Fox to Offer Films for Christian Viewers

LOS ANGELES -- The home-video division of Twentieth Century Fox said Tuesday it will acquire as many as a dozen family friendly movies a year and market them under the FoxFaith banner.

With budgets of less than $5 million each, the films will be aimed at the same Christian audiences that helped boost box-office receipts for such films as "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia."

"We saw the opportunity to fill the needs of an underserved marketplace," said Steve Feldstein, senior vice president of marketing at Fox Home Video.

"All of this programming is entertainment first. We're not in the business of proselytizing or preaching," he said.

The studio said last year it was forming the FoxFaith unit as part of a broader effort to reach audiences seeking family friendly films. Tuesday's announcement brought specific details.

FoxFaith could be successful if it concentrates on the home-video market rather than theatrical releases, which cost more to market and carry more risk, media analyst Harold Vogel said.

"My guess is that the real strategy is to build a DVD library," Vogel said. "Those are the kind of things that will sell steadily over many years."

Fox passed on the chance to distribute Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" theatrically. But the studio did distribute the DVD after the film grossed more than $600 million worldwide at the box office.

After the success of "Passion," Hollywood studios made greater efforts to market family films to faith-based audiences. New Line, a division of Time Warner Inc., is releasing the film "Nativity" in December. The film tells the story of Christ's birth.

Several studios have hired specialized firms to market their films directly to churches.
Fox has developed a network of 90,000 churches it will use to help market its FoxFaith films.

From the Washington Post.

Fox Faith
Fox Faith Movies

God and American foreign policy

America's foreign policy seems strongly influenced by religion. But that influence is much more complex than its critics suppose

SEPTEMBER 11th 2001 drew the transatlantic alliance together; but the mood did not last, and over the five years since it has pulled ever further apart. A recent poll for the German Marshall Fund shows that 57% of Europeans regard American leadership in world affairs as “undesirable”. The Iraq war is mainly to blame. But there is another and more intractable reason for the growing division: God.

Europeans worry that American foreign policy under George Bush is too influenced by religion. The “holy warriors” who hijacked the planes on September 11th reintroduced God into international affairs in the most dramatic of ways. It seems that George Bush is replying in kind, encouraging a clash of religions that could spell global catastrophe.

Dominique Moïsi, a special adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, argues that “the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare.” Josef Braml, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complains that in America “religious attitudes have more of an influence on political choices than in any other western democracy.”

Is America engaged in a faith-based foreign policy? Religion certainly exerts a growing influence on its actions in the world, but in ways more subtle and complicated than Europeans imagine.
It is true that America is undergoing a religious revival. “Hot” religions such as evangelical Protestantism and hardline Catholicism are growing rapidly while “cool” mainline versions of Christianity are declining. It is also true that the Republican Party is being reshaped by this revival. Self-identified evangelicals provided almost 40% of Mr Bush's vote in 2004; if you add in other theological conservatives, such as Mormons and traditional Catholics, that number rises closer to 60%. All six top Republican leaders in the Senate have earned 100% ratings from the Christian Coalition.

It is also true that Mr Bush frequently uses religious rhetoric when talking of foreign affairs. On September 12th he was at it again, telling a group of conservative journalists that he sees the war on terror as “a confrontation between good and evil”, and remarking, “It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening” (in other words, an outbreak of Christian evangelical fervour, of the sort that has swept across America at least twice before). And Christian America overall is taking a bigger interest in foreign policy. New voices are being heard, such as Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from Kansas who has led the fight against genocide in Darfur, and Rick Warren, the author of a bestseller called “The Purpose-Driven Life”, who is sending 2,000 missionaries to Rwanda.

Refuting the preachers
Yet there are qualifications to this picture. First, Mr Bush has frequently crossed his religious supporters. In his enthusiasm for trade with China, he brushed aside evangelicals' worries about government persecutions of Christians. Rebuffing several powerful preachers, such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, he insists that Islam is a “religion of peace”. He makes a point of visiting Islamic religious centres (including a visit within a week of the September 11th attacks) and involving mosques in faith-based initiatives.

