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What Is a Christian Movie, Anyway?

A year ago, as 2014 opened, the entertainment world was declaring that it would be the year of the Christian movie. Hollywood, we were told, heard our cries! They answered our longings for movies that speak to us Christians and our God-loving souls! We Christian moviegoers would show the entertainment industry our true and mighty influence in a way we hadn’t since The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004! Amen!

But looking back, I’m a little confused about what, exactly, makes a “Christian” movie.

Sure, we saw our share of Christian hits, especially early on. Son of God built on its television miniseries lead-in(The Bible) and earned $60 million in North America. God’s Not Dead, an out-of-the-blue, in-your-face defense of Christianity, banked a bit more—$61 million. Heaven Is for Real, the movie based on a best-selling book and fronted by Oscar nominee Greg Kinnear, earned $91 million.

When the year started, though, many experts were tossing big-budget monsters like Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings into the ring as winners for the faith-based community, too. Alas, neither Aronofsky nor Scott were particularly interested in what Christians actually wanted to see—which was reasonably faithful retellings of their cherished Bible stories. Christian? The collective response was Pah!

There were lots of complaints about the way God was handled even in the easier-to-identify Christian movies, too. Heaven Is for Real came off to some as pushing universal salvation, not to mention the whole I-hung-out-with-Jesus-and-now-I’m-back thing. Some of our readers let us know that they were more than a little chagrined at how Son of God tweaked the biblical chronology, going so far as to call it an affront to our faith. Left Behind was disowned by a swatch of churchgoers just on principle. (It wouldn’t have been Nicolas Cage’s acting, would it?)

Could it even be reasonably argued that the likes of Noah and Exodus grappled more seriously with the concept of God than the year’s less-known and more strictly Christian movies did? Consider When the Game Stands Tall and 23 Blast, two movies that focused on sports more than spirituality, tucking faith in underneath the pigskin. The same could be said for Moms’ Night Out and The Identical—minus the pigskin, of course.

And yet a movie like Selma—a film that not only has Oscar aspirations but also a deep Christian undercurrent—isn’t carted off into the Christian category. Never mind that the Bible is quoted more in Selma than in half the Christian movies released this year. UnbrokenNo, that’s an Angelina Jolie war movie, not a Christian movie.

So just what is a Christian movie, then? Does Christian financial backing make a project Christian? And if so, would The Giver—backed by Christian entrepreneur Philip Anschutz—count? What about Christian locations or Christian actors? Must a Christian movie be made in a church or star Kirk Cameron to qualify? And would it throw off our calculus if Cameron was suddenly tapped to act in the next James Bond movie?

We know a horror movie when we see one. We understand what makes a romance different from a run-of-the-mill drama where folks might kiss on occasion. Westerns? Animated movies? Dystopian thrillers? Sci-fi space adventures? Yeah, those sorts of films are easy to slide into their particular cubbyholes. Even if a movie fits in more than one genre, we at least know what genres they are.

Christian movies (or should it be movies that Christians will go see?) aren’t quite so easy to identify sometimes. They’re hard to pin down. And as more of them are made all the time, it’s going to get even harder.