How on earth do you strip the racism and genocide from Esther. What’s left? A Miss Persia contest… (I’m guessing you strip out everything surrounding that, too?) The End?
There’s a difference though; there’s a specific subset of bands that market themselves primarily on their religion and its prevalence in their music. There are also bands who don’t market themselves that way, but who happen to include Christian themes and have Christian members. Like say… U2.
A band like say… Skillet is a Christian rock band, while U2 is a rock band that happens to be composed of Christians.
I think there’s some merit to the idea expressed in South Park that Evangelical-targeted media is “easy” to create. Maybe not the Cartman level of “You just take normal popular songs and replace words like ‘Baby’ with ‘Jesus’” but it sure seems like the majority is pap. Which is kind of funny, since as others have amply shown (other examples are common in bluegrass and country, for instance) that there’s plenty of good music and other media that is very Christian in theme but is challenging to the listener/reader/viewer.
Back in college I took a lot of religion courses (had I realized how close I was to a minor I would have finished it.) One was about eschatology, which of course covered Daniel and Revelation but also modern stuff like Left Behind and that stuff that was popular in the 70s and 80s. Having read the “Apocalypse” volume of Left Behind for class and asked what I thought, I said “You ever read one of those Tom Clancy novels that weren’t actually written by Tom Clancy but by some writer you’ve never heard of while the publisher capitalizes on Tom Clancy as a franchise? This was like that, but worse.”
Yeah. When I talk about Christian media, I’m talking about works produced within and for the Christian media ecosphere of Christian bookstores, Christian music radio, Christian children’s video, etc. Consumers expect the works to be explicitly Christian, specifically evangelical/fundamentalist, and produced by creators who are Christian and mostly/only create Christian works. Doctrinal adherence is valued over entertainment value or quality.
Also, a popular secular work tends to spawn “Christian” alternative. You’d think that, say, Settlers of Catan would be okay, but a Christian company that makes Christian card and board games had to come out with “Settlers of Canaan”
Well yeah, they’re not going to make any money from Christians buying the original “Settlers of Catan” version, after all.
I’ve been reading a book by a Christian author, Gregory Boyd, who argues this very point - that many Christians aren’t actually looking for truth, but rather, inward assurance that they’ve found truth. This leads to an ironic situation where they actually dare not question or challenge their own inward beliefs for fear of the pain and shock should they find that they are wrong. They want that sensation of inner peace and security even if it means plugging their ears and covering their eyes.
heh anyone remember a show called superbook? i remeber it being a cheesefest but i never knew it was japanese made
A lot of American animated shows were farmed out to Japan in the 80s for cost reasons, but all of the shows development, writing, direction and so on would be done by the American production company, in this case CBN.
One of them did get an ill communication after that and had to check his head (as it was riddled with cancer).
He had a license for it!
There is something about things that are selected on the basis of two variables. The higher the one variable, usually the other variable is lower. For example in basketball people are chosen on athletic ability and height the smallest players are usually the most athletic. In baseball where players are chosen on the basis of hitting ability and defensive ability, the best defenders are usually bad hitters. In this case the videos are chose on the basis of Christian teaching and entertainment value so the most explicitly Christian videos are the worst in terms of entertainment. Veggie Tales is one of the fe really entertaining Christian video series, I love the Hairbrush song and In the Belly of the Whale.
So. I was once an evangelical Christian, until I was about 17. I consumed a lot of Christian media, and it was mostly pretty terrible. This includes, among other things, Christian magazines for teen girls, Christian rock bands (DC Talk et al), Christian literature (a particularly bad one I remember was a girl with God-given magic powers fighting Satanic cultists), and I just want to add that even as a teen, I loved Veggie Tales. I still know Dance of the Cucumber by heart.
In music I was particularly drawn to artists who were wrestling with their own faith. I’m not a Christian any more but I still love that stuff. The sheer spiritual angst of artists like Jars of Clay still resonates with me. Or deeper cuts - Dryve and Black-Eyed Sceva. One of my favorite ever bands is the mainstream nu-metal band Chevelle (The Red, Send the Pain Below, Vitamin R) whose members were at least at one point Christians and whose work has a lot of religious themes. Their lyrics are often kinda vague though.
I have a very good friend who is a Presbyterian minister, and we first bonded over his love of Tarantino films. He knows more about books, movies and music than I ever will. He even read my smutty romance novel and gave me editor feedback. I’ve asked him, how do you engage with all this stuff as a man of faith? And he said Christ wants us to be in the world but not of it. I think he manages to do this. He always has a worldview spin on everything he watches. We were talking about the John Wick movies and he said, “I was disturbed by the casual killing, but the fight choreography is spectacular!”
When the subject of Christian media comes up, he says much of it is pretty bad. He says the reason it is bad is because its purpose is to reaffirm Christian faith rather than raise questions or deal honestly with the reality of spiritual struggle. He said there is a difference between “Christian” art and art that comes from a Christian worldview. He prefers the latter.
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and our youth group would go to Christian concerts in Greenville. After the concerts there would be someone from nearby Bob Jones standing on the island between the road lanes outside waving his bible and screaming about how evil the music was.
Oh, yes. I went to a Bible Camp in North Carolina and the camp counselors worked aggressively to pressure kids to destroy their Christian rock CDs. I guess the reasoning, and I use that term loosely, is that if an outsider heard the music they wouldn’t immediately know it was Christian*. So the kids would destroy hundreds of dollars worth of music and descend into bitter regret when they got home.
(*yes they would, because they’d realize it sounded like some dimestore knockoff of actual rock, but I digress.)
I think this is the key to the lack of quality of explicitly Christian-marketed art. IMHO, not that I’m educated in such matters, the best art should challenge some idea or view or opinion the consumer holds. Maybe the belief survives the challenge intact, maybe the believer finds themselves questioning some previously-firm tenet, maybe they wind up rejecting a core principle entirely. The point is to encounter that challenge, wrestle honestly with it, and grow a bit in the wrestling.
This is so antithetical to the authority-driven Evangelical Christianity that has become so widespread, that almost any “good” art will be rejected as evil. The church’s (or the pastor’s, or the Bible’s) teachings are not to be challenged, but to be absorbed, taken to heart, and made impervious to criticism or question.
In my experience, Evangelical Christians don’t handle challenges to their faith well.
I mean, very serious athiests have issues seeing humour too:
Too far down any rabbit hole.
Wtf? So one old dude didn’t get an internet joke, therefore “athiests” are too serious?
They just refer to the Jews as being Mordecai’s family, not referencing Jews at all, even though they have Pa Grape (with his stereotypical older Jewish man voice) play Mordecai, and give Esther a vaguely Jewish-sounding song. However, Esther is a leek (a new character just for the movie), so it’s not immediately obvious that they’re cousins.
They hit nearly all the story points–they just soften them, often in humorous ways (which is what makes them easier for an adult to watch). The only one that’s a missing is Mordecai cleverly modifying the law, as they don’t really go into the idea that not even the king can repeal the law.
I could tell you everything they do, but it’d ruin the jokes, so I do want to offer a chance to watch it if you’d like. They let this version stay up on YouTube.
Enjoy this looooong analysis of *God’s Not Dead."
Actually, that is not the review I was looking for. Somewhere, there is a multi-part, scene by scene breakdown review, posted by someone on Patheos, but I can’t find it now.