Page 2834 – Christianity Today (2024)

People who don’t go to church may be turned off by a recent trend toward more utilitarian church buildings. By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio over any other option, unchurched Americans prefer churches that look more like a medieval cathedral than what most think of as a more contemporary church building.

The findings come from a recent survey conducted by LifeWay Research for the Cornerstone Knowledge Network (CKN), a group of church-focused facilities development firms. The online survey included 1,684 unchurched adults – defined as those who had not attended a church, mosque or synagogue in the past six months except for religious holidays or special events.

“Despite billions being spent on church buildings, there was an overall decline in church attendance in the 1990s,” according to Jim Couchenour, director of marketing and ministry services for Cogun, Inc., a founding member of CKN. “This led CKN to ask, ?As church builders, what can we do to help church leaders be more intentional about reaching people who don’t go to church?'”

Ed Stetzer suggested that the unchurched may prefer the more aesthetically pleasing look of the Gothic cathedral because it speaks to a connectedness to the past. Young unchurched people were particularly drawn to the Gothic look.

Stetzer noted that despite these survey results, most of the churches that look like a cathedral are in decline. Just because someone has a preference for the aesthetically pleasing, Gothic churches doesn’t mean they’ll visit the church if that’s the only connection point they have to the congregation, he said.

“Buildings don’t reach people, people do,” Stetzer said.

This post originally appeared on a blog operated by editorial advisor Ed Stetzer. It is an excerpt of an article, which can be accessed here.

What is an “evangelical”? According to almost 80 prominent pastors, theologians, and activists, the word “evangelical” has become “a term that, in recent years, has often been used politically, culturally, socially – and even as a marketing demographic.”

The group signed and released a 19 page “Evangelical Manifesto” last week in Washington D.C. The goal of the document is to “reclaim the definition of what it means to be an Evangelical.” They believe that theological, rather than political, principles should define evangelicalism, and they offer a strong rebuke to those who would equate the word with either end of the political spectrum. When evangelicalism is politically defined, they say, it makes Christians “useful idiots” for politicians and parties.

The manifesto’s signers are a diverse bunch including Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School; Os Guinness; Richard Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary; David Neff, editor in chief of Christianity Today; and Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine. Absent are some high profile Religious Right folks like James Dobson. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has written about why he won’t sign the manifesto even though he agrees with 90 percent of its content.

One commentator has noted that the manifesto represents a divide between the “old-style populist evangelicals” (think Religious Right, Moral Majority, pro-life, anti-gay marriage) and what he calls the increasing ranks of “cosmopolitan evangelicals” (think global awareness, social justice, poverty, AIDS). He says this bunch (shall we call them Cosmo-Christians?) are “the new public face of the evangelical movement.”

It isn’t that Cosmo-Christians don’t care about abortion, sexuality, or marriage issues, they’re simply acknowledging that there are other moral issues address by scripture and impacted by evangelical belief. A Seattle Times article this week reports on this trend:

Eugene Cho, a founder and lead pastor at Seattle’s Quest Church, which caters to a predominantly under-35 crowd, urges young Christians to look beyond the two or three issues that have allowed Christians to be “manipulated by those that know the game or use it as their sole agenda.” “While the issue of abortion – the sanctity of life – must always be a hugely important issue, we must juxtapose that with other issues that are also very important.”

Polls have shown that young Christians aren’t any less concerned about the “family values” issues that have traditionally driven Christians to the Republican camp?. It’s just that they’re also concerned about issues such as social justice and immigration, issues traditionally associated with Democrats.

Shane Claiborne calls these young evangelicals who don’t feel at home in either party “political misfits” which, I suppose, is a step up from “useful idiots.”

With the election driving political conversations in churches and among evangelicals, these trends are worth discussing. Do you think evangelicals have become useful idiots for the Republican Party? Are we in danger of becoming equally useful and idiotic tools for the Democrats? And do you resonate with Claiborne’s label? Are you a political misfit?

Here are a few additional resources to check out. Then come back and share your comments.

“The Evangelical Manifesto: What It Means” (U.S. News & World Report)

Read the full manifesto here.

“Why I am not signing the ‘Evangelical Manifesto'”by Richard Land

“Young, evangelical … for Obama?” (Seattle Times)

As a teen, I was told several times by fellow Christians that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. This 125-year-old legendwas believable because it played into the idea that no matter how wicked a life someone had led – and we believed Darwin to be a vile man – God would welcome them back, even in their final moments.

For Albert Einstein, who I will admit is one of my heroes, nearing the end did not make him a more religious man. His vague language on God had long been interpreted by the faithful that Einstein was a fellow believer. But, in a letter being auctioned in England, Einstein was quite critical of religion and the Jewish people, of which he was a proud member. From The Guardian:

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel’s second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s favoured people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Avoiding Einstein’s frank review of his people, I disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. Yes, Jesus spoke highly of a childlike faith, but does that mean the Bible’s stories are “primitive” and “childish?”

Hardly. Even if you don’t believe its accounts of Jewish history, the Gospels and the epistles, the complete book, covering 4,000 years from the Beginning to the End, is the greatest literary work ever.

