Christian Persecution Porn

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Another book preview.

The golden age of biblical epic films may be over, but the golden age of Christian persecution films may have just begun. Eric Brown of the International Business Times reported that an independent film titled God’s Not Dead has grossed more than $34 million in its first three weeks in theaters. Moviefone reported that the indie film was the fifth highest-earning film on the weekend it opened, in March 2014. The highly promoted Divergent and Muppets Most Wanted were among its competition.

The film, which I have not seen, depicts a college student whose philosophy professor demands the class write “God is dead” on a piece of paper, sign it, and hand it in. The student, a Christian, refuses. I assume several other things happen to fill the film’s running time. Eric Brown writes,

Russell Wolfe, CEO of “God’s Not Dead” distributor Pure Flix, admitted in an interview with the Blaze, the Glenn Beck site,  that the film is, by and large, “preaching to the choir,” saying that “God’s Not Dead” helps “people know more of why they believe what they believe.” But what values is the film teaching? Between the film’s abusive Muslims and angry atheists, the biggest take-home is that everyone is out to get Christians. Even the right-wing group Focus on the Family notes that “pretty much everyone who’s not a Christian in this story is villainized for being mean, abusive, grouchy or narrow-minded.”

I read that not just one, but two indie Christian persecution films are scheduled for release later in 2014, both named Persecuted. This is from a press release about one of them:

PERSECUTED tells the story of a modern-day evangelist named John Luther, played by SAG Award-nominated and Saturn Award winning actor James Remar ( X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, “Dexter”, DJANGO: UNCHAINED, WHAT LIES BENEATH, RED). Luther is the last hold out for a national endorsement to make sweeping reform in freedom of speech. As the government is mandating political correctness while covertly waging a war against religious organizations, a U.S. Senator, portrayed by Oscar-nominated actor Bruce Davison (X-MEN, “Lost”, “Castle”), and his political allies create a sinister plan of denial and scandal to frame John Luther for murder. Suddenly his once normal life is turned upside down as he becomes a fugitive vowing to expose those responsible. It is a mission that brings him face-to-face with the coming storm of persecution that will threaten the moral ethics and freedoms of America.

Since “mandating political correctness” usually is code for being called out for telling jokes involving black people and watermelons, I attempted to find out what awful thing is being mandated. It appears to be a hypothetical “Faith and Fairness Act” that would require religious broadcasters to present all religious points of view when presenting their own point of view. Well, yes, that would be dreadful. I shudder at the thought of anyone on the Christian Broadcasting Network attempting to present a Buddhist point of view.

The other Persecuted is set in the old Soviet Union and involves Evangelicals being pursued by KGB agents, but Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch says the film is “clearly meant to be an allegorical tale about the United States today.”

But if that’s not enough Christian persecution porn for you, a “Stories of the Persecuted Church” boxed set of six more Christian persecution films on DVD is available from ChristianCinema.com.

18 thoughts on “Christian Persecution Porn”

  1. John Luther

    Sorry kids, that name’s already taken by Idris Elba’s London murder police. Try to be at least a little original next time….

    Oh, right. Sorry.

    I shudder at the thought of anyone on the Christian Broadcasting Network attempting to present a Buddhist point of view.

    That is an excellent point.

  2. I can’t say I blame America’s Christians for being very upset.

    Not after we locked-down their churches, and then burned them – or turned into Mosques.

    And especially not after all of the Christian families were sent to FEMA camps for either re-education through hard labor – or extermination.

    And not after all of their Christian leaders were burned on wooden Muslim crescents.

    And then, to add insult to injury, we created video games where non-Christians could score points by having male and female martyrs tortured, violated, starved, and then fed to the lions, who, apparently, preferred their meat shredded, tenderized, and lean.

    Why, it’s amazing that there are enough Christians left in America to make these movies – let alone have Christians to pay to see them.

