I saw a comment regarding Disney’s decision to feature a child with two moms on their family sitcom, Good Luck Charlie suggesting it was time for Christians to “say no to Disney.”
The question that occurred to me is, What should we say yes to?
Should we say yes to any other Hollywood studio? Which one isn’t promoting some sort of immorality in some of its films? Are people suggesting we punish Hollywood for the same reason people are more angry with Marco Rubio over the immigration bill than anyone else? Because we expect better of Disney.
Should we say yes to Christian filmmakers and direct our entertainment dollars there? Despite some reasonably successful films, that industry is hardly engaging the wide-spread support of Christian views.
Cultural critics are right to stew at media turning against traditional values, but saying no isn’t enough. One of the great problems we’ve faced is that Christians have produced far more criticism of popular culture than they have coherent strategies to address its influence. The solution for most Christians is to be disengaged from the process: the result is that those that produce popular culture are overwhelming secularist or pagan in their worldview and those who are nominally Christian and work in the entertainment industry tend to share the worldview of their colleagues rather than an Orthodox Christian worldview.
This presents a real problem as Americans continue to consume popular culture and expose themselves to the influence of this industry at an ever increasing rate and it does matter. Both Joe Biden and Rick Santorum cited the sitcom Will and Grace in explaining America’s growing support for same sex “marriage.” The fact is that the in terms of influencing the future of the country, the average national television producer is far more important than most members of Congress in shaping the minds and hearts of the American people.
Some are beginning to recognize this. Former Senator and Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum announced he was joining Christian film producer Echolight Studios.
It’s about time for these sort of actions. Christians need to plan to address this problem and simply saying, “no” isn’t going to cut it.
