OPINION:
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — The Barna Group, a religious trend tracking organization, found in a recent survey that three out of four American adults say they want to grow spiritually. And at long last, even Hollywood is taking notice.
As Newsweek reported in July, “there’s currently a resurgence in faith films — at least 28 of them have been released in the past six years.”
For an American society that’s moved more and more secular — creating a dangerous situation for the fate of God-given individual liberties, the foundation of the nation’s exceptionalism — the cultural shift toward entertainment of a more godly nature is good news. After all, the playground of satan is the mind; and filling the mind with images and stories and narratives of nonstop sin dressed as entertainment has the eventual effect of numbing the soul to evil.
Films based on faith and on stories stemming directly from the Bible are proving to be major forces in the culture wars.
“Religion in movies: Why ‘Hollywood is taking notice’ of faith-based films,” Fox News wrote in April, in a story about ‘His Only Son,’ directed by David Helling. The trend’s been tracking for a few years.
“No longer a novelty, the faith-based film business is trying new ways to attract audiences,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2018.
That was on the heels of actor Dennis Quaid joining forces with rock group MercyMe in Dallas to sing and promote the faith film, “I Can Only Imagine” — which cost only $7 million to produce, but pulled in more than $17 million, shocking industry insiders and even the movie’s own makers.
“None of us ever in our wildest dreams would have ever gotten close to this kind of prediction for the film,” Jon Erwin, who directed the film with his brother, Andrew, told The Tennessean.
And that was after the Erwin brothers produced their other faith-based hit, “Woodlawn,” that netted around $14 million.
The latest addition to the Christian movie genre is “Miracle in East Texas,” a 2018 production that is finally hitting the screens this month. Produced in part by Sam and Kevin Sorbo, and starring both the Sorbos, as well as the likes of “Cheers” sitcom favorite, John Ratzenberger, the movie — narrated by Louis Gossett, Jr. — tells the true Great Depression-era story of two con men who trick widows into investing into wild oil drilling dreams. When one of their wells actually produces oil, the con men are faced with a dilemma: to come clean with their investors, who have been swindled into buying five times the shares of what the well’s worth, or cut and run and abandon the one genuine oil strike they’ve actually produced.
They decided to ‘fess up and drill. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“That’s the oil that helped us win World War II,” said Sam Sorbo, during the premiere of the film at Trump International Golf Resort in West Palm Beach on Thursday, referencing how Winston Churchill himself credited the East Texas oil pipelines as the deciding factor in the war.
The movie’s not the only 2023 faith-based release. In January was “Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist” — featuring again, Kevin Sorbo; in February were “Jesus Revolution” and “A Thousand Tomorrows.” Another box office smash, “The Chosen,” has entered its fourth season with plans for a big screen rollout.
And as profits grow — “Jesus Revolution” brought in more than $15 million — so, too, will productions of more faith-based movies.
From Movie Guide, an April essay titled, “There Are More Faith-Based Movies Than Ever, But Why?” — this: “The audience for faith-based films has grown, particularly among Christians. According to a study by Barna Group … ‘Four out of ten adults (41%) said that within the past two years they had seen a movie that had caused them to think more seriously about their religious faith…’ This has created a demand for more films with religious themes.”
That’s not only good for America’s culture.
It’s good for America’s political landscape.
As Founding Fathers warned, America could only stay a nation with a government that’s limited so long as its people are moral and virtuous. Why? Because it’s only the moral and virtuous who are capable of self-control; self-regulation; self-government. So as the nation grows more and more secular, the government grows bigger and more powerful, and freedoms and individual liberties become less and less prominent.
And entertainment that normalizes sin has been a hefty contributor to the cultural rot that’s fed the cycle of secularism-slash-Big Government in America for far too long.
The growing quest for spirituality combined with the growing profits of faith-based movies mean America’s moral compass may finally be pointing in the right direction again. God-given liberties aren’t dead. American Exceptionalism is still alive. The spirit of America’s freedom soars even today.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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