Though I have converted to atheism relatively recently, I used to be Christian, so there’s a ton of Christian media that I’ve watched/seen over the years. Looking back on it, though, I’ve come to realize that a ton of them are super cheesy in one way or another. Some examples from the top of my head:
VeggieTales - A show centred around vegetables teaching Christian-centered life lessons to the viewer. A fine enough show to watch on its own merits, but a lot of the lessons are presented with weird plotlines and can get pretty awkward to watch at some points.
The Holy Bible for Minecrafters - Hence the name, a compressed version of the Bible in the style of the game Minecraft. I do (hesitantly) confess I own this book, and honestly, it feels like an awkward attempt to get the kids into Christianity.
Christian arts/creativity is generally severely limited by a fear of offending and doing anything controversial (controversial by their own limitations, that is.) That’s why Christian movies will go to great lengths, generally, to avoid anything violent/sex/profane etc. You end up with terrible glurge.
As such, with such constraints, directors are pretty tortured in terms of trying to come up with something interesting yet bland. It’s like they’re given nothing but potatoes and salt to cook a meal, and have to make it tasty.
Sex and violence may be part of religion, and so are spirituality, mysticism, awesome majesty, dread, loss, angst, teleology, metaphysics, you name it. I am not sure little kids are equipped to fully deal with all of these interesting topics and experiences, which may be limiting, but on the other hand if a ton of media is lame (as it is in general, not just religious) I would first scrutinize the authors and directors who may simply not grok hermeneutics, homiletics, or even Christianity that well. Note that kids do like media like the Smurfs and others in that vein.
With things like Veggie Tales, there’s a strong “Don’t offend anyone (especially parents who are buying this stuff for their kids)” vibe.
Our kids remember watching it in Sunday School. They liked it, said it was better than listening to a teacher.
You want cheesy, try Christian Light Rock from the 90s… so Pre-sliced American Cheesy it’ll clog your arteries.
Anyone remember Spire Christian Comics? They are the ones that put out a slew of religious Archie Comics back in the 70’s. Spire Christian Comics - Wikipedia
It’s because virtually all modern Christian media is saccharine, simplified shallow pablum. Why should the stuff for kids be any better?
When my daughter was young, back in the 1990’s, I really scoured the universe for films and books that were both well-made and had what I would call “good values”, acceptable for a very intelligent sensitive child. Very thin pickings, I can tell you. And overtly Christian, an even tinier sliver. It does exist but I guess there’s not much of a market for it.
There’s plenty of good Christian media out there. It just doesn’t get labeled “Christian”. Why not? Because it doesn’t need to be. If it’s good, you just call it “cartoons” (or “rock”, or “painting”, or whatever your medium is). It’s only when it’s not so good that it needs the “Christian” label to sell it.
Killing everyone in a city is not genocide, it’s just total war. Killing everyone in a nation is genocide. People have to learn to stop misusing that word, before it becomes useless and valuless.
The Holocaust was genocide. The Firebombing of Dresden was perhaps a war crime, but not genocide.
If we use " genocide" for every fucking thing, then decades from now when we say “The Holocaust was genocide!” people will just go- “meh, so a few thousand people were killed, yeah?”.
Not to mention- when the Israelites took Jericho it was no longer a major city or anything.
Not to mention- this is hardly in line with the Op about “cheesy”.
You are mixing up the Battle of Jericho with the campaign for Canaan. Mind you both are both mostly mythological. Certainly the Israelites moved into the lands occupied by the Canaanites and took over, displacing them. It is very doubtful that they slayed them all.
Back to the subject matter – yep, part of the problem is that the “hey we’re Christian” branding usually binds the producer’s hands to a requirement to include nothing that will potentially upset the buying parents, as with any other commercial kids’ media, but then adding to that not disturbing the parent’s theologically, which considering the less than homogeneous nature of American Christianity is really a vain pursuit.
As Chronos stated, good media that promotes Christian (or any sort of moral) Values would not need to make a big deal about how “Christian” it is. There are many Christian critics of “Christian Media” whose position can be summed as: “could you guys bother making a GOOD movie/album/novel/show, that happens to have a Christian message, rather than dramatize/set to music/novelize a sermon?”
Veggie Tales may be cheesy, I don’t know, didn’t really watch it. But I did see a clip from their take on the story of Daniel and stole a line from it when I wrote a Sunday School play for the kids in my class.