I got the same sort of thing in my Methodist Youth Fellowship group. One program was all about Christian music, and why we should listen to it, instead of secular music. (Being Methodists, thus not too far down the crazy-Christian axis, the leaders didn’t suggest that secular music was evil or depraved or a tool of Satan. Just that Christian music was more uplifting.) The group leaders handed out a chart to give us Christian equivalents to popular music: “If you like: Jackson Browne, then you’ll like some anodyne Jesus-singer”. The only artist on the Christian list that I thought was any good was Amy Grant.
That program led to one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen a teenager do. The leaders played a song by a “Christian rock” band - Petra, if memory serves - then played AC/DC’s Highway To Hell. When they asked us afterwards which was the better song, all of us knew the correct answer. Except for Michelle, the group’s lone punk (she wore a leather jacket and a fauxhawk, so we knew she was a Bad Girl). Michelle was the only one of thirty or so teenagers who had the balls to say that no, AC/DC was the better band and Highway To Hell a more kickass song. And she was right, of course. The leaders all took pains to say that her opinion was perfectly fine, but the rest of us knew the score: she was clearly a dupe of the Dark Lord.
Michelle, if by some chance you ever read this, and recognize yourself, I salute your guts and your musical taste.
Wrt Christian music:
16 Horsepower is a personal favourite, steeped in dark Christianity. Woven Hand is similar, both with David Eugene Edwards.
Johnny Cash has made many Christian - themed songs, as has Nick Cave. Even Tom Waits (down in the hole) and Bob Dylan have their share of Christianity. Not to mention Van Morrison.
As for movies: Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ is controversial but in the end in keeping with the teachings AFAIK. And one of my Greatest Movies of all Time, Andrei Rublev by Tarkovsky, is distinctly Christian in outlook (though, admittedly, the mystical variety).
As far as I can tell, as has been mentioned by previous posters, the label Christian is more likely to involve crap than worldly artists exploring Christian themes.
Btw I am a non-Christian from Europe, that may influence my outlook. Hell, even Rammstein had their take on Him (Asche zu Asche).
I remember the protests against it. I also remember one priest who actually watched the movie going on a morning news show and explaining how it had a wonderful Christian message and that the last scene moved him deeply.
I remember those. From my perspective today they were fairly innocuous as far as Christian comics of the time are concerned. The comic series featuring The Crusders from Jack Chick were incredibly fucked up in my opinion. You can see three of them at this link.. I remember the second one at that link, entitled “The Broken Cross”, scaring the shit out of me as a severely closeted teenage boy. I’m certain reading those comics did much more damage to my self image than anything I was taught at church or by my parents. In fact, my parents would have certainly been appalled at some of the things those comics espoused but, because they were “Christian”, they never looked at them to my knowledge.
Oh, God, I have a copy of that movie (my dad gave it to me, because he knew I liked time travel stories). And I tried to watch it, I really did. But it is, without a doubt, the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. In every aspect in which a movie could possibly be rated, on a scale of 1 to 10, it is somewhere between a 0 and a -2. Attempting to watch it was literally physically painful, and I know what the word “literally” means.
At least as far as children’s Christian media is concerned, I don’t know if it’s so much about being explicitly against the challenging aspects, so much as it seems to be about two things- setting itself very clearly apart from the other media, and reinforcing the values that they want to inculcate in their youth.
So what you get is something that’s so obviously, ridiculously Christian, and that has zero storytelling conflict because if you have a protagonist who questions, sins, etc… that’s not promoting the way they want their kids to live.
Of course, the more rational among us realize that the whole point of Christianity isn’t that we’re expected not to sin, etc… but rather that we’re forgiven regardless. Which I personally think is a fantastic message for young children- as parents, we love you the way you are, we know you’ll screw up, but we never cease loving you and will forgive you. And guess what… it works that way with Jesus as well! Yay!
But the sort of people who go out of their way to find explicitly Christian stuff aren’t really the sorts who believe that way; they’re much more about conformity and living in their own little nicely padded life that they’ve engineered to have no opportunity to sin or screw up whatsoever, and decrying sin where they can find it.
Yes, it’s a Christian film. But it’s not a Christian film, ya know? You mean “Christian” as in a film by a Christian that deals with themes related to Christianity. This thread is about Christian, as in a particular set of films, shows and music marketed towards U.S. (mostly evangelical) Christians.
The reason it’s cheesy and lame is that it’s primarily designed to be Christian, by which I mean the second definition above. Entertainment value is a secondary concern. That’s how you get Time Changer. (The director claims to be named “Rich Christiano,” but we all know that’s a nom de guerre.) When “Rich Christiano” and his co-writers, who I assume were named “Bill Jesusguy” and “Michael P. Doesntsin,” sat dfown to write “Time Changer,” they didn’t start off thinking “Alright, what’s our premise, who are our key characters, and how do we map those things onto the structure of a science fiction movie”? They thought “Alright, we need to tell people they have to believe in Jesus. Let’s write some stuff around that.”
I’m an atheist, but even I can be deeply moved by the Christian themes expressed by an artist like Martin Scorsese in his films about his faith, exactly the same way I was moved by “Saving Private Ryan” even though I’ve never seen combat, or “Moonlight” even though I’m not a gay Black kid. True art does that. “Christian” pop culture stuff isn’t that, though. the problem with it isn’t that it’s about Christians, the problem is that it really isn’t. The characters aren’t people you can identify with, they’re just mouthpieces to say the next cliche.