It’s more enjoyable, though, if you believe it.

This article was cross-posted atThe God Blog.

• When I closed my eyes to pray, I was alone on the platform. When I said amen, a man I did not know was standing beside me. He immediately stepped behind a microphone and started talking …
• After his sermon, a friend stepped to the communion table. To his surprise he was met there by a woman who immediately shoved all of the communion elements onto the floor …
• In the middle of the sermon, a young woman walked onstage, interrupted the pastor, and announced that she had a message from God. When the pastor declined her request to address the congregation, she refused to leave. As two male ushers stepped up to escort her away, she began screaming, “This is just like the church. A bunch of overbearing men oppressing women … “

Guess what? None of these events was on the program. And it’s just a matter of time before something like this happens at your church. Maybe it won’t be someone demanding to speak—it might be someone having a heart attack, or the electricity suddenly going out.

Interruptions happen without warning, but you can be prepared. The real question is: Are you ready? Even if the service comes to a temporary halt, you don’t have to lose your ability to lead.

There are several things you can decide right now that will help you and your congregation survive your next unscripted moment.

Keep Your Cool

In the movie The Apostle, Robert Duvall plays the part of Sonny, a Pentecostal preacher who gets so mad at a member of his congregation that he ends up beating the guy unconscious. While there are moments when this sounds like a wonderful option, it’s not the best choice, at least not if you want to keep your job.

While researching this article, I learned of several pastors who lost their composure and then their positions. The result was the same whether they got mad and spoke too hastily—sound technicians and mothers of a crying infants are frequent targets—or if they simply panicked and walked around looking like Chicken Little.

Leadership means keeping your cool, especially if everyone around you is losing theirs. Yelling is never a good idea. Nor is inaction.

Take Charge

Alexander Haig is remembered a bit derisively for stepping up to the microphone to claim control in the moments after President Ronald Reagan was shot. While he can be faulted for misconstruing the presidential line of succession, I believe his soldier’s instincts were right on. In a crisis, someone needs to lead.

When a worship service spins out of control, the senior pastor or the worship leader needs to step in and assert leadership. The good news is that just about any reasonable and calm action you take will be accepted. When the woman screaming about male oppression was being led out, the senior pastor asked the ushers to let her return to the stage. He then dismissed the congregation so he could talk with her privately.

“All 1,000 people filed out,” he said. “And it was the quickest exit I’ve ever seen.” He then invited her to share with him what she wanted to share with everyone. When it turned out that her message was that Brad Pitt was the prophet of God, he was able to get her help and then invite everyone back in. When he explained what happened, the congregation was accepting.

While asking everyone to leave a service is rarely necessary, the point is that his calm and decisive improvisation kept a bad situation from getting worse. He led.

Provide Direction

Some simple coaching to others may be all that is needed. When a homeless man wandered down the center aisle midservice and stopped to kneel at the feet of the senior pastor, the pastor turned to an usher and said, “Could you please help our brother. Take him into the lobby and pray with him and see what he needs.”

When a man suffered a massive coronary near the first pew of The Chapel in Akron, Ohio, the pastor stopped his message and said, “There obviously is a problem here in the front rows. If you are a doctor, we invite you to help. And we need an usher to call 911, but for the rest of us, let’s do what we can, and what we can do is to pray.”

By suggesting a calm and loving next step, you help others process what is going on, and you also prevent others from rushing in, which can make things worse.

At the end of a service several years ago, a disturbed man challenged me to a debate on the question of immortality. I said I’d be glad to talk with him about that afterward, but he wanted a public debate, and he wanted it now. He became increasingly agitated and started swearing at me.

I let him go on a bit too long before I realized that some of the men in the church were about to swoop in and remove him forcibly. Things were about to go from awkward to ugly, when I finally escorted him away myself. I should have taken control of things earlier and not allowed so many people to grow uncomfortable.

A leadership vacuum during a crisis opens the door for anyone to step in. Either the senior pastor or the worship leader needs to be prepared to calmly reassert control before things get out of hand.

Learn from the Moment

The real opportunity a crisis provides is the teachable moment that follows.

After the communion elements were scattered on the floor and several ushers had led the woman away, my friend turned to the congregation and said, “Well, Jesus told us to love our enemies. We have an opportunity to do just that right now. This woman is obviously not well. As the ushers reset the table, let’s pray for her.”

At a church in Hawaii, a drunken man stumbled in a side door of the church and walked out on stage before anyone had the presence to stop him. He looked at the senior pastor, who had stopped his sermon, and then looked at the congregation and said, “Hello.” The senior pastor greeted him and asked how he could help him. The discussion led to a spontaneous interview that the pastor was able to weave into his sermon. If we can keep our wits about us, the unexpected can be a great opportunity to model mature Christian living.

Prepare a Crisis Team

Finally, because it is a given that there will be medical emergencies, technical meltdowns, crying babies, or unruly adults, we should prepare a strategy today to deal with tomorrow’s surprises.

Talk through how you might handle the exceptional cases.

The first step is to be certain that the ushers are aware that their responsibilities extend far beyond handing out bulletins at the door. They need to help monitor what is going on in the service and be willing to help step in and calmly handle any emergency that presents itself.

