I’m a fan of the CBS series, Blue Bloods. The show has been a steady presence since 2010. If you’re not familiar, the series depicts a family that’s steeped in New York City’s law enforcement. From Tom Selleck as the Police Commissioner to a District Attorney daughter, it is a family deeply entrenched in the police life. In the simplest terms, it’s a cop drama. A good one at that. It’s a portrait of normal folks trying to make it through life. A consistent part of any episode is the ‘family dinner’ wherein the family gathers for a Sunday dinner. In most dinner scenes, the family starts the meal by saying grace. The family is Catholic and attends church regularly. Their faith is an important part of their life. The depiction of Christians is as close to accurate as Hollywood can muster.
Blue Bloods is not the norm.
Long has been the case that modern entertainment was comfortable portraying sin. Name the sin and, in an effort to be ‘cutting edge’, Hollywood has been willing to cross that social norm. Some norms from days gone by were pretty silly. That married TV couples were required to sleep in different beds was pretty silly. Otherwise, in the portrayal of sex and violence, Tinsletown never met a line of morality it didn’t want to cross.
To know me, it’s clear that I’m no prude. Not by a long shot. Still, the line that’s being crossed in Hollywood is no longer the just a willing portrayal of sin but now makes Christianity the source of disdain if not all out evil.
Versus the Irish-Catholic Reagan family in Blue Bloods, the Irish-Catholic Cleary family in the recently canceled ABC series ‘The Kids are Alright’, had a different take on their faith. A disdainful one.
Said the family mother, “Our religion has a lot of beautiful, profound ideas that only work if you don’t look at them too closely,”. Noting the disdain of Christianity, replying to his wife, the husband said, “Yeah, church isn’t set up for brainiacs wringing their hands, trying to pick things apart.”
There’s an old axiom that if you drop a frog in to a boiling pot of water, that it will jump out. But if you place the frog in a cold pot of water and bring to a slow boil, the frog will never know and boil to death.
The insidious nature of such slights on Christianity in the Kids are Alright isn’t just small and passing. The very nature of behavior change is found in small, often unnoticed cultural degradations. What is reflected in our entertainment can unknowingly filter in to our psyche.
Betsy Levy Paluck is a psychology professor at Princeton University and studies social changes. A decade ago, Levy Paluck studied the often violent relationship between the Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Her experiment was in the form of a radio soap opera depicting a Romeo and Juliet-like relationship between characters from each tribe. Said Levy Paluck, “The radio program did not change people’s personal beliefs, but it did alter their perceptions of intermarriage and dissent as more socially acceptable. That shift in perspective coincided with their changes in behavior.”
Important in this study was the slight change in perception by simply listening passively to a radio program. Such passive consumption can be a very powerful tool for good. This study showed us as much. In American culture, the same can be said for the shifting of the socially acceptable window of behavior away from Judeo-Christian values. This is nothing new. That frog pot has been boiling for some time now.
The Kids are Alright is but a recent example of entertainment’s contempt of Christianity. Simply slighting Christianity is old hat nowadays.
As the nation more deeply divides in to liberal coasts and generally conservative middle America, Hollywood’s woke factory is taking direct aim at middle America’s core: Church.
In what would appear to be a Christian’s dream sitcom, 2018’s ‘Living Biblically’ depicts lead character Chip Curry as a man on a spiritual journey with the intent of living the Word of the Bible. Sadly, the sitcom uses the mechanism of Chip living literally by the Bible’s words. Not the actual message. Obviously an intentional misinterpretation of what Judeo-Christians mean in ‘living the Word’.
Given the absurdity of character Chip’s literal Biblical life (blowing a horn at a new moon a la Bible verse Numbers 10:10?), his ‘voice of common sense’ is his wife Lesley. Lesley is an atheist.
Of course she is.
The sitcom utilizes a standard lead character mechanism of the ‘bumbling dad’ who finds himself in zany situations and must be rescued by the sensible supporting characters. Chip, the Christian, is the bumbler. The savior, if you will, is amongst others, his atheist wife. Chip does have his ‘God Squad’ of a priest and a rabbi too. There is at least a little balance of common sense characters.
