Why Hollywood Gets the Bible Wrong - Part 2

[Darris McNeely] Hi, we're on the set today of a program that Gary has done about three ways that Hollywood gets the Bible wrong. We've been talking about the bias that is there. One of the big markets or big pools of audience that Hollywood has are fundamentalist Christians, evangelical Christians, which represents a tremendous pool of interest, and when they do a biblical theme and topic, why is it that they get it wrong, and not cater to the interests of such a large group of people? What do you think?

[Steve Myers] Well, you'd think they'd want to get it right.

[Darris McNeely] You would.

[Steve Myers] With the stories that are told biblically – it is amazing, you go on the web, and you can see all the different reviews of movies, especially from those that are evangelicals, which will point out all the mistakes and all the inaccuracies in those stories, so you would think that they'd try to get it right –and that much more, have a bigger audience, and actually probably could make more money in that way. But I think part of the reason is that they don't really care. They don't really care about getting it right because they don't want to get it right. They don't take the Bible as the truth. They don't take it as inspired by God – they think of it as just another storybook, and tell the story in that way, rather than the fact that it is the inspired word of God. So I think that is a big part to play in it.

[Gary Petty] You know, when I was working on this script, I read an article by someone who said, "Why are Christians – " I vaguely remember, I don't know if this exact headline, but "Why are Christians afraid of art?". And his argument was that movies are art, they're entertainment, and that artistic license is something that a moviemaker has, and so the Christians' sort of hoopla around "it's not biblically accurate" is silly because movies should be seen as art, not as theological.

[Darris McNeely] Well, the Bible is the revealed word of God, it's not art in the sense as the modern world looks at it, as normally would be interpreted. But I think in the stories of the Bible, there is far more to be interested in and to get into than any of the stories as they are told in the films that we have before us today. So just a bit more to consider and to think about as we look at a very interesting and fascinating topic of Hollywood and the Bible today.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.