Reporting on Reporting and "For the Bible Tells Me So."

In October I wrote that one of the Churches in the Sacramento Presbytery was showing the film "For the Bible Tells Me So." I wrote that they were linked to a trailer on U-Tube at [trailer]. The film is evidently about families with homosexual children. It also provides a progressive view and explanation of those biblical texts that deal with homosexual sex. It is an attempt to show that the text does not equate homosexual sex with sin.

I also wrote that the trailer "is pure propaganda. Scary propaganda since it uses people without explaining who they are. It also uses insinuation since for instance it places Billy Graham preaching from the Bible right after a Nazi leader making a hate speech during the Nazi era." The film producer also has someone suggesting that those who believe the homosexual act is sin have a fifth grade view of God.

Today the Presbyterian News Service had an article, Biblical examination , about the film. It is written by Toya Richards Hill. While it is true that this particular film has won quite a few awards at the Sundance film festival, so it is a news worthy film, it is also true that the Presbyterian News Service is, well, officially Presbyterian. So it seems to me in their news reporting they should be handling the subject of this film from a two-sided position.

That is, the Presbyterian News Service could write about how the Covenant Network likes this film and here is what all of those who made the film and agree with the film, including some theologians, say about it. (Which they did.) But on the other hand, there are those scholars and theologians and Christians in the pews who don't agree with the film's take on the subject and this is what they have to say about it. (Which they did not do.) And hopefully as the film is shown across the country PNS will do that?

But another part of the story, and a news worthy one at that, is that damnable trailer. And that is quite a story. While I haven't seen the movie, yet, I have seen the trailer and in their use of Nazi and Klan figures to make Christians who believe homosexual sex is sin look like thugs, its makers have themselves resorted to Nazi like propaganda. If any one has ever viewed the old propaganda films the Nazis put out about the Jewish people there is honestly not much difference between the caricatures of those Jewish people and the Christians portrayed in this trailer.

At least the Evangelicals in the Presbyterian Church USA can now know what the Jewish people felt like at the very early beginning of that horrible time in history.

Jesus Christ, the light in our messy world is calling us to faithfulness in the midst of gross darkness. "And Jesus cried out and said,'He who believes in me, does not believe in me but in him who sent me. He who sees me sees the One who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness." (John 12: 44-46)