WHEN HOLLYWOOD STOPPED BELIEVING, CHRISTIANS TOOK OVER:

Jesus Christ, Superstar: When Hollywood stopped making Bible movies,
right-wing Christians took over (Amy Sullivan , June 2004, Washington Monthly)

America's mainstream entertainment industry has not always been so oblivious to the Christian market. Hollywood studios used to churn out biblical epics at a steady pace, raking in millions of dollars--and, sometimes, Oscars--with predictable crowd-pleasers. Cecil B. DeMille directed a number of biblical movies, including the silent screen classic King of Kings and the 1949 film Samson and Delilah with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature. Gregory Peck starred in David and Bathsheba, Anthony Quinn headed a star cast in Barabbas, Kirk Douglas was nomiated for Best Actor Oscar for Spartacus, and a pre-political Charlton Heston brought down the house in both The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. To the extent that any political bias was discernible in the films, it was vaguely liberal, taking on the status quo and the established political power. Around the same time, Christian writers like C.S. Lewis were international superstars, selling millions of copies of The Screwtape Letters, a satirical correspondence between two devils strategizing about the best way to tempt their human target and thus bring him to spiritual ruin.

And then, sometime in the 1960s, religiously-themed entertainment simply disappeared. Why that happened is anyone's guess; a hip disdain for traditional cultural mores, perhaps, or a heightened fear of offending religious minorities. In any event, it was a major, if underappreciated, break. For nearly 2,000 years, the story of Jesus and broader biblical epics had infused the cultural environment of the average Westerner. Now those influences were suddenly nowhere to be seen. In the rare instances that movies did center on religious topics, they took the form of the irreverent (The Life of Brian), the mildly heretical (Jesus Christ Superstar), or the controversial (The Last Temptation of Christ). On television, Linus's recitation from the second chapter of Luke at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965 was perhaps the last respectful reference to Jesus that Hollywood offered America's children. In general, with the exception of a few bland made-for-television movies, popular culture has limited religion to the rather harmless, generic use of angels as gimmicks--"Touched by an Angel," Angels in the Outfield--or poorly made and under-funded Bible films such as last fall's The Gospel of John, described by one catatonic reviewer as "the longest Sunday School class ever."

At about the same time that popular culture began to ignore, if not irritate, traditional Christians, the evangelical movement--long a subculture--took off. This was perhaps not a coincidence. Evangelicals, with their heightened sense of the sinful nature of the secular world, have traditionally cultivated a feeling of separateness from mainstream American life. A series of political and cultural trends in the 1960s and'70s--from court decisions legalizing abortion and outlawing prayer in schools to the spread of sex and violence in popular entertainment--both mobilized this group and reinforced their sense of cultural isolation. When the entertainment industry also stopped reflecting their religious values and history, evangelicals had just one more reason to feel set apart.

By the 1980s, conservative Christian leaders and institutions began to fill the void. First came nationwide cable talk shows like the 700 Club (which launched Pat Robertson's briefly successful GOP political career). Soon, a nascent infrastructure emerged to produce and distribute other kinds of Christian entertainment, such as the music of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. [...]

Anybody who cares about both the spiritual and political health of the country has to have mixed emotions about the runaway success of The Passion and the Left Behind series. The fact that there is a hunger for religious entertainment isn't surprising nor is it a big deal. The fact that the only books and movies available come packaged with a heavily right-wing slant is. And not just because I, and millions of other Christians, would like to sit down with a spiritual thriller or watch a Jesus movie without being bombarded with conservative politics.

This is a problem because when the only Christian-themed entertainment in the marketplace is laced with conservatism, Christianity itself will increasingly take on a conservative cast. The faith of Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr is not the faith of Tim LaHaye and Mel Gibson. Yet the more that single interpretation of Christianity dominates airwaves and bookshelves, the more people of faith are tempted to believe that the only way to be a "good" Christian is to be a conservative.