Behind the Screen
Hollywood Insiders On Faith, Film, and Culture
Edited by Spencer Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi
Baker, 216 pp., $14.99

CHRISTIANS AND HOLLYWOOD HAVE USUALLY been at odds with each other, and given that the American movie and television industries turn a tidy, regular profit, it has become clear to many Christians that they will have to be the ones to mend the breach. Behind the Screen makes the practical, intellectual, and theological case for such an effort.

Christians' well-known complaint is that Hollywood films and TV programs generally disparage Christianity and promote immorality. The authors here accept that premise but tend to blame Christians for the problem. On the whole, contributors say, Christians have been too negative, too philistine, and too unsophisticated in their approach to the entertainment industry.

The authors are largely correct in that assessment, though there is more to the story than that. Since the 1960s, Hollywood has frequently gone out of its way to characterize Christians and Christianity as narrow-minded, foolish, and dangerous. Even sympathetic treatments, such as NBC's recent series The Book of Daniel, seem to take pains to be as edgy and snide as possible in their depiction of all things Christian.

Christians' bashing and boycotts certainly haven't changed Hollywood's ways. As one contributor astutely notes, Christians' criticism of the film industry has been counterproductive, as executives "see Christians as negative people who . . . won't watch no matter what we make, so why bother making shows for them?"

The attempt to build a parallel Christian culture during the past couple of decades has only reinforced that impression. Moreover, it has failed aesthetically because the quality standards have been too low, and it has not succeeded in pulling Christians away from Hollywood fare. As another contributor notes, "In poll after poll, the esteemed sociologist George Barna reaffirms Christians go to the movies at the exact same rate as the rest of the country."

Clearly, Christian leaders' complaints about the industry are falling on deaf ears, even among their own followers. There is a good reason for this. Christians who criticize the media, a contributor notes, tend to count up the number of images they don't like in a film while failing to see the real meaning of the stories. "Sometimes," another writer observes, "it will serve the Truth to have the bad guys get away with murder." After all, Scripture itself depicts numerous horrible actions. The events depicted in a film are not all-important; what counts is what they mean.

Hence, as another contributor acknowledges, Christian art need not be explicitly religious in content--which should be an obvious point but has been largely underappreciated in contemporary believers' encounters with the arts:

A television show doesn't need to have an angel in the cast to be about mercy. A film doesn't have to quote Scripture to put the Gospel in people's hearts. If the world will know us by our fruits, then by our cop shows and romantic comedies and thrillers they can know us too. I want to write so that the Good News is so entwined in the muscle of what I am writing that it can't be stripped away, can't be disregarded.