A Note on Evangelicals
I'm about to head out of Chicago where yesterday I gave an address to a conference of young pastors and other creative Christian types, mostly evangelicals. I don't have a lot of time to write, but I have to say: regardless of where I agree and disagree with them, these people are (along with maybe the tea partiers) the single most misrepresented group in the country. Taken as a whole, they are largely cool, sweet-natured, open-hearted, intelligent and thoughtful. The fact that the news and entertainment media routinely pick out the most small-minded and bad-tempered of them to represent the whole is despicable. If we picked the worst journalists to represent the news media, Katie Couric would be anchoring a major evening news program and Maureen Dowd would be writing a column for the New York Times, which is absurd. By the same token, if we only allowed the meanest, most shallow, most ignorant people in the country to make movies... hey... waaaait just a minute...
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Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Andrew, boy have you hit on one of my pet pissers. I am a practicing Jew with every reason to be suspicious of these devoutly Christian types. But when my elderly father and step mother were chased out of New Orleans by Katrina, my Christian step brother and family outside Atlanta took them in. My father had Alzheimers and the move was deteriorating. I ended up putting him in a place called, gulp, Christian City, where he died in shortly after. The people working in hospice were serious Christians and couldn't do more to aid his comfort and try to accommodate any Jewish traditions I required. These were sincerely thoughtful, kind people.
Shortly afterward I wrote a pilot for FOX set in a high school where the main antagonist was a super PC tightass. The first change the ultra-liberal executive producer I was working with wanted was to make him a super Christian tightass. Wow, I thought, couldn't you get less original and more offensive.
Aug '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Thanks, Andrew. As an evangelical Christian, and one who works with a lot of evangelicals, I can say for certain the way we are generally portrayed in the media reflects only a small slice of the evangelical world. Taken as a whole, evangelicals are as diverse as any group. Probably far more diverse than any random sampling of evangelical bashers. I know plenty of evangelicals on both sides of just about any hot-button social issue you can mention. It makes for interesting conversations, believe me.
Jul '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Not for nothing, but evangelicals are the biggest supporters of Israel in the United States.
Bigger than most of the Jews I know.
Jun '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Serious Christians, like I'm trying to be, don't see the New Testament as a replacement for the Old Testament, or in any way a repudiation of it, but the fulfillment of it. When the Messiah comes in the future, we can ask him if he's been here before. I think he has. :)
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
That's my experience, too. I can also add to the story that at no point was I asked whether I worried for my soul or my fathers. Not even by the sitter who stayed with him nightly reading the New Testament from dusk to dawn.
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Just to clarify, I'm not a literal Messianic Jew, but every Passover I keep that door open for the Messiah and he/she never shows. And no one can resist my brisket! Not even Bill Clinton. See What's Your Poison?
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
It was also one of the funniest scripts I've read in a long time. They were fools not to put it on, as written. Would've been a big hit. What is it, Denise, with our business?
Aug '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Thanks for the great post, Andrew. Serious Christians recognize slander, scorn, and persecution as a badge of honor. If we're not experiencing it - especially now - we're not doing our job. We've always known that the price of being on God's side is the world's revulsion, that's the nature of this world.
Notice the people the world loves: Obama ( his approval ratings overseas are sky high ); Lady GaGa; Hugo Chavez; Che Guevara; Castro. You begin to see a pattern emerge.
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Thank you, Rob. What's wrong? Have you not seen all the Obama stickers on in the parking lots? Our industry runs on fear and group think.
May '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
That's not fair. I want to see that show. I had a right to see that show. I'm calling Elizabeth Warren! She'll show those Fox executives a thing or two.
May '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Denise Moss
Thank you, Rob. What's wrong? Have you not seen all the Obama stickers on in the parking lots? Our industry runs on fear and group think. · Sep 24 at 11:23am
This is why we've taken the American-ness out of our American film icons (GI Joe works for the UN?). The excuse is that international box office would decline otherwise. John Nolte at Big Hollywood (insert podcast plug here) has debunked that, showing that boldly American films do every bit as well overseas. The real reason is that the studio execs aren't that keen on America as currently configured. Or possibly, it's that they have no idea what international audiences want, like kids who put maple leaf stickers on their backpacks.
May '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Trace Urdan
That's not fair. I want to see that show. I had a right to see that show. I'm calling Elizabeth Warren! She'll show those Fox executives a thing or two. · Sep 24 at 11:44am
Yeah! That isn't fair! I wanna see it, too! You can't just tantalize me with "one of the funniest scripts I've read in a long time" and just leave me hanging!
Jun '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
And this is the great challenge: we oversimplify groups to get our heads around them, then end up with
1) the extremes representing the group;
2) false dichotomies defining the "opposition" dominating the discourse.
liberal vs. conservative - blurring the hugh differences within both liberals and conservatives
religious vs. atheists
wall street vs. main street
Moralists vs. PC
etc.
