{"id":4861,"date":"2014-02-27T11:07:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T16:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=4861"},"modified":"2014-02-28T07:22:26","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T12:22:26","slug":"go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks.html","title":{"rendered":"An amended blog: Go see &#8220;Son of God&#8221; &#8212; and why I take the view of a certain atheist critic with a grain of salt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n<iframe title=\"Son Of God Official Trailer #2 (2014) - Jesus Movie HD\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tFL6JRh1JNI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve come and revisited this commentary after having a night to sleep on it and toned it down a bit. I apologize for the original tone which I think was a bit too harsh.\u00a0 I honestly do try to keep things positive here and want to make it clear that I respect Ms. Kang&#8217;s right to an opinion and have no reason to think she&#8217;s not a nice person. I just honestly think that her review of this particular film displayed a certain unfortunate bias against and lack of respect toward the beliefs of Christians.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><strong>Jumping the snark.<\/strong> For the second time in a matter of weeks I find myself taking issue with a critic from The Wrap (a site I otherwise enjoy and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/tv\/blog-post\/ultimate-tv-network-schedule-22854\">have even written for<\/a>). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/gimme-shelter-alone-yet-not-alone-alone-face-stiff-industrymedia-hurdles-a-talk-with-kathy-difiore-whose-real-life-work-inspired-gimme-shelter.html\">I objected<\/a> when Alonso Duralde made the compassionately honest <em>Gimme Shelte<\/em>r out to be some sort of judgmental screed against anyone who supported abortion. Something which, whatever you think of its merits as a film, it clearly wasn&#8217;t. The reviewer seemed less concerned with what was actually on the screen than the preconceived notions in his mind.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the site has dispatched Inkoo Kang to review <em>Son of God<\/em>, the Mark Burnett and Roma Downey&#8217;s big screen epic that grew out of the success of their success with <em>The Bible<\/em> miniseries on TV.\u00a0 Kang is an atheist, a personal details the writer reveals in the 14th paragraph of her review. It&#8217;s not that an atheist doesn&#8217;t have a right to hold an opinion about a movie dealing with Christian subject matter. It&#8217;s just that it would be nice if\u00a0 Christian films beliefs (even if not shared by the critic) were treated with a modicum of respect and, at least, not to be dripping with sarcasm.\u00a0 From the headline (&#8220;Bless me, Surfer Jesus&#8221;) and carrying through virtually every paragraph the critic seems as intent on tweaking Christian sensibilities as she does in actually reviewing the film.\u00a0 She also makes the requisite attempt to make the movie appear anti-Semitic (while, parenthetically, admitting that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/jewish-leader-hopes-son-god-will-antidote-passion-christ\/\">Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman has approved the film<\/a> as being sensitive to Jewish concerns).<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s too much to ask that a mainstream, and generally high-quality, show-business site like The Wrap offer reviews of Christian-themed films (whether positive or negative) without &#8212; what seem to me, anyway &#8212; to be sarcastic and unfair asides aimed at tweaking the sensibilities of believers. It&#8217;s just hard to imagine such a tone being struck with a film dealing with the sensitivities of a group located closer to the top of the PC Pyramid.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, I saw <em>Son of God<\/em> and, while my personal beliefs admittedly lean in favor of such films, I also don&#8217;t like bad movies. The truth is I found it to be a cinematic triumph with strong performances and a laudable focus on the love and compassion of Jesus. Burnett and Downey, it seems to me, took great care to ensure that the movie not feed the evil of anti-Semitism.<strong><em> Son of God<\/em> is highly recommended. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><\/strong><em>Encourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em><b>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. Note: I&#8217;ve come and revisited this commentary after having a night to sleep on it and toned it down a bit. I apologize for the original tone which I think was a bit too harsh.\u00a0 I honestly do try to keep things positive here&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[619,6,9,18,20,22,24,1],"tags":[6407,35,6279,6409,6408,4238,216],"class_list":["post-4861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism","category-atheism","category-christianity","category-internet","category-journalism","category-media","category-movies","category-uncategorized","tag-son-of-god","tag-1-thessalonians-511","tag-alonso-duralde","tag-anti-defamation-league-director-abraham-foxman","tag-inkoo-kang","tag-mark-burnett-and-roma-downey","tag-the-wrap"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An amended blog: Go see &quot;Son of God&quot; -- and why I take the view of a certain atheist critic with a grain of salt<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An amended blog: Go see &quot;Son of God&quot; -- and why I take the view of a certain atheist critic with a grain of salt\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. Note: I&#8217;ve come and revisited this commentary after having a night to sleep on it and toned it down a bit. I apologize for the original tone which I think was a bit too harsh.\u00a0 I honestly do try to keep things positive here&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-27T16:07:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-02-28T12:22:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John W. Kennedy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"An amended blog: Go see \"Son of God\" -- and why I take the view of a certain atheist critic with a grain of salt","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"An amended blog: Go see \"Son of God\" -- and why I take the view of a certain atheist critic with a grain of salt","og_description":"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. Note: I&#8217;ve come and revisited this commentary after having a night to sleep on it and toned it down a bit. I apologize for the original tone which I think was a bit too harsh.\u00a0 I honestly do try to keep things positive here&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2014\/02\/go-see-son-of-god-no-matter-what-the-wraps-atheist-critic-snarks.html","og_site_name":"Faith, Media &amp; Culture","article_published_time":"2014-02-27T16:07:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-02-28T12:22:26+00:00","author":"John W. 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Kennedy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/e5d5ef9caeb6b01bcbf08ca6de6591c2","name":"John W. Kennedy","description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4861"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4861\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}