Crouch Says Blanket Film Bans Backfire : Cinema: ‘Christians refused to patronize even the clean, wholesome and Christ-honoring’ movies, he says, so Hollywood turned to sex and violence.

Although the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Paul F. Crouch has focused his energies on television and radio--amassing more than 200 stations around the world--his interest in the movies predates the controversy over “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

In a recent newsletter, Crouch recalled, as a youth “the sermons I heard preached on the evils of the silver screen. I was strictly forbidden to enter a motion picture theater under penalty of damnation.

“But like most of the young people of my church, I finally yielded to temptation and slipped into a darkened theater with my neighbor boyfriend. I fully expected lightning to hit the place, and I trembled with fear that God would strike me blind for entering Satan’s kingdom.

“I’ll never forget that first movie in the old Fox theater in Springfield, Mo.: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans (who now have a regular program on Trinity Broadcasting Network) and Andy Devine hopped on their horses, caught the bank robbers and cleaned up corruption in Dodge City, and then went to church to thank the Lord for it all. Nary a demon in the place.

“Yes, I know there were some bad movies produced, but by today’s standards, most of those early Westerns were a Sunday-school picnic.”

Today, Crouch conceded in an interview, he believes that the advice of his elders had been “a terrible mistake. By our lack of patronage of good, clean, wholesome films, Hollywood had no choice than to get more sex and violence oriented.”

As a result of his recent involvement in the film industry, he said in the interview, “I catch a lot of criticism from some of the old traditional Christians.”

He explained in his newsletter: “My point is, instead of damning the media and preaching it into the flames of hell, we, the church, should have seized it and used it for the proclamation of the Gospel. Even when Cecil B. DeMille came on the scene and produced ‘King of Kings’ and ‘The Ten Commandments,’ the theater to much of the church was still ‘forbidden fruit.’

“Later, the great epic ‘Ben-Hur’ was produced, and I succumbed to temptation, again. To my astonishment, the Crucifixion of Christ was portrayed magnificently, and as he hung upon the cross, the classic scene shows the precious blood of Christ trickling down into rain that began to fall. Down the hill of Calvary it flowed into a larger stream, then into a river, and finally into the great ocean. The symbol is shown powerfully and poetically that the blood of Christ now covers the whole world.”

“Later,” Crouch’s newsletter said, “a beautiful healing scene is shown, as Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are miraculously healed by the power of Jesus Christ.

“I will always wonder if the ominous turn for evil that the motion picture media has taken in more recent years is not due at least in part to the fact that Christians by and large refused to patronize even the clean, wholesome and Christ-honoring films.”