by Steve | May 20, 2013 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May-June 2013
By Rob Renfroe
I think many of us are feeling that things are changing. Our culture, once friendly to the Christian faith, is becoming more and more hostile. And persons who hold to a traditional view of morality are often ridiculed as judgmental, mean-spirited, and on the wrong side of history.
Rob Renfroe
I’m not willing to give up on the power of the Gospel to convert people thoroughly, heart and mind, to Jesus Christ. And I’m not willing to believe that the church cannot influence our culture in powerful and dramatic ways. I believe we can. In fact, I believe in the present dark moment, we, as the people of God, can have one of our finest hours.
But I am certain that the battle to bring secular people to faith in this cynical era will not be won through politics, power or even by the most compelling intellectual answers. We’ve tried to do it that way and it didn’t work.
There are still important reasons for Christians to engage the culture philosophically and through the arts. But I’m convinced the only way we will impact our culture significantly is for people to see the truth, not just hear it. And the truth is that the way of Jesus is a better way to live.
Our current secular culture perceives Christians as judgmental, angry, self-righteous, and defined by a political agenda. Only after Christians are seen as living authentic lives of love and compassion and service – and the Church is seen as a servant community that cares more and loves more than anyone else on the planet – will we get our culture to listen to our claim that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, who can connect lost souls to God and bring life out of death.
And it can happen. I’m sure of it because it happened once before. In the early centuries AD of the Roman Empire, society was cynical, violence was celebrated, morals had decayed and life was cheap. Twenty centuries later, does any of that sound familiar?
The Romans were cynical about their gods. Their deities were flawed and petty, engaging in foolish and egotistical rivalries – not better than people wanted to be, but worse. And though Romans might sacrifice to their gods in hopes of blessing and prosperity, religion as a whole was losing its influence on the daily lives of the middle and upper classes.
Our culture is also cynical about religion. Fewer and fewer people in the U.S. claim a connection with organized religion. It has become more prevalent to attack and dismiss religion as a crude superstition.
Whether it’s the intellectual attacks of those known as “the new atheists,” secular attempts to remove faith from the public square, or the exposure of the church’s flaws (especially the unforgivable cover up of child abuse by church officials), you can see that persons in our time are as cynical regarding religion as the Romans were in the first centuries after Christ.
During that same period, Romans reveled in the violence of “the games.” They rejoiced to see men fight to the death, whether at the hands of other gladiators or being mauled by wild beasts in arenas throughout the empire, including the Coliseum which seated 50,000.
We haven’t gone quite that far, but there are similarities. Boxing has given way to UFC cage matches. G.I. Joes for boys have given way to explicit video games that simulate murder and even rape.
Morally, first century Rome was a time of sexual promiscuity and decadence. Affairs were common, marriages didn’t last, and it was permissible for men to keep young male and female slaves for their sexual pleasure.
Our time is characterized by human trafficking, the omnipresence of pornography, strip clubs, children sending naked pictures of themselves and others via telephone (sexting), casual hook ups and friends with benefits, so that sex is devalued to nothing more than the gratification of physical desires.
Human life in both cultures is deemed expendable if inconvenient or unwanted. Roman children born deformed or weak or even female could be discarded, left exposed to the elements to die of starvation or mauled and eaten by wild beasts.
Today, we create “clinics” where the unwanted life, often because of defect or gender, is dismembered and discarded. Over the last 40 years we have seen over 50 million abortions. Of those, less than five percent were conducted because the life of the mother was at stake or because of rape or incest.
Two cultures, 2000 years apart, but not that dissimilar. And yet, three centuries after it began as a lower-class Jewish sect in faraway Palestine, the Roman Emperor Constantine announced his conversion. And before the year 400, Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire, embraced, some estimates state, by nearly half of its inhabitants.
How had a despised and persecuted sect with no political power, that worshipped a man executed as an insurrectionist, and that appealed at first primarily to the poor and the uneducated, change the hearts and minds and eventually the culture of people who were cynical, licentious, crass, and crude? Simply put, the early Christians lived the way Jesus lived. They loved the way Jesus loved. They served the way Jesus served. And when persecuted, they died the way Jesus died, praying for the forgiveness and the salvation of those who had ordered their deaths.
Over time, the Romans came to see that the Christian way of life was simply – better. And they came to believe that the Christian faith could make them better. And they came to believe that the most outlandish thing was true – God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, offering life to all who would repent and believe.
How did the early Christians love and serve and live better? There were unwanted babies left to die because they were deformed or because they were female (there were 50 percent more boys in Roman households because female infants had been discarded). Christians would go into the woods and rescue those abandoned children and raise them as their own.
In times of plague, the Romans commonly abandoned their relatives at the first sign of illness, even pushing them into the streets before they died, in hopes of escaping the disease themselves. Not so the Christians. They not only cared for their own and nursed them to health, but also took in and cared for unbelieving neighbors and strangers – many dying themselves as a result of contracting the disease.