Give your church ushers and greeters the training they need with our Orientation Guide for Ushers and Greeters.

Read the full version of this articlehereby joining theCT Library.

When Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty last year to violating anti-terrorism laws—and was fined $25 million for its payments to Colombian terrorists—Tania Julin and Nancy Hamm felt betrayed and angry.

Though Chiquita’s plea did not involve the group that murdered their husbands 12 years ago, the women learned through the case that Chiquita had also paid protection money to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

“I believe they need to be held accountable,” said Hamm, who retired from New Tribes Mission (NTM) last year. “This affected us in a horrible way, but I think it could affect a lot of other Americans, too, if Chiquita or other American companies continue to blatantly fund terrorists.”

Julin, Hamm, and three other widows are among the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed March 11. The suit alleges Chiquita is culpable in the deaths of their husbands, all of whom were NTM missionaries. FARC kidnapped and later killed the men in a pair of 1993–94 incidents in Columbia and Panama.

According to the suit, the Cincinnati-based company provided money, weapons, and other support to FARC. The suit asks that compensation be determined through a jury trial.

Sanford, Florida–based NTM, which is also a plaintiff in the case, pulled some personnel out of Latin America after the kidnappings. Spokesperson Nita Zelenak said NTM prefers not to specify exact locations of its 3,200 missionaries, who serve in more than 18 nations. But if any are seized, she said, NTM—like many other mission agencies—maintains a “no ransom” policy, because it provides a safeguard against more personnel being taken.

“We’re always looking at the safety issue, and as the climate changes, we have to change with it,” Zelenak said. “We’re definitely careful to let missionaries know of the potential dangers.”

Chiquita has defended its actions as the cost of doing business and protecting its employees in Colombia. Spokesman Ed Loyd said terrorists murdered 30 of its people in the 1990s.

“This wasn’t a philosophical threat,” Loyd said. “This was a situation where a large number of our employees were killed. Thirty is what I’m aware of, but frankly there may be others.”

Nor did Chiquita try to hide its actions, Loyd said. After becoming aware of a change in federal law in 2001, he said Chiquita notified the U.S. Department of Justice about its payments. That sparked a four-year-long investigation, which culminated in the company’s guilty plea last year.

Despite that plea, Loyd said the plaintiffs face a high standard of proof. They must demonstrate Chiquita’s conduct actually caused the deaths, he said—something he doesn’t think the former missionaries will be able to do.

The status of the court case is unclear. At least half a dozen lawsuits filed against Chiquita by Columbian victims of terrorism have been combined for further action, but the missionaries’ suit isn’t among them.

Regardless of the outcome, Mercer University ethics professor David Gushee said the case should give pause to both sides. As they examine the consequences of forays into remote regions, he said, corporate leaders would be wise to ask what potential harm could result and what non-business values are at stake.

“The more economic pressure that a corporation feels they are facing, the more likely they will be to cut moral corners,” said Gushee.

However, Gushee also said that missions agencies need to clearly communicate risks to their personnel.

While Julin said none of the widows are bitter about the dangers that ultimately ended their husbands’ lives, she does hope that winning the lawsuit will pose a warning to companies tempted to do business with terrorists.

“Chiquita had a choice whether to deal with the terrorists or not. If they felt they had to deal with the terrorists or not be in Colombia at all, they could have chosen not to be in Colombia,” Julin said. “They chose to work with these terrorists.”

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Other news coverage includes:

All Chiquita lawsuits in Colombia slayings shift to West Palm | Claims that Chiquita Brands International is responsible for the murders of hundreds of Colombian residents and a group of American missionaries working in the war-torn country are to play out in a West Palm Beach courtroom (Palm Beach Post, Apr. 29)

Families Sue Chiquita in Deaths of 5 Men (The New York Times, Mar. 17, also in International Herald Tribune)

Chiquita Faces Wrongful Death Suits for Payments to Terror Group (Dan Slater, WSJ Law Blog, Mar. 12)

Chiquita sued by relatives of five slain missionaries (The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 12)

Earlier Christianity Today articles on NTM, Colombia missionaries, and payments to terrorist organizations include:

Did Martin Die Needlessly? | Gracia Burnham believes her husband would be alive today if someone had paid the proper ransom—but mission agencies wonder how many other missionaries would have been kidnapped as a result. (June 2003)

Missions Evaluate New U.S. Kidnapping Policy | Does Washington understand the reason for no-ransom positions? (May 1, 2002)

Why the FARC Hates Evangelicals | The terrorist group has many misconceptions about Colombian Christians. (February 2004)

Missionaries Defy Terrorist Threat in Colombia | U.S. Embassy says North Americans are guerrilla targets (May 21, 2002)

Missionaries May Be Target Of FARC Guerrillas | U.S. embassy in Colombia issues warning to missionaries and churches. (March 2002)

New Tribes Missionaries Kidnapped in 1993 Declared Dead | Mission concludes Colombian guerrillas shot the three men in 1996 (Sept. 2001)

Colombian Guerilla Offers No Clues to Missionaries’ Fate | FBI says that Medina has no information on kidnapped New Tribes missionaries. (Feb. 23, 2001)