    Hey, uber-Christian looney-tunes:
    Criticism of the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and/or religious intolerance, by some of you Christians – I’m looking at YOU, Dominionist Evangelicals!!!! – is not persecution!
    It’s criticism that hopes to bring you back to Christ’s messages of love, peace, and acceptance.

    PS:

    GET OVER YOURSELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Cund: A fine comment, serious, energized and fierce without being a rant. (Not that your rants aren’t good.) And your penultimate line — It’s criticism that hopes to bring you back to Christ’s messages of love, peace, and acceptance. — is exceptionally on target.

  5. philosophy professor demands the class write “God is dead” on a piece of paper, sign it, and hand it in.

    They really think, or want to pretend, that “librul” college campuses are as authoritarian and overbearing as their Christian colleges. projection much?

    Being forced to sign your name to things you don’t believe is more of a right-wing conformist practice. Haven’t they spent the last few years trying to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy?

  6. I’m going to post a bunch of something Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal wrote today that relates. I added the bold face are to make that point.

    “But now Huck’s combining several popular Christian Right memes by making the rapid change of national opinion on same-sex marriage an act of national apostasy engineered by the Great Deceiver Barack Obama, who has had the gall to pretend to be a Christian when everybody knows Christians will have no truck with sodomites!

    [M]y question that I would love to pose to the president is this: Mr. President, please explain that when you said in 2008 at the Saddleback Church forum that you stood for traditional marriage and you did so because you were a Christian and because it’s what the Bible taught, please answer: Were you lying then, are you lying now, or did the Bible get rewritten?”

    So what’s it going to be, you lying apostate?

    I went back to read the transcript of what Obama said at Rick Warren’s famous 2008 moment in the sun:

    I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian … it’s also a sacred union. You know, God’s in the mix..

    Where’s the assertion that the Bible eternally proscribed same-sex marriage (a very dubious proposition even if you do treat the Bible as, to use Paul Broun’s philistine construction, a “manufacturer’s handbook” for human life) or that “Christian convictions” dictate opposition to marriage equality? Huck just kinda made it up, the better to fit Obama into the Antichrist mold he’s hinting at.

    Insofar as it’s only April of 2014, what sort of chiliastic hysteria will Mike Huckabee find necessary to articulate by this time next year, when serious candidate commitments will be under consideration by the antichoicers and homeschoolers of Iowa? ….”

    ——————————————————————————-

    Hat tip to Ed, who has his head screwed on pretty good.

    On the subject of movies, the film that was released just prior to the 2012 election that may have sparked Benghazi was IMO planned and financed to try to produce an incident in the mid-east to make Obama look bad. The financing and deception behind the movie smell of Rove. Yeah, I may be paranoid, but am I wrong? The financing has yet to be explained. The actors did not know how the film was going to be edited into an attack on Islam or be distributed in the mid-east to inflame the anger of Muslims.

    Now we have a series of movies.. and they dovetail sooooo conveniently into a Huckabee run for the WH. Even if/when Huck blows out in the primaries, the films will do what they are intended to do – fire up the base and create a phony narrative of democrats persecuting christians.

  8. Don’t forget Pastor Saeed…He’s currently at the top of the Christian persecution chart. Yeah, he knocked Pastor Wally out of the box. Although Pastor Wally does have an advantage with the You Tube videos.

  9. Christians have ‘evolved’ on a number of issues. The Bible was used as a defense for slavery for millennia before Abolitionists saw the light and used it to Bible to call for slavery’s demise. But, still, there’s more in the Bible that would allow you to defend slavery than the opposite. The Bible does speak against gay people, sorry, no real way around it, but kind of in the way that the Bible speaks about slavery. It’s pretty vehement in the Old Testament where it is outright forbidden with severe punishments in place for those ‘caught in the act’ (along with eating shellfish). In the New Testament the feeling is that gay people are a sign that the society is going to hell in a handbasket,(along with being disobedient to your parents) but there’s no specific call for gay people to be stoned, or burned, or anything else.

