New Cultural Approach for Conservative Christians: Reviews, Not Protests

[kweerwolf]

Like other reviewers of "Brokeback Mountain," Steven Isaac was impressed by the quality of the filmmaking. But for Mr. Isaac, who reviews movies for the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family, the movie, about a love affair between two male ranch hands, posed other critical challenges.

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"When Ang Lee brings his considerable talents to a film that promotes homosexuality, which I believe personally hurts our culture, you get a movie that sells its message more effectively than one by someone less talented," Mr. Isaac said in a telephone interview. In a review that acknowledged the film's virtues, published on the Focus on the Family Web site pluggedinonline.com, he objected that it portrayed the characters' tribulations as consequences of an intolerant society rather than of "the destructiveness of acting on homosexual temptations."

"Brokeback Mountain" has received overwhelming acclaim from mainstream critics, but elicited a different reaction from conservative Christian media: respectful and often laudatory, but finding biblical fault with the film's content.

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This critical ambivalence represents a change in the way conservative Christians engage popular culture, said Robert Johnston, a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical institution, in Pasadena, Calif. Until recently, he said, Christian groups would have ignored a sexually explicit movie like "Brokeback Mountain" except to protest it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/movies/26crit.html?ex=1293253200&en=e6fb8afa008bb2bc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[msongs]

1. what about "destructiveness of acting on" christian temptations?

tens or hundreds of millions of people raped, tortured, and murdered in the past 2000 years? Is that not worse
than a poor little movie about fictional characters like those 2 cowboys...or the mythical jesus for that matter?

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[kevinbgoode]

2. LOL...Focus on the "Family"

which has tried desperately to create a "family" culture of obscurity and denial of reality in order to promote illusions that caused more social problems 50 years ago in this country than anything they accuse "liberals" of doing. . .

Puh-leeze - this movie "promotes" REALITY - perhaps we should take this tack with them every time television or Hollywood produces any film that mentions "God" - as promoting superstition. Perhaps the FOF reviewer was just upset because there was no scene where the father showed the son his peepee in the bathtub.