Break in Missionary Kidnapping Case | Captured Colombian guerilla may hold key to U.S. missionaries’ fate. (Dec. 4, 2000)

Plan for Peace in Colombia Is a Plan ‘For Death,’ Say Church Activists | Will U.S. military assistance in destroying coca fields only increase violence? (Aug. 15, 2000)

Death in the Night | Colombia’s pastors endure extortion, kidnappings, and threats as they plant churches and help the poor in a war zone. (June 6, 2000)

Fate of Kidnapped Missionaries Still Unresolved | Colombia remains thought to end questions are not human after all. (Mar. 29, 2000)

Twenty-five Pastors Killed This Year (Oct. 4, 1999)

Christians Held As Hostages (July 12, 1999)

Colombia’s Bleeding Church | Despite the murders of 120 church leaders, Christians are fighting for peace in one of the world’s most violent nations. (May 18, 1998)

Today’s Christian, a Christianity Today sister publication, noted the 10-year anniversary of the Colombian kidnappings.

Philip Anschutz may be the biggest Hollywood mover and shaker you’ve never heard of. The two adjectives that typically precede his name in news stories—”Christian” and “billionaire”—are the very reasons he can do all that moving and shaking.

Almost a decade ago, the Christian part motivated Anschutz to quit cursing the darkness of mainstream movies and do something about it instead. And the billionaire part, of course, prompted Tinseltown’s execs to sit up and listen.

His efforts seem to be working. Anschutz, 69, now owns two production companies—the family-friendly Walden Media and the more broadly focused Bristol Bay Productions. The companies’ creative teams have brought us such films as Amazing Grace, Charlotte’s Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Ray, and, most prominently, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first of seven planned movies based on C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia. The second Narnia film, Prince Caspian, is due this month. Bristol Bay is also adapting The Screwtape Letters for the big screen, likely due in 2009.

Such cinematic bounty is a result not just of Anschutz’s deep pockets: he’s also a lifelong film buff committed to bringing more wholesome options to the local multiplex.

Joining the Hellfighters

Anschutz’s first brush with Hollywood was a literal trial by fire. It was 1967. Anschutz, then in his mid-20s, had recently taken over the family’s once-lucrative oil-drilling business after his father had fallen ill.

After coming up empty for a while, Anschutz finally struck black gold in Wyoming and immediately bought the surrounding oil leases on credit. Things looked good. For one day.

The next day, a spark started a fire, and the entire oil field went up in flames. Facing bankruptcy, Anschutz had to do something in a hurry. While he watched the blazing fields, an outside-the-box idea—one of many he’s had in his career—came to him: Call Universal Studios and get a film crew out here.

Anschutz had heard that Universal was filming Hellfighters, a John Wayne movie about Paul “Red” Adair, the famed American oil-field firefighter. Computerized special effects were still a thing of the distant future, so the studio needed some footage of a real oil field ablaze.

Anschutz cut a deal, and Universal cut him a check—for $100,000—to film his burning fields. With that money, Anschutz then hired the real Adair to extinguish the flames. Anschutz ended up making a huge profit off of those fields, and went on to make a fortune in oil.

He sold most of his oil fields in 1982 to Mobil for $500 million and started buying railroad companies, including the Denver and Rio Grande Western in 1984 and Southern Pacific four years later. In the 1990s, he capitalized on his railroad holdings by laying fiber-optic cables along all of those rail lines—a brilliant and forward-thinking move, long before the Internet swept the globe. He bought Qwest Communications at about the same time, and when he took the company public in 1997, he turned his original $55 million investment into a staggering $4.9 billion.

Today, according to Forbes, Anschutz is America’s 41st richest man, with a net worth of $7.6 billion.

Fortune noted admiringly that Anschutz struck it rich in a “fundamentally different way … [operating] across an astounding array of industries, mastering and reshaping entire economic landscapes.”

With that kind of money, Anschutz is now doing some serious drilling into what he has long seen as the decadence of Hollywood.

‘Abnormally Normal’

Anschutz hasn’t granted an interview for a feature story in more than 30 years. When I asked one of his assistants about the chances of talking to him, the assistant cracked up. When I asked what he could tell us about his boss, he replied, only half-jokingly, “I want to keep my job!”

Anschutz lives with his wife, Nancy, on a large ranch near Greeley, Colorado. According to various reports, he drives a used Lexus, and buys his coffee at a 7-11 and hot dogs from a corner vendor. An avid athlete, he has completed several marathons.

A 1999 Fortune magazine profile, “Billionaire Next Door,” noted that one of the most interesting things about Anschutz “is not that he’s worth well over $10 billion [his worth at that time]. It’s that he’s a genuinely nice guy worth more than $10 billion. He didn’t make his money by being a nasty, grasping, miserly bastard. Once he got rich, he didn’t turn into a twisted, weirdo billionaire like Howard Hughes. … As billionaires go, Anschutz is abnormally normal.”

Anschutz and his wife, both Presbyterians, attend a local church and support various local charities, including Step 13, a Denver home for alcoholic men.

