>God is all over Hollywood these days. The name of God has been mentioned so often in movies lately because movie producers have realized that God sells.
Take, for instance, this brief selection taken from an article published in The New York Times on Saturday, May 27, 2006:
“You don’t believe in God?” Tom Hanks’s character asks Audrey Tautou, who plays his partner-in-ciphers in “The Da Vinci Code.”
“Do you believe in God?” Liev Schreiber’s character asks a therapist who doubts that his adopted son, Damien, has devil genes in the new version of “The Omen.”
“Get right with God,” William Hurt preaches in the small, intense film “The King,” but he’s playing an evangelical minister, so he’s a lot more certain.
“With echo upon echo of faith-based dialogue, movie theaters today often sound like church. But what seems like a new willingness to explore questions of faith — as if Mel Gibson’s blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ” had made religion safe for Hollywood — has the spiritual depth of the “Daily Show” segment “This Week in God,” with its quiz-show-style “God Machine” that spits out religions to satirize.”
The article, “God and Man on Screen: Big Questions as Entertainment,” was written by Caryn James. To read the complete article, click here.
With all this publicity God is receiving lately, we should remember that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
File under: Movies, God, Hollywood
