Christians and the Movies – Observations from the movie “A Great Awakening”

I thought the same thing Don. That whole part of the movie seemed almost intentionally vague as if they were leaving it up to the viewer to decide if he came to Christ. Pretty clearly he did not but it was a good movie otherwise.

I actually thought it was pretty obvious (to me) at the end that Ben Franklin, though he greatly respected Whitefield, did not come to the conclusion that Whitefield was right about Jesus Christ, and did not make a decision to accept Christ, even though he was greatly affected by the life and ministry of Whitefield. My mom, my wife and I were all discussing it after the film was over. However, I will admit that I could have seen it that way partly from the fact that I already knew that Franklin himself was a deist and did not claim to be a Christian. If I had had less knowledge going into the film, I suspect I could have come to a different conclusion.

Of course, a bigger issue in this is the fact that my generation (pretty much the same as Don’s) was taught fairly well that a film, no matter how good it is, and no matter how well the known facts are portrayed, is not reality. I’m not sure I could say the same about younger generations today.

Given the venue of my post, I didn't want to be as inflammatory as my next comments might be taken:

I watched the film with some evangelical relatives. I don't know exactly what they thought about Franklin at the end, but they tend to be quite credulous about such things. My wife asked me in private, "Do you think Franklin was saved?" The impression the film gives, in my opinion, is that he might well have been, but if you do even casual research about it you can see that it is virtually impossible unless he had a sudden change of heart in the last month of his life.

However, the producers are Sight & Sound. I had never heard of them before, but apparently they've been a big deal in Christian entertainment for quite a while. Some other friends went to one of their shows in Branson recently and enjoyed it (I forget which one they saw). With them, we watched the S&S production of Noah on a streaming service. The basic outlines of the story were correct, but there was some artistic license (naturally) with the story line. (They left out the after flood scene, of course.) The whole show was highly emotional as most of these things are. And accurate enough, I guess, but it always bothers me when biblical events are clearly misconstrued.

Now. My concern is not just with movies in general - Christians do need to use them (if they do) with discernment. However, what about Sight & Sound? Isn't there an integrity issue here, especially in the Franklin film? They are giving a very disingenuous presentation, in my opinion, for an emotional and kind of an "evangelistic" effect. Would we let an evangelist get away with that kind of distortion?

Oh, but it's "just a movie..." Ok. Have it your way, but I don't think the organization is trustworthy.