One longtime friend says Anschutz’s faith informs everything he does.

“His set of values and beliefs permeates his life,” said Jim Monaghan, a spokesman who has worked with Anschutz for 24 years. “He is a composite of religious values, ethics, and morals, but he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. He walks the talk.”

Monaghan wouldn’t say much more about Anschutz: “My job is to keep people from writing articles about him at all. He just doesn’t want the publicity.”

Phil and Nancy are involved with the Anschutz Family Foundation in Denver, run by Phil’s sister, Sue Anschutz-Rodgers. The $54 million foundation helps poor children and families in the community. Anschutz is also known for his steady financial support of Republican candidates over the years, including his longtime friend and fellow Kansas native Bob Dole, and President Bush. According to Newsmeat.com’s campaign-finance database, Anschutz has donated $269,165 to Republicans (and $22,750 to Democrats) since 1979.

Several companies in the Anschutz empire have made news for questionable dealings, if not outright scandal. In 2007, former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio was convicted for insider trading for illegally selling $52 million in company stock in 2001. But a U.S. appeals court recently overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial in front of a different judge. The appeals court slammed the original judge for excluding testimony by an expert witness upon whom the defense based much of its case. Nacchio also faces a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit that alleges he and six other Qwest officials took part in a $3 billion accounting fraud.

In another case, Qwest was fined $25.9 million by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission in 2003 for allegedly violating competition laws, but the penalty was overturned in July 2007 by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in a unanimous decision.

More recently, the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which owns several sports teams and arenas, was in the news when one of its properties, London’s The O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome), was involved in a bid for a super-casino. London’s Greenwich borough was one of eight British municipalities bidding for the facility, which would have been built on O2 property, but lost out to Manchester in early 2007. (Manchester city officials later voted to not have the casino, so none will be built at all.) In 2005, Anschutz made U.K. headlines after hosting and reportedly giving gifts to then–British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at his Colorado ranch. Britain’s Parliament and Scotland Yard investigated a potential conflict of interest, but both probes were later dropped.

Monaghan, Anschutz’s spokesman, says AEG was “supportive” of Greenwich’s bid for the casino at The O2, but says, “Phil himself would not have owned or operated a casino.” Monaghan said the casino property would have been leased from AEG, and the casino itself would have been run by Kerzner International, which develops and operates resorts, hotels, and casinos around the world.

‘Where Good Men Die Like Dogs’

Despite those questionable incidents, there’s no question about Anschutz’s commitment to redeeming Hollywood. In a 2004 speech at Hillsdale College, he said movies “have an enormous effect on our culture and an even larger effect on younger Americans.”

Anschutz lamented the inordinate number of R-rated movies coming out of Hollywood, and noted that none of history’s top 20 moneymaking films were rated R. (That’s no longer true. Within months of his speech, The Passion of The Christ became the sole exception, at least in the U.S.)

“Don’t these figures make you wonder what’s wrong with Hollywood from a business point of view?” Anschutz asked his listeners.

His attitude about Hollywood may be best captured by quotes from the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson that hang on Anschutz’s office wall. Of the movie biz, Thompson wrote: “[It’s] a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side.”

In his Hillsdale speech, Anschutz said, “Four or five years ago, I decided to stop cursing the darkness—I had been complaining about movies and their content for years—and instead to do something about it by getting into the film business.”

Anschutz did just that in 2000, when he and Howard Baldwin formed Crusader Entertainment; one of their first movies, Joshua, released under the (now defunct) imprint Epiphany Films. Crusader disbanded in 2004, and Anschutz soon formed Bristol Bay (which would later release two productions that had been in Crusader’s plans, Ray and Sahara).

In 2001, Anschutz helped finance the fledgling Walden Media, a start-up film production company that he later purchased outright. Walden and Bristol Bay are now both part of the Anschutz Film Group.

While Walden focuses on family films, Bristol Bay makes movies geared to adults (with a mandate of no R-rated films). Neither Walden nor Bristol is considered a “Christian” company, or has a mission to make “Christian” or even “spiritual” movies, but both labels include such fare anyway. Walden’s Narnia films are filled with Christian metaphors, and several others—like Bridge to Terabithia and Because of Winn-Dixie—include Christian material. Bristol Bay includes such Christian-themed films as Amazing Grace and the upcoming Screwtape Letters.

Walden’s track record at the box office has been up and down. But The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe more than made up for any missteps, grossing a whopping $744.8 million worldwide, making it the 26th highest-earning film of all time. Add more than 12 million DVD sales (with a retail price of $29 each), and it’s well over a billion-dollar franchise already—and that doesn’t include millions in revenue from sales of related merchandise.

For Bristol Bay, the limited-release Amazing Grace—one of 2007’s better films—only earned $31 million worldwide, but Sahara ($119 million) and Ray ($124 million) fared quite well. Ray was also nominated for Best Picture, and Jamie Foxx won an Oscar for his lead role in it.

If Bristol Bay or Walden ever have trouble finding a distributor or theaters for a film, Anschutz has that end of the market covered as well. He’s the largest shareholder of Regal Entertainment Group, the biggest theater chain in the U.S. with 6,400 screens. (While Anschutz doesn’t allow his company to make R-rated films, Regal does allow them to be shown in its theaters.)