America's foreign-policy elite is also one of the most secular groups in the country. Douglas Johnston, a former Defence Department official, calls religion “the missing dimension in statecraft”. Mr Bush's most controversial policy, the Iraq war, arguably rested on a failure to take religion seriously enough. The administration was preoccupied with the idea that terrorism had state sponsors—hence the desire to remove Saddam Hussein. It also argued that reordering the Middle East might wean people off radical Islam. But both ideas ignore the fact that Islamic extremism is at base a religious movement. Holy warriors don't need state sponsors to be effective. And democracy may well hand power to religious extremists.

Third, many outsiders hate America not because of its religiosity but because of its highly secular pop culture. In Pakistan 60% of the public has an unfavourable view of the United States. But the proportion rises to 75% among people who think that America is insufficiently religious. America makes enemies, therefore, as much because it lacks morality as because it seems soaked in it.

Critics of America's “faith-based” foreign policy make two errors. They lump all religious Americans together into one mass, and then confound the lumping by quoting the wackiest people they can find. (Oddly, many of the worst lumpers are the first people to insist on the importance of distinguishing between radical and moderate Islam.)

Ethical impulses
So what role does religion play in shaping foreign policy? The Euro-secularists are right about one big thing—the influence of religious groups on policy toward Israel. Americans support Israel for lots of secular reasons too, including sympathy for a nation of settlers and the strength of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. But the booming evangelical movement, convinced of the vital importance of Israel in divine planning, provides a solid core of popular support.

The Euro-secularists are usually blind to the other big influence of religion on American foreign policy. Christians are at the forefront of attempts to make American foreign policy more ethical. They have encountered fierce resistance from the realists in the State Department (particularly over deeper involvement in Darfur) and from business Republicans (particularly over China). But they have significantly increased the size of the constituency that favours a moral foreign policy.

Evangelicals have campaigned against sex-trafficking and drug-trafficking, against poverty and religious persecution, and against the genocide in Sudan. They have led the charge to deal with AIDS in Africa - see Holly Burkhalter, The Politics of AIDS: Engaging Conservative Activists, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2004 - (the person who did most to persuade Mr Bush to pledge $15 billion to that cause was his former chief speech-writer, an evangelical who has been dubbed “the conscience of the White House”). A group of leading evangelicals recently signed a statement on climate change proclaiming that the problem is real, that human activity is an important cause, that the costs of inaction are high, and that those costs are disproportionately borne by the poor...

From the Economist, Setpember 14th 2006

God's Country?

Foreign Affairs, Setpember/October 2006

Summary: Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country's political scene -- with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic: evangelicals are passionately devoted to justice and improving the world, and eager to reach out across sectarian lines.
By: Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Full Essay
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EVANGELICALS AND FOREIGN POLICY

Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, policy, identity, and culture. Religion shapes the nation's character, helps form Americans' ideas about the world, and influences the ways Americans respond to events beyond their borders. Religion explains both Americans' sense of themselves as a chosen people and their belief that they have a duty to spread their values throughout the world. Of course, not all Americans believe such things -- and those who do often bitterly disagree over exactly what they mean. But enough believe them that the ideas exercise profound influence over the country's behavior abroad and at home.

The more conservative strains within American Protestantism have gained adherents, and the liberal Protestantism that dominated the country during the middle years of the twentieth century has weakened. This shift has already changed U.S. foreign policy in profound ways.
These changes have yet to be widely understood, however, in part because most students of foreign policy in the United States and abroad are relatively unfamiliar with conservative U.S. Protestantism. That the views of the evangelical Reverend Billy Graham lead to quite different approaches to foreign relations than, say, those popular at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University is not generally appreciated. But subtle theological and cultural differences can and do have important political consequences. Interpreting the impact of religious changes in the United States on U.S. foreign policy therefore requires a closer look into the big revival tent of American Protestantism.