    Christian Persecution Syndrom (CPS) has been around for ever. I remember hearing sermons as a kid about the liberal professors and how they were turning the children of good Christian families away from their faith. I remember thinking then that their faith must not have been that strong in the first place if a professor was able to change them. But that’s a particular fantasy of CPS, the christian kid sent off to college who stands up for his faith, confronts the atheist professor, who then is made to look like the fool. It’s the big boogeyman fear of many of the christians; the stuff that’s out there in the world can tear your faith from you. So they develop lives that never, ever have to confront the world. I have a niece who went to christian K-12, christian college and now is married to a christian tea-bagger/conceal carry guy. Never actually lived in a world that would challenge her.

  10. buckeyblue,
    I went to a Catholic college, after going to public grade school and JHS and HS.

    Catholics allow critical thinking, and encourage learning critical thinking skills. And I got a great education at that college, and enjoyed my experience immensely – even if everyone knew that not only wasn’t I Catholic, but I wasn’t a believer.

    It seems to me that it’s the Dominionist Christian Evangelicals, among a few other sects, who don’t want their children learning critical thinking skills.
    They want Christian robots, I guess.

  11. Hey, I have an idea for another Christian persecution film. This one is set in Roman times. A group of faithful Christians is herded into the arena, and then the entire crowd starts to chant “Happy Holidays” at them. Or is that too graphic?

  12. Seriously, though, if all you have to do to persecute Christians nowadays is not be one, why even bother passing a “Faith and Fairness Act”?

  13. Gulag: you’re exactly right. I don’t know if anyone watches Vice (on HBO) but they had a piece on Israel and how the Dominionist Evangelicals were driving a lot of the foreign policy. Even providing a lot of money for Israel. I grew up an Evangelical, but in a time where they weren’t involved in politics, and one could safely be a Democrat. Now, there’s no way you could be a Democrat and attend an Evangelical church without out being ostracized for it. Speaking of Catholics I’m happy to be sending my son to a Catholic university next year. Absolutely no chance I would send him to an evangelical school, not a chance in that mythical biblical hot spot.

  14. The only thing that I can figure is that they are firmly commited to the idea that the US is a “christian nation”. Anyone that disagrees with that or makes any decision without accepting that is persecuting christians. That’s the only guess I can come up with. It seems to me that those that aren’t christian and will say so are far more discouraged and defamed.

  16. Huckabee is a failed preacher.. What’s funny about that is that preaching the word of God according to real Christians is that its not something you try your hand at and hope you succeed. It a calling from God where the anointing is upon you and you cannot fail. It’s a special gift given to a select few by God to further his kingdom. Yet Huckabee couldn’t sell enough spiritual snake oil to make a go of it. So now he’s preaching the word to pseudo-Christians and getting over as some sort of scriptural authority.
    Truth is that he’s just another blowhard bag of shit plying his nonsense on a bunch of rubes.

    Well, that concludes my therapy for this evening.. Sorta like the joke where the women walks into the psychiatrists office and he tell her to take off her clothes and lay down on the couch. He then ravishes her. When he’s finished he gets up and says…Well, I just got rid of my problem, so what’s yours?

  17. When I first moved to this area of NC, I had a conversation with one of my neighbors that touched on the separation of church and state. She valued it, because it kept the church safe from the worldliness of political struggle. Obviously, times have changed, even in our little community. But, I think she had a point, and I agree with her.

    I remember the remnants of the “Social Gospel” and the positive influence it had on our society and policy. So, I have some high regard for Jesus and what he taught. Even as a child, I could sense that people were moved toward justice and sacrifice because their beliefs demanded that they try to be better people.

    But, if I were a young adult today, my opinion of Christianity would probably be a lot different. For a few decades, the most prominent face of Christianity has been an amalgam of telegrifters, mean spirited patriarchs and christofascist hacks. That’s not a winning representation of the Christian message or an accurate one. But, it is in a sense, the consequence of succumbing to the temptation of political power.

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