Mandate to Produce Good Films

Seemingly overnight, Walden Media has found itself as an influential player working with big boys such as Fox, Paramount, and Disney. (Indeed, most of Walden’s films are now distributed theatrically through Fox; the Narnia films are distributed through Disney.)

Robert Johnston, author of Reel Spirituality and professor at Fuller Seminary, says Walden appeals to Christians because they are “making movies that children and their parents can enjoy together.” Those goals remain the same, even as some Walden films (Around the World in 80 Days, Hoot, How to Eat Fried Worms) have bombed at the box office.

Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen has observed Walden’s growth, and says they’re doing it right.

“It’s a smart business plan,” Jensen says. “The whole world of children’s lit is filled with properties that Hollywood has not exploited, because for a long time, it wasn’t ‘cool’ to go after those properties. But Walden has done a great job of proving that you don’t have to be Disney to make movies for families.”

Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis’s stepson, who manages much of the Lewis estate, says he decided to sell the film rights to the Narnia franchise to Walden because he liked their vision—and Anschutz.

“The main reason I went with Walden,” he told CT Movies in 2005, “is because of their mandate to produce good, entertaining movies that also educate, not merely in factual matters, but in matters of ethics and values and morality.

“But the clincher for me was meeting Phil Anschutz, and growing to respect him enormously and spending time in prayer with him. Walden Media has exactly the right idea what we should be using cinema for.” Which is exactly what Anschutz wanted.

Mark Moring is the editor of CT Movies.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

When Ben Barnes saw the final cut of Prince Caspian for the first time in New York two weeks ago, he did what many people do after watching a 2½-hour movie … and drinking a large soda. He headed for the men’s room.

Nothing unusual there. What was unique, though, were the throngs of teenage girls waiting outside the theater, practically ambushing the handsome Barnes—who plays Caspian‘s title character—and co-star William Moseley in their short trip to the “loo,” as they call it back home in England.

Barnes, in his first major feature, and Moseley—who plays Peter Pevensie and was already a bit of a teen idol back home in England—politely pushed their way through the gawking girls and made it safely into the bathroom to take care of business.

Meeting with members of the media the next morning, Barnes was still snickering about the previous evening’s events.

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “I had to break the shocking news to the fans: Even Prince Caspian gotta pee.”

If Barnes, 26, doesn’t make it as a movie star, he could consider a second career as a stand-up comic. In two interviews with CT Movies (a couple months ago on the phone, and again recently in New York), he had his questioners in stitches on several occasions—especially when talking about his sudden fame, which is about to explode with Caspian‘s worldwide release this Friday.

Barnes’ face is the dominant image on the movie poster, plastered everywhere these days. You’ve probably seen him on any of the countless TV spots in recent weeks. And, of course, he’ll soon be in a toy store near you as a bona fide action figure—a concept that has Barnes shaking his head.

“Scary, isn’t it?” he says. “It’s exciting when you hear you’re going to be an action figure, but when you think about it, you realize that what this entails is probably some 6-year-old smashing my head against a table! That’s what I did with my Transformers and my He-Man! I was like, ‘Fight each other!’ Little kids chewing on them, that’s the reality of it. And people will be playing the video game yelling, ‘Die, Caspian, die!’ That’s what’s going to happen.”

Beneath the humor is a young man who is very serious about this role for a number of reasons. He’s playing one of his childhood heroes—Barnes has been a Narnia fan since he first read the books with his dad at the age of 8—and, as a student of children’s literature at Kingston University, he has had the opportunity to dig deeper into the books than most. So he comes to the role both as a giddy young fanboy and as a grown man who sees the character more philosophically.

“I was a massive fan of the books as a kid,” he says, “so it was something I grew up with. From that point of view, Caspian had some sort of iconic status with me. But another thing that draws me to his character is that he’s not a prototypical action hero. He’s just a boy struggling to come to terms with his own growing up and his place in the world.

“It might seem like reading too much into it, but I sort of read the story as almost Hamlet-ian. Caspian’s father has been killed by his uncle [for anyone who’s read the book, that’s not a spoiler] and he spends the rest of the film trying to deduce whether vengeance is going to be the best policy for him. In the process, he’s forced to become a leader, and he’s forced to re-direct his animosity.”

When asked about the spiritual themes that author C. S. Lewis weaves throughout the Narnia books, Barnes is even more philosophical.

“It’s definitely something I’ve thought about,” he says. “But I think it’s dangerous to think about that when you’re shooting the movie, because we’re making a contemporary film for a 2008 audience, for people who don’t necessarily know the books or are not necessarily interested in that side of it—and we still want it to be exciting for those people.

“As for the spiritual themes, I’m not a fan of spoon-feeding themes in films. I find myself patronized very easily by those kinds of films. But when I watch a film, I always ask, ‘What’s the point? What’s the message?’ And I don’t think in this film there’s one specific clear message. There’s a lot of little messages about self-belief, belief in the people around you, and having faith in something bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily have to give it a name.”