Christians provided food and assistance to the poor regardless of their faith and to both sexes, though Roman welfare was given only to males. They were faithful to their wives and kind to their children.
Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor, gave the following account of the Christians he had interrogated sometime between 111-113 A.D.: “… They were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, no(r) falsify their trust …”
In the midst of the decadence and the cynicism and the hedonism of Rome, the Christian way, the way of compassion and purity and service, looked like life, a superior kind of life. And what was once despised became treasured. And the foolish One, crucified in weakness and shame on a cross, became adored as Lord of all, God in the flesh. And a culture was changed.
Our culture can be reached. Its promises of life and happiness in material possession and pleasures will leave people in our time as empty and as unfulfilled as did the cynicism and selfishness of the Roman Empire. But whether they know it or not, people in our crass and cynical society are looking for a better way. And when they see it in us – the way of service, sacrifice and love – they will be able to believe that the way of Jesus is the way that leads to life.
We don’t have home field advantage anymore. But we do have a real opportunity to become focused on the way of Jesus and live it out the very best we can. If we do, I believe God will be pleased and a world can be transformed.
Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News.
by Steve | May 14, 2013 | Magazine, Mar-Apr 2013
By Rob Renfroe
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871), there is an amazing passage. I think it provides a great deal of insight into the debates and discussions that occur between those of us who are orthodox and those who refer to themselves as “progressives.”
Rob Renfroe
In this sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice enters a strange world and encounters Humpty Dumpty, whom she has a difficult time comprehending. He uses words with which Alice is familiar, but the way he uses them seems odd, if not completely nonsensical. When she tells him that she does not know what he means by a word, “Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you.’ … ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’”
Sound familiar? Words I think I understand and have in the past found very useful in communicating with others, when talking with my progressive friends seem to have been given altogether different meanings.
Take the word “open.” Certainly, being open is a valuable trait as we seek after God and his truth. “Being open” is the virtue of admitting that no matter how much we may know, we still have much to learn. Openness is the sincere acknowledgement that God often speaks in surprising ways – even through people with whom we disagree, and so we need to listen to all who want to dialogue in good faith.
It’s here where progressives often take us traditionalists to task. They claim that we are anything but open because we have made up our minds regarding certain doctrines and seemingly won’t budge, no matter how out of step we are with the most current beliefs.
But does being open mean having no settled opinions or beliefs? If it does, then many progressives are as closed-minded as they claim we are. For example, most progressives in The United Methodist Church would never consider ordaining anyone who discounted the validity of ordaining women or who rejected infant baptism. Of course, neither would traditionalist Wesleyans, but the point is that the progressive worldview never would allow this thought: “In rejecting this candidate for ministry, we’re not being very open, are we? In fact, we’re rather intolerant.”
No, it would never occur to them that holding to these particular beliefs and implementing these standards for ordained ministry would ever make them guilty of not possessing “open hearts, open minds, [or] open doors.”
John Wesley described true openness, calling it a “catholic spirit.” He described it this way: “A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine. It is true, he is always ready to hear and weigh whatsoever can be offered against his principles; but as this does not show any wavering in his own mind, so neither does it occasion any. He does not halt between two opinions, nor vainly endeavor to blend them into one.”
It’s not wrong, in fact it’s imperative, that a church has particular doctrines and practices and is willing to defend and enforce them. I don’t believe that means we’re not open. I agree with G.K. Chesterton who said, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
It’s not wrong to hold views that you have decided are correct – in fact, so correct that you are unprepared to change them. What’s wrong is condemning others for doing so when you have done the same thing. One could say it borders on hypocrisy.
In evangelical-progressive dialogues, “openness” among progressive advocates too frequently means that you must believe what they believe – and be absolutely sure that everyone else is wrong.
If for example, it were stated that many gay persons were not “born gay,” but came to same-sex attraction through events that occurred in their lives, you are likely to be labeled by progressives not only as closed-minded, but as hateful – even though there are no reputable scientific studies that conclude all gay persons are attracted to the same gender because of genetics or other biological causes. And if you are invited to give a prayer at the presidential inauguration, holding this view, you will discover, as Pastor Louie Giglio did, just how “open” progressive guardians can be.
Or, express your belief that abortion on demand is immoral. Forget “closed-minded;” you will never be on the staff of our most progressive, and one would assume therefore, our most “open,” UM agency – the Board of Church and Society!
But many who assert just as strongly that gays are born gay and abortion is never wrong if it’s the woman’s choice fancy themselves to be open, not closed, even though they will not for a minute consider another position.