Why focus exclusively on Protestantism? The answer is, in part, that Protestantism has shaped much of the country's identity and remains today the majority faith in the United States (although only just). Moreover, the changes in Catholicism (the second-largest faith and the largest single religious denomination in the country) present a more mixed picture with fewer foreign policy implications. And finally, the remaining religious groups in the United States are significantly less influential when it comes to the country's politics...

EVANGELICALS AND THE MIDDLE PATH

Evangelicals, the third of the leading strands in American Protestantism, straddle the divide between fundamentalists and liberals. Their core beliefs share common roots with fundamentalism, but their ideas about the world have been heavily influenced by the optimism endemic to U.S. society. Although there is considerable theological diversity within this group, in general it is informed by the "soft Calvinism" of the sixteenth-century Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, the thinking of English evangelists such as John Wesley (who carried on the tradition of German Pietism), and, in the United States, the experience of the eighteenth-century Great Awakening and subsequent religious revivals.

The leading evangelical denomination in the United States is the Southern Baptist Convention, which, with more than 16.3 million members, is the largest Protestant denomination in the country. The next-largest evangelical denominations are the African American churches, including the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., and the National Baptist Convention of America (each of which reports having about 5 million members). The predominately African American Church of God in Christ, with 5.5 million members, is the largest Pentecostal denomination in the country, and the rapidly growing Assemblies of God, which has 2.7 million members, is the largest Pentecostal denomination that is not predominately black. The Lutheran Church­Missouri Synod, which has 2.5 million members, is the second-largest predominately white evangelical denomination. Like fundamentalists, white evangelicals are often found in independent congregations and small denominations. So-called parachurch organizations, such as the Campus Crusade for Christ, the Promise Keepers, and the Wycliffe Bible Translators, often replace or supplement traditional denominational structures among evangelicals.

Evangelicals resemble fundamentalists in several respects. Like fundamentalists, evangelicals attach a great deal of importance to the doctrinal tenets of Christianity, not just to its ethical teachings. For evangelicals and fundamentalists, liberals' emphasis on ethics translates into a belief that good works and the fulfillment of moral law are the road to God -- a betrayal of Christ's message, in their view. Because of original sin, they argue, humanity is utterly incapable of fulfilling any moral law whatever. The fundamental message of Christianity is that human efforts to please God by observing high ethical standards must fail; only Christ's crucifixion and resurrection can redeem man. Admitting one's sinful nature and accepting Christ's sacrifice are what both evangelicals and fundamentalists mean by being "born again." When liberal Christians put ethics at the heart of their theology, fundamentalists and evangelicals question whether these liberals know what Christianity really means.

Evangelicals also attach great importance to the difference between those who are "saved" and those who are not. Like fundamentalists, they believe that human beings who die without accepting Christ are doomed to everlasting separation from God. They also agree with fundamentalists that "natural" people -- those who have not been "saved" -- are unable to do any good works on their own.

Finally, most (although not all) evangelicals share the fundamentalist approach to the end of the world. Virtually all evangelicals believe that the biblical prophecies will be fulfilled, and a majority agree with fundamentalists on the position known as premillennialism: the belief that Christ's return will precede the establishment of the prophesied thousand-year reign of peace. Ultimately, all human efforts to build a peaceful world will fail...

OUT IN THE WORLD

The growing influence of evangelicals has affected U.S. foreign policy in several ways; two issues in particular illustrate the resultant changes. On the question of humanitarian and human rights policies, evangelical leadership is altering priorities and methods while increasing overall support for both foreign aid and the defense of human rights. And on the question of Israel, rising evangelical power has deepened U.S. support for the Jewish state, even as the liberal Christian establishment has distanced itself from Jerusalem.

