Christianity in the Media

*Originally published on 1/30/09


Writers of books, movies and television, I have a crazy idea. How about you try portraying a Christian as something other than a pedophilic priest or a hateful, bigoted psychotic zealot? I'm not joking, try and broaden your horizons because, seriously, we're not all like that.

I'm not offended so much as I'm frustrated. For all the talk about political correctness and respecting other people's viewpoints, there seems to be an asterisk that says "except for Christians, they're acceptable targets." I don't care if you parody religion. South Park, for example, has gone after religion of all sorts and it has been funny every time, even when it's my religion that's being mocked. I'm talking about portrayals in more serious work.

Once in a while is fine, but it seems that every portrayal now is one of the two that I mentioned above. Why I'm calling foul is because if this was done with any other religion, there would've been an uproar. People got upset that the terrorists in "Iron Man" were middle eastern and if you show a rich person who's Jewish you better be prepared to be verbally assaulted. People complained that "Passion of the Christ" was anti-semitic. Having seen the film I can say that it is in no way anti-semitic. It's a bad movie and I don't recommend seeing it but I didn't come out it thinking "those damn Jews!"

Look, I know that there are a lot of bigoted zealots out there, but this is not a phenomenon isolated to just Christians. Atheists, Jews and Muslims are all capable of equal hatred and bigotry. Case in point, Bill Maher is an atheist and he is one of the biggest, most bigoted hate-mongers around. I'm not sure about Buddhists, they seem too laid back to actively hate anyone but I don't want to stereotype. I may be wrong and there may be a hateful Buddhist out there, I don't know. The point is that hateful people hate. If it's not over religion, than they will find some other reason.

There are exceptions that prove the rule however. Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamasov" featured a devoutly religious man who was in no way portrayed negatively. On the contrary, I found his optimism refreshing as I was going through a crisis of conscience and was convinced that people suck. I'm still not the optimist I was say six months ago, but my faith has been somewhat restored.

One of the more recent Christian characters who is portrayed positively is Nightcrawler from the X-Men. X2 nailed the character and Alan Cumming's performance continues to be one of the many highlights of that movie. Even in the comics, they don't use him as a vessel to bash Christianity. On the contrary, in keeping with the message of tolerance, people find his faith as inspirational.

People were all for Obama saying that he was going to reach across to people and unify the country. When the rumor that he was a Muslim came about, most people on the far left responded with a logical "who cares what his religion is? That's his choice" but when he appointed a Christian preacher to speak at his inauguration, those same people cried foul saying that it was unacceptable.

Most Christians are good, caring and generous people. If you choose not to believe in God, that's fine. There's no reason to knock a person down just because they have faith in a higher power. There are some who take it too far, I'm not arguing that. But you can't generalize the whole of Christianity based on the actions of a few hardcore folks.

One more thing to wrap this up, just because a person is Christian doesn't mean that they're ignorant and believe that evolution is a myth. Conversely, saying evolution exists does nothing to disprove the existence of God. Watch this, God created the universe, and evolution occurred..checkmate.

It is possible to portray Christianity in a positive light. Given the fact that Obama does seem to sincerely want to bring people together even if they may not agree on everything. I think it behooves people in the media to cut Christians some slack and ease up a bit.