Barnes, a bit of a history buff, said the story also shed more light on the state of the world at the time Lewis wrote the book—just a few years after World War II.

“The historical context became even more vivid to me while watching the film,” he says. “There’s this race [the evil Telmarines, who have taken over Narnia] with a dictator who wants his race to go forward at the expense of all others. This film is set during the second World War, and you see remnants of that [Nazi Germany] all through it. But all of it—the historical element, the spirituality—is there if you choose to see it, and you can judge the film on whatever level you want to.”

Die-hard Narnia fans may judge the film more meticulously than others, and one issue that they’ve discussed is Barnes’s age. He’s 26, and students of the books argue that Caspian was either 13-ish, 17-ish, or somewhere in between.

Barnes rightly notes that the book never gives Caspian’s age, but only hints at it.

“It only says that when Peter first sees Caspian, he’s described as ‘a boy about Peter’s age,’ and Peter was probably an older teen at that time,” says Barnes. “But William Moseley [who plays Peter] is 21 now, and they needed someone who looked a similar age. And then you’ve got Voyage of the Dawn Treader [coming in 2010, with Barnes again playing Caspian], where Caspian has become a young man and he’s leading a ship.”

Barnes takes the nitpickers in stride.

“There’s very little you can do to quell the wrath of the stalwart fan,” he says, “but hopefully, they’ll be able to enjoy the movie as much as anyone else. We honestly have tried to be as faithful to the book as possible. Besides,” he adds with a laugh, “I was only 25 when I made the film! And I’m very immature, so it’s okay!”

Barnes was offered the role after director Andrew Adamson had searched for almost a year for the right person. When Adamson saw Barnes perform at London’s National Theatre in The History Boys, he knew he’d found his lead actor. Five weeks later, Barnes was in New Zealand filming his first major motion picture.

He had to gently “earn” his way into what was already a tight-knit family—Adamson and the four young actors who play the Pevensie siblings (Moseley as Peter, Anna Popplewell as Susan, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, and Georgie Henley as Lucy). Those four had worked together, with Adamson, for several years, and then here comes Barnes, the new guy, to steal some of their thunder.

Barnes says he had heard that they had bonded like family when making 2005’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, but was skeptical that it was anything more than warm and fuzzy publicity—till he arrived on the set.

“I was very cynical at first about this whole ‘family’ thing,” he says. “When I first got the part, I got the DVD of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and watched all the bonus materials. And there’s Georgie [Henley], saying [he mimics her sweet voice perfectly], ‘We’re like a family, and Will’s like my big brother, and Andrew’s like my dad when my dad’s not there.’ And you just think, Get me a bucket! It’s not gonna BE like that!

“But then I got there, and I walked into the branch office, and they’re playing table tennis with each other, and Georgie’s sitting in Will’s lap, and they were sharing ice cream, and it was just like something out of, you know … Disney! So it really is like that!”

Barnes is laughing as he recounts this story—and so are his listeners.

He also gets a kick out of telling how he developed his accent for the film. The day before his audition, Barnes learned that Adamson wanted the Telmarines to speak with an invented dialect—speaking English but with a Spanish accent. Barnes scrambled to think of something he could use a model. Then he popped in his DVD of The Princess Bride, and closely studied—who else?—the character of Spanish swashbuckler Inigo Montoya, played so marvelously by Mandy Patinkin.

“It was the only thing that jumped into my mind,” says Barnes, “because I’ve seen it at least 20 times!”

In the Prince Caspian movie, there is a point where the young prince finds his uncle—the evil King Miraz who had killed Caspian’s father—unarmed and defenseless. It’s an opportunity for Caspian to take revenge, but he does not. When filming that scene, Barnes was tempted to modify one of the most famous lines in film history:

“Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

But Barnes stuck to the script—albeit with a line that’s not too far off from Inigo’s.

In the end, Barnes says they’ve made a movie that he thinks Narnia fans will enjoy.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of the books,” he says, “and I don’t think there’s anything that’s incongruous with the book that fans know and love. I think that once they see it, they’ll like it.”

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

In Gordon MacDonald’s monthly column at LeadershipJournal.net, he asks this provocative question:

Is there a significant difference between Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America,” and the comment so oft-quoted in evangelical pulpits (attributed to a well known preacher who shall go unnamed): “If God does not judge America for its sins, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Don’t quibble about word-choice; think substance. Is there a significant difference?

I figure Out of Ur is as good a place as any to answer MacDonald’s question. Have at it.

A small Chinese congregation in Colorado Springs is suing the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) for proceeds from the sale of its sanctuary—and, perhaps, for an explanation.

Chinese Alliance Church of Colorado Springs (CACCC) completed the purchase of its storefront property in 2002. However, denominational bylaws allowed the C&MA to seize the property in 2006 and sell it to a karate studio in 2008 for $550,000.

According to Richard Hammar, editor of Church Law & Tax Report, most churches own their own worship space. However, some hold it in trust for their parent denomination. C&MA bylaws state that a congregation’s claim to property depends on its standing within the denomination.