Still, Chip is the Christian fool.
Though lighthearted, Living Biblically is not accurate to Christianity. In its failing to be accurate, a non-believer might be lead non-Christians in to thinking this kind of madcap silliness is based on truth. It’s not. That’s the problem.
At a time when Americans are becoming less religious, mischaracterization can impact a non-believer’s perception. Wrapped in the veneer of comedy is this misinformation being aimed directly at religion.
Living Biblically lasted one season. Possibly due to it appealing to absolutely no single core audience.
Given the failure of the ‘Christian as a fool’ television content, TV has come to rely on a sort-of amoral darkness to fill programming. Cable TV programs geared to Gen Z like Pretty Little Liars (a show originally based on the coverup of a fellow student’s death) provide no real cultural value. Though the content is dark in nature, is not explicitly anti-Christian. If you’re counting Christian sins, there’s a slew of them.
That’s not the point. It is no longer simply about sin and TV (and entertainment in general) pushing moral boundaries, Christianity itself is the target.
Coming to MGM channel EPIX is the new drama ‘Perpetual Grace LTD’ starring Ben Kingsley. From the show’s marketing page, Perpetual Grace, “…modern noir drama from MGM Television, which follows James, a young grifter, as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown, who turns out to be far more dangerous than he suspects. The pastor and his wife Lillian – known to their parishioners as Pa and Ma—have used religion to bilk hundreds of innocent people out of their life savings.”
The problem isn’t simply the misdeeds of these characters but the show stereotypes faith leaders as conniving and evil and the parishioners as rubes. Hollywood needs a villain for a compelling story. The idea that faith leaders can be dishonest is not unwarranted. Many leaders have taken advantage of their position. It is a rarity.
Despite the rarity, it makes a good storyline, I guess.
If you’d like a heaping dollop of blaspheme, ‘Good Omens’ serves up a hardy spoonful.
A six part Amazon series, the New York Times sums the story as, “…Aziraphale (Angel) and Crowley (demon) have been on Earth for millenniums, luring its inhabitants toward salvation and damnation, respectively. Now, though, their time is almost up. A war between Heaven and Hell is brewing; Judgment Day is just a week away. But like a pair of John le Carré undercover agents who have grown too comfortable in their assumed identities, the angel and the demon realize that they quite enjoy living with the human race, so they team up to find the Antichrist and postpone the end of days.”
Because, you know, the omnipotent God couldn’t see past those hijinks.
In this series, the mockery is not just that the end times is seemingly malleable by an affable Angel and demon but said Angel is a party to the scheme. Sure, you can understand why demon Crowley wants to avoid Armageddon, his next stop is a lake of fire. The problem is that Aziraphale is choosing to refute God’s Word. In Psalm 103:20-21, Angels are to follow God’s command even if they do have free will. Don’t follow His command? Well, where do you think demons came from?
The show makes God’s Word a choice. As a believer, you’d have a choice to not follow God’s Word but if you change your mind, you’re welcomed back. Angels? Not so much. God has a one strike policy for Angels.
Good Omen’s simply mocks most all that the Bible stands for.
The denigration of Christianity on TV is legion. From the slight pokes found in comedies to even more dark anti-Christian content not even discussed here, the atheist strain within leftist entertainers and writers finds an easy target in Christianity. Christian faith today, along with Judaism, prefers to peacefully dispute differences. Accordingly, is an easy target.
When Chris Pratt openly declared his faith, the Hollywood woke factory mocked and derided Pratt for the declaration. This spoke volumes and clearly put on display why such a spate of programs with Christianity put in a bad light are being ground out of the Hollywood evil sausage factory.
As Princeton University professor Betsy Levy Paluck confirmed, entertainment can be a powerful tool to change social norms. For the good and for the bad. Christianity has not been perfect. However much more good has come from the faith than the bad. People have stopped believing this. It gets in the way of social justice.
We are going to hell in a hand basket. Even the Bible says so. Grab the popcorn and watch our moral demise. Maybe just avoid these programs…