In these cases as in others, evangelical political power today is not leading the United States in a completely new direction. We have seen at least parts of this film before: evangelicals were the dominant force in U.S. culture during much of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. But the country's change in orientation in recent years has nonetheless been pronounced.

Evangelicals in the Anglo-American world have long supported humanitarian and human rights policies on a global basis. The British antislavery movement, for example, was led by an evangelical, William Wilberforce. Evangelicals were consistent supporters of nineteenth-century national liberation movements -- often Christian minorities seeking to break from Ottoman rule. And evangelicals led a number of reform campaigns, often with feminist overtones: against suttee (the immolation of widows) in India, against foot binding in China, in support of female education throughout the developing world, and against human sexual trafficking (the "white slave trade") everywhere. Evangelicals have also long been concerned with issues relating to Africa.

As evangelicals have recently returned to a position of power in U.S. politics, they have supported similar causes and given new energy and support to U.S. humanitarian efforts. Under President Bush, with the strong support of Michael Gerson (an evangelical who was Bush's senior policy adviser and speechwriter), U.S. aid to Africa has risen by 67 percent, including $15 billion in new spending for programs to combat HIV and AIDS. African politicians, such as Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, have stressed their own evangelical credentials to build support in Washington, much as China's Sun Yat-sen and Madame Chiang Kai-shek once did. Thanks to evangelical pressure, efforts to suppress human trafficking and the sexual enslavement of women and children have become a much higher priority in U.S. policy, and the country has led the fight to end Sudan's wars. Rick Warren, pastor of an evangelical megachurch in Southern California and the author of The Purpose Driven Life (the single best-selling volume in the history of U.S. publishing), has mobilized his 22,000 congregants to help combat AIDS worldwide (by hosting a conference on the subject and training volunteers) and to form relationships with churches in Rwanda.

Evangelicals have not, however, simply followed the human rights and humanitarian agendas crafted by liberal and secular leaders. They have made religious freedom -- including the freedom to proselytize and to convert -- a central focus of their efforts. Thanks largely to evangelical support (although some Catholics and Jews also played a role), Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, establishing an Office of International Religious Freedom in a somewhat skeptical State Department.

Despite these government initiatives, evangelicals, for cultural as well as theological reasons, are often suspicious of state-to-state aid and multilateral institutions. They prefer grass-roots and faith-based organizations. Generally speaking, evangelicals are quick to support efforts to address specific problems, but they are skeptical about grand designs and large-scale development efforts. Evangelicals will often react strongly to particular instances of human suffering or injustice, but they are more interested in problem solving than in institution building. (Liberal Christians often bewail this trait as evidence of the anti-intellectualism of evangelical culture.)

THE NEW GREAT AWAKENING

Evangelicals are likely to focus more on U.S. exceptionalism than liberals would like, and they are likely to care more about the morality of U.S. foreign policy than most realists prefer. But evangelical power is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and those concerned about U.S. foreign policy would do well to reach out. As more evangelical leaders acquire firsthand experience in foreign policy, they are likely to provide something now sadly lacking in the world of U.S. foreign policy: a trusted group of experts, well versed in the nuances and dilemmas of the international situation, who are able to persuade large numbers of Americans to support the complex and counterintuitive policies that are sometimes necessary in this wicked and frustrating -- or, dare one say it, fallen -- world.

A Popular Strategy For Church Growth Splits Congregants

Across U.S., Members Divide On Making Sermons, MusicMore 'Purpose-Driven'
No More 'Wrath of God'?

IUKA, Miss. -- In April, 150 members of Iuka Baptist Church voted to kick Charles Jones off the deacons' board. The punishment followed weeks of complaints by Mr. Jones and his friends that the pastor was following the teachings of the Rev. Rick Warren, the best-selling author and church-growth guru. After the vote, about 40 other members quit the church to support Mr. Jones.