The new niche audience and long tail opportunities of the internets allow for people to go beyond the false dichotomy to more detailed group identity, but requires more from the media and media audience. It will be interesting to learn if the Tea Party can remain separate from the Republican party, creating the beginnings of something beyond the major false dichotomy of our two party system...
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Maybe I should put copies up for sale on ebay. Recoup some of my emotional pain and suffering.
Jun '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Denise Moss
Maybe I should put copies up for sale on ebay. Recoup some of my emotional pain and suffering. · Sep 24 at 12:55pm
Why is there a monopoly on movie and television production in the Hollywood establishment. Most of us probably believe that there is an big audience that the production companies would rather ignore (or insult) than serve, so why doesn't the market generate new production companies, even in a new locale. Film industry craft people seem to be available world-wide judging from the number of films set in the US but made overseas. (as long ago as "spagetti westerns")
Edited on Sep 24, 2010 at 2:52pmRe: A Note on Evangelicals
Well Pilgrim, this is a very serious area you've stumbled into. Vertical integration since the changes in so called Fin-Syn laws has made television production a virtual monopoly. Universal creates content for its susidiaries, NBC, Bravo, etc. Disney for ABC, Family Channel, etc. And so it goes. There are still some independent studios selling to the networks. But it goes deeper than that. TV is a business where executives circle the wagons and protect their own. They don't trust outsiders. They barely trust each other. So the same names get recycled over and over whether it's writers, producers or executives. So do the same ideas, the same political mind meld.
There are other successful locales...Tyler Perry's production company in Atlanta has broken through making comedies for the primarily African American market, but he is notorious in the business for mistreating writers. See this.
Anyway, we've come a long way from a discussion on evangelicals. Maybe Rob and I can start something about our gripes with the biz in another conversation.
Edited on Sep 24, 2010 at 3:18pmMay '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Denise Moss:
Shortly afterward I wrote a pilot for FOX set in a high school where the main antagonist was a super PC tightass. The first change the ultra-liberal executive producer I was working with wanted was to make him a super Christian tightass. Wow, I thought, couldn't you get less original and more offensive. · Sep 24 at 9:00am
I've been catching up on old episodes of The Office and thinking the character of Angela, who is the Christian tight-ass of that show, is completely unconvincing. It's clear the writers know nothing of what they're trying to parody.
I always thought Ned Flanders of The Simpsons was the best Evangelical characiture on TV: struggling to swim against the tide of the culture, and driven to neurosis in the process. Even Christianity Today gave Ned a (qualified) thumbs up.
Sep '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Andrew, I love your work. Thanks for sharing your wit and insight with us.
"these people (the evangelicals) are ... the single most misrepresented group in the country"
Why is this? I would suggest that to accept evangelicals as normal would be to lend an air of respectability to the sterner forms of Christianity - the ones that have fixed standards of behavior. If you are an advocate of Utilitarianism (secular with pleasure = good, pain = evil), then anyone that believes in the rather strict code of conduct in the Bible must be an impediment to good - they prohibit many forms of pleasure which is, by definition, good.
Remember Billy Joel's hideous, anti-Catholic screed, "Only the Good Die Young"? The object of his song, a girl named Virginia, was mocked because she was a devout Catholic and wouldn't sleep with him.
It's not the religion they hate, it's the restrictions.
Jul '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Notwithstanding that all of the above is true, Hollywood has succeeded in making religion appear ridiculous and faith absurd. In a word, lame. My son is a graduate student in Texas. All of his friends are atheists. We're on our way to Britain's status as the land of empty churches. Give it a hundred years and Islam will walk all over us. They think in terms of millennia, we think in terms of sweep weeks and quarterly earnings reports.
May '10
Re: A Note on Evangelicals
Can I just turn this around a bit? When I was raised in Latin America (as an evangelical - pentecostal, in fact), I had the misconception that Roman Catholics weren't Christians. There was good reason for that since many of the Catholic missionaries way back when had allowed animism to creep into the faith. So, you could go to a Roman Catholic church and find busy pagan sacrifices occurring right on the church steps. Some of the pagan gods had been given saints' names. What's more, many of the natives, who were lifetime Catholics, had no clue what their faith consisted of.
Fortunately, I went to boarding school with a lot of Roman Catholics. At that point, I got to see that those crazy Catholics really weren't that crazy after all. In fact, I found much to be admired in their understanding of Christianity. Some of my best friends in my formative teen years were a wonderful source of encouragement in my own faith.
I agree with the comments above that you can't take a generalization and apply it to an entire population. You're bound to be incorrect, with two exceptions being Leftists and Media... Kidding!