The Village Voice Falls in Line

Here is a really good and fair piece in, that bastion of conservative Christian principles – The Village Voice! I had a very fun time talking to the journalist, Anthony Kaufmann – and I’m so glad the article reflected that.

Here are the snips with me in them…

Earlier this year, evangelicals expressed concern on websites that Hollywood producers would soft-pedal the story’s Christian principles. But those fears have now been allayed by former nun Barbara Nicolosi, head of Act One, a Los Angeles–based Christian screenwriting program. “People particularly want to know if Aslan comes off as a Christ-figure, or just some warm and fuzzy magic lion,” she writes in a press release accompanying her new book Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture. “Well, I personally cried every moment Aslan was on the screen. . . . So, I am going to say that Aslan is absolutely discernible as a figure of Jesus—for those who have eyes to see.” Indeed, Barbara Nicolosi, who encourages her students to emulate her favorite author Flannery O’Connor and films like Todd Field’s In the Bedroom and Jim Sheridan’s In America, says she wants the arts to “explore the spiritual side of human nature. Too much art is coming from the one limited perspective of pure materialism.”

Along with writers like Dean Batali ( That ’70s Show) and Scott Derrickson ( The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and producers like Ralph Winter ( X-Men), who all teach at Act One, Nicolosi is leading the charge from the inside, calling for Christians to learn the craft of filmmaking and work within Hollywood. “To write a movie that’s unintelligible outside of the [Christian] community is a weird thing to do,” she says, citing films like the Left Behind series. “It just keeps Christians on the fringes of our own culture.”

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Still, judging from the dozens of stories published in the mainstream press about the Narnia-Christian connection—The New York Times has run at least six since February—the “secular” establishment seems to be worried. As Nicolosi says, “The idea of religious people acquiring media and artistic expertise is chilling to the secular left. I suppose they imagine that we will be as unfair and propagandistic with cultural power as they have been. But I pray we won’t be. We have to answer to God for how we treat people.”

P.S. For the record, our God is an awesome God.

P.P.S. For the further record, I am not “leading the charge.” My principle achievement is in securing a forum for a whole bunch of really cool people to share what they know.