Mr. Warren, the effusive pastor of stadium-sized Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is best known for his book "The Purpose Driven Life," which has sold 25 million copies and urges people to follow God's plan for them. He has spawned an industry advising churches to become "purpose-driven" by attracting nonbelievers with lively worship services, classes and sermons that discuss Jesus' impact on their lives, and invitations to volunteer.

But the purpose-driven movement is dividing the country's more than 50 million evangelicals. Some evangelicals, like the Iuka castoffs, say it's inappropriate for churches to use growth tactics akin to modern management tools, including concepts such as researching the church "market" and writing mission statements. Others say it encourages simplistic Bible teaching. Anger over the adoption of Mr. Warren's methods has driven off older Christians from their longtime churches. Congregations nationwide have split or expelled members who fought the changes, roiling working-class Baptist congregations and affluent nondenominational churches.

Last summer, the evangelical church of onetime Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers split after adopting Mr. Warren's techniques. That church, Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, wanted to increase membership and had built a huge sanctuary several years ago to accommodate hundreds of people. Church leaders adopted a strategic plan built around Mr. Warren's five "fundamental purposes": worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry and evangelism...

At a time when many churches are struggling with declining or aging congregations, advocates of the purpose-driven movement credit it with energizing congregations, doubling the size of some churches and boosting the number of "megachurches" of more than 2,000 members. Mr. Warren says his church and nonprofit arm have trained 400,000 pastors world-wide. He reaches many more through sales of his sermons, books and lessons on the Web. Mr. Warren says he donates 90% of his money to fund philanthropy and overseas training.

Mr. Warren preaches in sandals and a Hawaiian shirt, and he encourages ministers to banish church traditions such as hymns, choirs and pews. He and his followers use "praise team" singers, backed by rock bands playing contemporary Christian songs. His sermons rarely linger on self-denial and fighting sin, instead focusing on healing modern American angst, such as troubled marriages and stress.

As membership in Protestant churches stagnated in the 1980s, Mr. Warren, a Southern Baptist in Orange County, Calif., learned from surveys that the region's Reagan-era baby boomers said they didn't connect with their parents' churches. He figured they might find God if they could sit in a theater-style auditorium and listen to live pop music and sermons that could help them with ennui and personal problems. Through Mr. Warren's Internet marketing savvy, tens of thousands of subscribing pastors learned about his church, which draws 20,000 people each weekend. In the past decade, many pastors jumped to replicate his methods, creating new churches and transforming existing ones...

Full Story from the Wall Sreet Journal.

Minorities prop up church-going

The long-term decline in church congregations has been slowed by people from ethnic minorities, a survey says.

Christian Research, a religious think tank, found that a third of churches are growing, especially those with predominantly black congregations.

The figures confirm anecdotal evidence that churches attendances are growing in ethnically diverse areas of the UK.

Overall, figures show a 500,000 fall in typical Sunday congregations since the last comparable research in 1998.

Churches in England have been in long-term decline since the 1950s, with an estimated one million people giving up regular churchgoing in the 1990s alone. Overall, congregations are generally older than the average age of the population.

However, according to the figures from Christian Research, based on an extensive census of congregations in 2005, the decline has been slowed as Britain has become more ethnically diverse.

Worshippers from black communities now outnumber white churchgoers in London. Many black Christians have formed their own churches while African communities have been introducing their own particular institutions into the UK.

Some of these churches have become the most successful in the UK with weekend congregations sometimes topping 1,000.

While the growth of black churches has been recognised for some time, the figures show that it has been significant enough to affect overall church attendance in the UK.

Elsewhere, the Roman Catholic church may start growing if migrant workers continue to arrive from Eastern European nations such as Poland.

Dr Peter Brierley of Christian Research said: "It is important that church leaders, both nationally and locally, pick up on these positive things, learn from those who are doing well, and build for the future.

"If that happens we could see the church in this country once again having a major impact on our nation."

Full story