Celluloid Sermons
Author: Terry Lindvall
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011-01-01
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 0814765351
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Celluloid Sermons
Author: Terry Lindvall
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011-10
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0814753248
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Christian filmmaking, done outside of the corporate Hollywood industry and produced for Christian churches, affected a significant audience of church people. Protestant denominations and individuals believed that they could preach and teach more effectively through the mass medium of film. Although suspicion toward the film industry marked many conservatives during the early 1930s, many Christian leaders came to believe in the power of technology to convert or to morally instruct people. Thus the growth of a Christian film industry was an extension of the Protestant tradition of preaching, with the films becoming celluloid sermons. Celluloid Sermons is the first historical study of this phenomenon. Terry Lindvall and Andrew Quicke highlight key characters, studios, and influential films of the movement from 1930 to 1986—such as the Billy Graham Association, with its major WorldWide Pictures productions of films like The Hiding Place, Ken Curtis’ Gateway Films, the apocalyptic “end-time” films by Mark IV (e.g. Thief in the Night), and the instructional video-films of Dobson’s Focus on the Family--assessing the extent to which the church’s commitment to filmmaking accelerated its missions and demonstrating that its filmic endeavors had the unintended consequence of contributing to the secularization of liberal denominations.
Protestants on Screen
Author: Erik Redling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-08-16
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 0190058900
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Protestants on Screen explores the Protestant contributions to American and European film from the silent era to the present day. The authors analyze how Protestant filmmakers, beliefs, theology, symbols, sensibilities, and cultural patterns have shaped the history of film. Challenging the stereotype of Protestants as world-denouncing-and-defying puritans and iconoclasts who stood in the way of film's maturation as an art, the authors contend that Protestants were among the key catalysts in the origins and development of film, bringing an identifiably Protestant aesthetic to the medium. The essays in this volume track key Protestant themes like faith and doubt, sin and depravity, biblical literalism, personal conversion and personal redemption, holiness and sanctification, moralism and pietism, Providence and secularism, apocalypticism, righteousness and justice, religion and race, the priesthood of all believers and its offshoots-democratization and individualism. Protestants, the essays in this volume demonstrate, helped birth and shape the film industry and harness the power of motion pictures for spiritual instruction, edification, and cultural influence.
Religion and Media in America
Author: Anthony Hatcher
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2018-05-25
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 1498514456
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Covering topics ranging from the Moral Monday movement to Christian films and performers, Religion and Media in America is a qualitative study of the ways in which religion has been woven into American popular and civic culture. This book explores how Christianity both adapts to and is affected by new media forms. Its six chapters address religious activism; government imposition of religiosity into secular culture; religious entertainment; Bible translations marketed as consumer goods; and how religious satire comes from both religious and secular sources. Recommended for scholars and students interested in media studies, film studies, religion, communication, American history, American studies, political science, and popular culture.
Judas Iscariot: Damned or Redeemed
Author: Carol A. Hebron
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-09-22
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0567668312
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →At the beginning of the 20th century, Judas was characterised in film as the epitome of evil: the villainous Jew. Film-makers cast Judas in this way because this was the Judas that audiences had come to recognize and even expect. But in the following three decades, film-makers - as a result of critical biblical study - were more circumspect about accepting the alleged historicity of the Gospel accounts. Carol A. Hebron examines the figure of Judas across film history to show how the portrayal becomes more nuanced and more significant, even to the point where Judas becomes the protagonist with a role in the film equal in importance to that of Jesus'. Hebron examines how, in these films, we begin to see a rehabilitation of the Judas character and a restoration of Judaism. Hebron reveals two distinct theologies: 'rejection' and 'acceptance'. The Nazi Holocaust and the exposure of the horrors of genocide at the end of World War II influenced how Judaism, Jews, and Judas, were to be portrayed in film. Rehabilitating the Judas character and the Jews was necessary, and film was deemed an appropriate medium in which to begin that process.
Evangelical Christians and Popular Culture
Author: Robert H. Woods Jr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2013-01-09
Total Pages: 912
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This three-volume collection demonstrates the depth and breadth of evangelical Christians' consumption, critique, and creation of popular culture, and how evangelical Christians are both influenced by—and influence—mainstream popular culture, covering comic books to movies to social media. Evangelical Christians and Popular Culture: Pop Goes the Gospel addresses the full spectrum of evangelical media and popular culture offerings, even delving into lesser-known forms of evangelical popular culture such as comic books, video games, and theme parks. The chapters in this 3-volume work are written by over 50 authors who specialize in fields as diverse as history, theology, music, psychology, journalism, film and television studies, advertising, and public relations. Volume 1 examines film, radio and television, and the Internet; Volume 2 covers literature, music, popular art, and merchandise; and Volume 3 discusses public figures, popular press, places, and events. The work is intended for a scholarly audience but presents material in a student-friendly, accessible manner. Evangelical insiders will receive a fresh look at the wide variety of evangelical popular culture offerings, many of which will be unknown, while non-evangelical readers will benefit from a comprehensive introduction to the subject matter.
Sanctuary Cinema
Author: Terry Lindvall
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 0814752500
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sanctuary Cinema provides the first history of the origins of the Christian film industry. Focusing on the early days of film during the silent era, it traces the ways in which the Church came to adopt film making as a way of conveying the Christian message to adherents. Surprisingly, rather than separating themselves from Hollywood or the American entertainment culture, early Christian film makers embraced Hollywood cinematic techniques and often populated their films with attractive actors and actresses. But they communicated their sectarian message effectively to believers, and helped to shape subsequent understandings of the Gospel message, which had historically been almost exclusively verbal, not communicated through visual media. While radio eclipsed the motion picture as the Christian communication media of choice by the 1920s, the early film makers had laid the foundations for the current re-emergence of Christian film and entertainment, from Veggie Tales to The Passion of the Christ.
Cinema as Pulpit
Author: J. Ryan Parker
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2014-01-10
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 0786491019
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sherwood Pictures is the filmmaking ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, and the leading producer of church-based, independent Christian films. This book situates their work in the history of religion and film in America and shows how they bring to fruition early 20th century Protestant expectations for the use of film in the life of the church and their hopes for a vibrant Christian film industry. Also covered are the handful of churches, inspired by Sherwood, that have taken up their own cameras to create a growing church film movement. This book offers another examination of the relationship between conservative evangelical Protestant Christianity and the wider popular culture.
James Friedrich and Cathedral Films
Author: Kenneth Suit
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2017-12-01
Total Pages: 291
ISBN-13: 1498541526
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →James Friedrich and Cathedral Films: The Independent Religious Cinema of the Evangelist of Hollywood, 1939-1966 looks at the religious sub-genre of independent cinema during the classical Hollywood period through the works of one of its most accomplished pioneers. Episcopal pastor James Friedrich used professional Hollywood casts and crews to produce over sixty short and feature-length religious films in the 1940s and 50s, with critics and viewers alike offering praise for their cinematic and theological quality. This book is a unique contribution to our understanding of the history of the American film industry, providing unprecedented insight into the way a small independent B-studio created and distributed religious films for the church, television, and theatrical markets, and anticipated and influenced the mid-century Hollywood biblical blockbusters and independent religious films that followed Friedrich’s work.
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