The trouble for CACCC began in 2001, according to court documents. Congregants began to leave the church, and giving dropped. When the church failed to file an annual report with the State of Colorado in 2003, if was officially dissolved as a nonprofit entity. Three years later, the C&MA’s Mid-America District downgraded the church’s status from “accredited” to “developing”— a change that forfeited the congregation’s right to its property.

Angelique Kwok, one of the plaintiffs in the church’s civil suit, filed this March in Colorado Springs, said she wonders if the entire saga was a pretense for the denomination to get its hands on the church’s valuable property.

The C&MA, which is based in Colorado Springs and includes about 2,000 churches, declined requests for comment.

“We have conflict,” Kwok said. “Every church has conflict. Are you going to close them down one at a time?”

Robert B. Kruschwitz, director of the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, said that satisfying a denomination’s procedures doesn’t necessarily lead to a fair outcome. Kruschwitz said the C&MA may have been better served by coming to a “compassionate understanding” with the church’s members and reimbursing them with some of the proceeds from the sale.

According to Hammar, the Colorado Springs court is unlikely to overturn denominational bylaws. He said the Supreme Court has urged religious groups to adopt provisions that resolve property disputes “without the need for judicial intervention.”

Kwok continues to hope for such resolution. “I think both [the C&MA] and we are doing God’s work, and Satan’s between us now,” she said. “We need to come to reconciliation.”

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous articles about lawsuits and churches are in our section.

When Evan Almighty hit theaters last summer, some evangelicals worried that elements of the movie were sacrilegious. One of their particular objections got me thinking.

In the film, God (played by Morgan Freeman) claims that people miss the point of the story of Noah’s Ark because they think it’s about God’s anger, when really it’s a “love story.” Some Christians saw that statement as an offensive distortion of the Genesis account of God’s wrath. Their protest left me pondering what I suspect is a fundamentally important question: Is there any story about God that isn’t a love story?

Growing up, I had two images of God. The first was a painting on my bedroom wall, Bernhard Plockhorst’s Jesus Blessing the Children. After bedtime prayers, I would drift off imagining I was one of those children in Jesus’ embrace. Everything about that picture reinforced the first thing I was taught in Sunday school: God Is Love.

My other image was a mental one I’ll call “the Vengeful God,” a peeved Father Time crossed with an accusing Uncle Sam. That picture helped me remember that God hates sin, and reinforced the second thing I learned in Sunday school: God Is Holy.

We sang about grace at my church, and we meant it. But we suspected that an exclusive emphasis on God’s love would lessen our desire to live holy lives. So periodically, our preacher would thunder about God’s wrath and judgment, ensuring we were never “soft on sin.”

God is love, BUT God hates sin. How does one hold those two realities in tension? I unconsciously developed a theology that intermittently had God the Son and God the Father in a good cop, bad cop routine, with the Holy Spirit stepping in as a sympathetic parole officer.

I professed that God was love all the way through, but deep down I couldn’t help assuming he was a bit like me. Even his love had to have limits. It stopped at sin and turned into wrath. Naturally.

My understanding began to change when I read Baxter Kruger’s depiction of God’s wrath as his love in action—his emphatic “No!” to anything that leads to our destruction. That perspective flipped a switch for my husband and me. If our daughter stepped into oncoming traffic, she might perceive our reaction (screaming “No!” and yanking her out of harm’s way) to be harsh and unloving. But in reality it would be an expression of our fiercest and purest love. Is that how it is with God?

What if God’s wrath is not a caveat, qualification, or even a counterpoint to his love, but an expression of it? What if God grieves sin less because it offends his sensibilities, and more because he hates the way it distorts our perceptions and separates us from him?

Recently, my friend Liliane told me the story of her conversion. Years ago, someone handed her a pamphlet with Jesus on the cover asking, “Do you love me?” Honestly, I can’t say I do, Liliane whispered to Jesus. I really like you, though. I want to get to know you.

For a year, Liliane attended church and spent time with people who knew Jesus. One day, with a start, she realized she did love him. He’d captured her heart.

“That whole first year, I didn’t read the Bible, and I’m really glad I waited,” she told me, laughing at my raised eyebrow. “You know how, when you’re with someone you really trust, you can say the hard things if you need to? Now that I know God, I see his love all through the Bible, even in the hard bits.”

There are some pretty hard bits in Scripture. It is difficult to frame, say, the saga of Sodom and Gomorrah as a love story. But if we truly believe that God not only loves, but is love, we must believe there is no action he can take that is not animated by love.

My church was right to be concerned that an inadequate understanding of God’s righteousness would lead to sin. After all, one of Satan’s strategies with Eve was to undermine the reality of God’s judgment: “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4).

But his more sinister tactic was first to get Eve to doubt God’s love and character: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1). His strategy worked then, and it works now. Our sin is rooted not only in a lack of reverence for God’s holiness, but also in a profoundly insufficient understanding of his love.

God is love, SO God hates sin. We are loved with a holy love that cries “No!” again and again to the things that destroy us. We are part of an epic love story, and what we all need desperately is to know the Author better.

Carolyn Arends is an award-winning singer-songwriter, author, and film critic (for ChristianityTodayMovies.com) who lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. More at CarolynArends.com.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Arends’s first Christianity Today column was “Carbonated Holiness.”