You Can’t Script Christ

Thank you to Howard Rosenberg for alerting us to the Christian writers workshops at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church (“Scripting the Work of the Lord,” June 23).

As a Christian pastor, I am deeply disturbed by the plan to script “Christianity” into movies and television. The attempt by Barbara Nicolosi to infuse media with “Christian” themes is at best misguided and at worst dangerous.

What Christians need is to recognize God’s grace and presence in every moment of beauty in the world. What pastors and religious leaders need is courses that help them recognize biblical and religious themes in all kinds of media. Movies such as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Shawshank Redemption” dramatize quite well the themes of resurrection and hope. Movies for television such as T.S. Cook’s “The Switch” help people struggle with the moral and ethical implications of an issue. That is where Christians can do their best work and, hopefully, some of that will be dealt with in Nicolosi’s workshop.

However, the worst part of an attempt to attract Christians to an affirmative action for Christian writers in the business, referring to them as an underrepresented majority, unwittingly (perhaps) suggests that there is an overrepresented minority. It does not take much of a jump to identify just who that minority is. As we approach the end of a century when Christian anti-Semitism reached apocalyptic proportions, we must avoid rekindling embers that are still simmering dangerously.

THE REV. IGNACIO CASTUERA

Pastor, Community United

Methodist Church

Pacific Palisades