Faith-Based Entertainment Is Good Now—But What’s the Endgame?
There’s a scene in Gilmore Girls in which Lorelai bemoans, “There’s nothing on the radio but Top 40 and Christian Rock. Christian Rock, there’s an oxymoron for you. I need my tunes.” The dialogue captured the prevailing view that faith-based art was (1) not mainstream and (2) bad.
Christian art was something to be mocked rather than celebrated, affirmed for what it was not (godless, profane, and secular) rather than for what it was. Even many Christians were sheepishly eyeing mainstream Hollywood with envy, imagining a day when they wouldn’t have to pretend that every cheaply produced Christian knock-off product was as excellent and thrilling as what Hollywood was creating.
That Gilmore Girls episode aired on October 23, 2001. A lot has changed since then. The golden age of faith-based art has seemingly arrived. Faith-based entertainment is becoming mainstream and—perhaps more surprisingly—good. But what happens when the dog finally catches his tail? The faith-based entertainment landscape may be shifting again, which raises an important question: What exactly is the endgame of the faith-based industry?
Shifting Christian Approaches
For years, the governing Christian posture toward pop culture was combative and reactionary. Secular entertainment was deemed irredeemably godless and immoral, so an “alternative” was needed: “Anything you can do, I can do better!” Only, it was not better. Christians eventually recognized that an alternative to something “bad” is not always “good,” just as having an organic raisin bran muffin won’t keep me from eyeing up the “Hot Now” sign every time I drive by Krispy Kreme.
As younger and more culturally savvy Christian creatives emerged, many of whom had grown up dissatisfied with the existing Christian alternative options, the approach shifted toward infiltration. No longer content with being confined to a sanitized side room at the mainstream party, Christians wanted a seat at the table. Yes, doing so occasionally required disguising our true identity or using a few cuss words to demonstrate that “this isn’t your grandma’s faith-based entertainment!” But like a Trojan Horse, the mission was to infiltrate the established system and make a positive impact from the inside.
That sneaky attitude was eventually recognized as manipulative, and many Christians realized they weren’t fooling anyone. Yet Christians continued to hone their craft. They lacked funding to compete with Hollywood, but the quality improved exponentially. As the stories got better, audiences grew. And as audiences grew, so did the budgets. The occasional breakout hit such as The Passion of the Christ or The Sound of Freedom was a cherry on top, an affirmation that faith-based entertainment had finally arrived as a force to be reckoned with.
Now, the approach appears to be shifting again. The growing success of faith-based entertainment has shown Hollywood that religious people are not just a worthwhile target audience but also a bankable one. Whereas Christian entertainment once had to crash Hollywood’s party, it’s now being pursued as a valued guest. But just as Christian entertainment was finally being welcomed to the table, there appears to be a return to yesteryear’s “Christian alternative” roots.
Get Out, It’s Our Party Now
Amazon Prime’s breakout hit Bible adaption House of David was a proverbial white whale for Christians starved of blockbuster entertainment. It was rightly acclaimed for being well-acted, skillfully filmed, and epic in scope, not merely affirmed for its sacred source material. It was also a mainstream breakthrough. In anticipation of the debut season, Amazon Prime packages were plastered with the show’s branding. An atheist could order a salacious book from Amazon, and it would arrive in a package sporting King David (checkmate, atheists!). Faith-based entertainment had finally achieved mainstream success.
But unlike King David, its reign was brief. By the time the second season of House of David was released, it was only viewable through The Wonder Project, a paid add-on subscription focused primarily on faith-based content. The most buzzworthy, breakthrough faith-based show in years was seemingly relegated to the side party room.
There are plenty of understandable business reasons for the decision (expensive-looking shows are, well, expensive), but the cultural impact of having a well-received faith-based show on a mainstream streaming platform is neutered when it’s stashed behind the paywall of an explicitly faith-based service. Unbelievers stumbling upon a buzzy new show on a streaming service is one thing; adding yet another subscription fee for a service that doesn’t align with their own worldview is another (in fact, in a saturated streaming industry, even compelling Christians to pay for yet another platform is an uphill battle).
The Wonder Project is not alone in this approach. Angel Studios, another major faith-adjacent studio, releases many of its films into theatres. But it, too, is largely focused on growing its own subscription service, often utilizing marketing that takes an “us vs them” stance against Hollywood. Even The Daily Wire, a politically conservative rather than explicitly faith-based company, has attempted to enter the chat by selling its own high-concept fantasy show, The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, on the merits of its faith elements. But because it’s only watchable with a subscription to Daily Wire+, it’s unlikely to attract audiences outside of those who closely identify with the company’s larger political brand.
This trend was perhaps most vividly articulated by Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who declared it was time to “blow up the Death Star that is the Left-wing monopoly on entertainment.” The new approach seems to represent a belief that it’s not enough to inhabit a side room at the party or even to have a seat at the main table. It’s time to kick everyone else out and have our own party. But the result may be a return to the faith-based entertainment subculture model many Christians were happy to have left behind.
Conversation Partners
To be clear, the faith-based entertainment industry isn’t a hivemind entity with a singular mission or approach. It’s a collection of individual artists and creators who tell stories for a variety of reasons. There is never one “Christian” approach. But some trends and creative powers are more influential than others.
Creative forces such as The Wonder Project, Kingdom Story Company, Angel Studios, and the expansive infrastructure behind The Chosen represent the movers and shakers who will largely define the new age of faith-based entertainment, and it seems like that future is populated with faith-specific streaming platforms. Thanks to the Come and See Foundation, The Chosen has bucked industry trends and remained free to watch. But the company has also foreshadowed that the impending future Bible cinematic universe is unlikely to follow the same strategy.
Whether or not this hypothetical future is inspiring may depend on how you view the purpose and endgame of faith-based storytelling. There is undeniable value in allowing The Wonder Project to curate wholesome entertainment. Parents who are unable to evaluate every show their children want to watch may welcome the development. Furthermore, removing the requirement for every Christian movie to have an evangelistic purpose is creatively freeing.
On the other hand, as has long been the case with Christian radio stations, there are drawbacks to being locked in a narrow feedback loop. Christians may end up out of touch not because they don’t know the trendy pop culture memes or references to every profane Hollywood movie but because every story and protagonist celebrates their existing worldview. Heroes like us may be inspiring, but it’s often those who see the world differently that challenge us.
Additionally, by curating faith-based stories for believers, these streaming services are also effectively creating an easy way for unbelieving audiences to avoid them. Christian storytellers may desire to contribute to the ongoing cultural conversations, but it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation from different rooms.
I’m optimistic. The future of faith-based entertainment has never been brighter. Still, there is something disheartening about the once-noble ambition of creators to shine the light of Christ in Hollywood devolving into simply churning out “content” for Christians to consume from within an isolated religious subculture.
Thus, the question remains: What is the endgame? Are creators of faith-based entertainment trying to make Hollywood more Christian or attempting to make Christianity more like Hollywood? In the future, how will people reflect on the industry? Will it be with fondness or will people share Lorelai’s dismissive scorn? I pray for the former, but I worry that if the industry continues down the path of segregation and isolation, people may not reflect on it at all.
