to give him credit, he stood up for what he believed, put his money behind what he believed against the ideas, the thoughts, the beliefs of Hollywood, and so on, and he pulled it off.I don’t agree with his film.I think it was unbiblical, it’s contrary to, obviously the Scriptures, nevertheless, Mel pulled off what he believed in and put his money behind it.I don’t think that’s going to happen down the line.

Dave:

Well, unfortunately Tom, what he believed in wasn’t true.So, it was bad stuff and it’s happened in the Christian publishing, they are being --------- by ----------people.Rupert Murdock owns a big chunk of it now, and what does it do?It just dilutes the message and corrupts the gospel and it’s getting worse, and I’m not thrilled about this.

Tom:

And Dave, there was one last thought that I had about this.This is entertainment, and you want to talk about a curse on the evangelical church, it’s the attraction of entertainment to supposedly bring people to Christ.I don’t think those things work together.

Dave:

Amen.