The sports team down on their luck with a prayerful coach that just won’t quit.
The gospel singer who is nervous about what her parents would think if they raised the bpm on the hymns.
The black boy finally entering church at the end of the movie to thunderous applause.
Christian films have held onto these tropes for a very long time, and there is nothing wrong with them, but they can be seen as cringey. I didn’t watch mainstream Christian films for a few years because when I tried, I just found them awkward. When I was researching, I found something interesting that I want to clarify for this blog. I want to affirm what I think a Christian film is. Some think that Christian films just have Christian themes – however I disagree. Some class ‘The Omen’, which is about a devil child taking over his family, as a Christian film?? Immediately no. These films go under the ‘supernatural’ genre for me, as they focus on demon possession, ghosts and gods. I believe Christian films focus on God, as the Bible does. They should affirm what the Bible teaches through their plot and accurately reaffirm the existence of God and/or the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Also, there are many worldwide Christian movies that are wonderful, but, for time, I am gonna talk about Hollywood.
There are different types of Christian films out there: films about the Biblical stories (‘The Passion of the Christ’, ‘Prince of Egypt’, ‘The Ten Commandments’) and those that tell a non-Biblical story (most of them are biopics) but with a Christian message/moral (‘Hacksaw Ridge’, ‘The Blind Side’, ‘God’s Not Dead’). Initially, in the early 20th century, Hollywood Christian films were mainly focused on the former, with Cecil B DeMille , a great American filmmaker, saying “Give me any couple of pages of the Bible and I’ll give you a picture [they called films ‘pictures’ back then]”. He created epics like ‘The Ten Commandments’, ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Samson and Delilah’. DeMille loved the Bible, and used his platform to encourage others to read it. But also, these films were cash cows; an opportunity to create a big historical blockbuster with a big budget and audience, with the 1956 remake of ‘The Ten Commandments’ being the most expensive film ever made for its time. Sometimes Biblical guidance was ignored in favour of spectacle – but it paid off, with ‘The Ten Commandments’ (1923) holding the revenue record for its film studio for 25 years.
Independent Christian studios took the reins, wanting to make movies with more of a passion for Jesus behind it. Christian filmmakers would create films based on sermons and go from church to church to give out tapes in the 80s for them to watch. Later, the Jesus movement in the 60s/70s encourages a rise of Christian kids films and music for children, like ‘Psalty the Singing Songbook’ and subsequently, film studios like Pinnacle Peak Pictures (PureFlix) and Cloud Ten Pictures came to be in the late 90s/early 2000s. Christian movies do really well in Christian circles, but the critics don’t like many of them. One of the reasons is because in the films, non-Christians are usually painted as heinous villains, which is largely not the case in reality. Also, the writing and acting quality in the Christian movies have a reputation of being bad, or cringey. And I don’t completely disagree. I have groaned at Christian films sometimes and thought:
please stop xx
I was watching ‘I’m in Love with a Church Girl’, and the opening credits said: Executive Producer – God. They couldn’t even credit him as ‘Director’, ’Author and the Finisher’. I couldn’t stop laughing and actually never finished the movie. It would make sense that Christian films and ideologies would seem weird to those that do not indulge, but sometimes it goes beyond that and the films are super unrealistic or just too cringey to bear. Christian films usually have a smaller, dependable audience, but if they want to use the films as a vehicle to share the message to others, you have to meet people where they are – without jeopardising Christian principles, of course, because Biblical integrity is crucial. Sacrificing Biblical truth for entertainment purposes does not help in the long run. The aim isn’t to please all, but to say the truth and say it well, with Christ being at the centre rather than an afterthought for a money grab from a guaranteed Christian audience.
This opens the question of the true purpose of the movie being made and how this can affect the movie outcome. Is the aim to only entertain Christian audiences? Is it to evangelise to non-Christians? Or for mainstream audiences with a subtle Christian message? I can’t get into that in this blog because it won’t end but there is another blog by Sean Paul Murphy, a Christian screenwriter for PureFlix, and he digs into this, if you are interested.
Films of a less cringey nature are being made now, and budget plays a part in exposure and increasing the film quality. Movies like ‘Evan/Bruce Almighty’ and ‘Silence’ are produced by Christians in huge big-budget studios and resonate with Christian and mainstream audiences as the movies are filmmaking, are of good quality, contemplative and are still of Christian interest without because completely blasphemous and taking creative liberties. There was this era when many Christian movies just focused on the rapture (‘Left Behind’, ‘A Thief in the Night’). Despite the rapture being true, I think they mainly instil fear because they insinuate that Heaven is the only reason to become a Christian, when it is much more than that. I don’t think it’s good for people’s initial thought of Christianity to be that they don’t want to be left behind after Jesus comes. I prefer movies that are a bit more uplifting in general, and I am getting that with the new Christian films. I (reluctantly) watched ‘Jesus Revolution’ (2023) and it was actually a good movie – A Christian film that I would recommend! There are other films done by people like the Kendrick Brothers, the Erwin Brothers, DeVon Franklin and more, who are making great films with a focus that I prefer.
I am not saying that all old Christian movies were bad, but packaging matters – excellence matters; especially in such a saturated movie market. At the end of the day, Christian films are created with a message, and I like those that keep God and the Cross central and holy. But don’t take a film as law or get a sole measurement of Christianity through it. Maybe try and read the Bible and see if you can get to know God for yourself. It’s working for me.