And what about our most important claim: that God has revealed himself uniquely in Jesus Christ, and that no one comes to the Father except by him? Why does claiming that The Truth is found in the Christian faith cause the “open-minded” progressive wing of a Board of Ordained Ministry to be on edge or even hostile, as many of our orthodox colleagues have discovered? Because being open in the progressive worldview often does not mean being open to traditional Christian teaching, what Wesley called the “grand Scriptural” doctrines. Instead it means being open to the latest theological fad – which will be yesterday’s news and forgotten in a generation. And it means being open to what other religions teach and failing to affirm that what we have in the Christian faith is a revelation that is uniquely true and authoritative.
In The Closing of the American Mind, Professor Allan Bloom writes: “Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power.”
We live in an Alice in Wonderland world when some people claim, for example, that Islam worships the same God as Christianity, even though Christians believe that God sent his Son Jesus into the world for our salvation and Muslims do not. That kind of openness isn’t broadmindedness – it is simply denying the reality that contradictory views cannot both be true. Have you ever been told that Buddhism and Christianity are simply two different paths to the same God? It cannot be true. Buddhism denies that the death and resurrection of Jesus is in any way connected to our salvation. Christians believe it is essential. The same holds true for Hinduism and its pantheon of thousands of gods and goddesses. It’s not being open or generous of heart to claim Christianity is true and at the same time assert that all religions lead to God, even those that deny the uniqueness of or the need for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; it’s being disingenuous. It’s mistaking being open for accepting everything, even beliefs that are contradictory, and denying reason’s power.
We can be open to persons who differ with us in their beliefs – we can learn from anyone. We can be and should be open to persons, regardless of their lifestyles – we are all sinners, and all are deserving of the ministry of the church. There’s no question about that.
What we cannot be open to is the false logic that contradictory religious beliefs can all be correct. What we cannot be open to are those who claim to be morally superior to persons who will not recant their traditional Christian beliefs, when they themselves are every bit as obstinate in their beliefs as those they judge. What we cannot be open to are those who sit on Humpty Dumpty’s wall, redefining words, because they have decided that’s the way to master the conversation and, ultimately, the church.
Rob Renfroe is the president and publisher of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 9, 2013 | Features, Jan-Feb 2013, Magazine, Magazine Articles
She captured America’s heart every week as the divine messenger with the lilting and soothing Irish accent on Touched by an Angel. He is the creative genius behind Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Voice. Together, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett are one of Hollywood’s most uniquely equipped married power couples.
Beginning March 3, you will be able to catch their latest ambitious venture on the History Channel. The Bible is a fabulously scripted five-part docudrama produced by Downey and Burnett after a 4 month location shoot in Morocco.
The 10-hour version of this Biblical epic was conceived after the husband and wife team watched the spectacular Ten Commandments by legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) for the first time since childhood. “Give me two pages of the Bible and I’ll give you a picture,” DeMille once said. With this new venture, Downey and Burnett have produced an entire photo album.
Good News editor Steve Beard spoke with Roma Downey and Mark Burnett about their new project.
How did this become a project that you both wanted to do?
Roma Downey: Well, that was a God thing. I believe we were called to do this, for such a time as this. We are at the fortunate place in our careers where we can choose projects that honor and are pleasing to God. And we joined forces, bringing our talents together and our faith and our love and it has been the most exciting and thrilling and humbling few years of our lives as we’ve brought this to light. And we are so excited because it’s within inches of being finally finished, Steve.
How do you go to the History Channel and make this pitch in a way that they’ve not heard it before?
Roma Downey: Well, if you were me, you would go and knock politely on the door and wait until you’re invited in. But if you were my husband, you would arrive and you would kick the door down. And you would just somehow go in there and present it in such a way that they absolutely knew they had to be part of it.
I love that. And Mark, how did you go about doing that?
Mark Burnett: We heard of a documentary someone was going to make about the Bible that was asking why God is so mean to everybody and why would God flood the earth and kill everybody, why would God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, et cetera, et cetera. Roma was so offended and she said to me, “You know, we should just do a Bible project on…” I said, “What, the whole Bible?” She said, “Yes, we should do that.” I said, “Roma, you’re crazy. There’s no way. Who do you think we are? Cecil B. DeMille?” She said, “Maybe. We should do this.” I said, “Roma, this is impossible, you know.” And she said, “Well, so was Survivor, so was The Voice. Why don’t we do this. We love the Bible, we love these stories, we believe.” And I said, “No, no, no, this is crazy.” And then a couple of days later I decided, you know, maybe she’s right, maybe I should listen to my wife.
We took a year and a half to think exactly how to present it in a way that would be impossible to say no to. There is an art form to how to present an idea in our business, to get someone to say yes.
Mark, you certainly know how to do that.
Mark Burnett: Yes, I’m probably the most experienced person in television at doing exactly that.
This obviously is much more serious than anything else we’ve ever done. But you have to decide upon what’s the entry point and what’s the three-line message? What is the story of God’s love for all of us? And realize that the worst thing you can present is like a rule book: Don’t do this, don’t do that — and in a dry kind of way. If you do it in a dry kind of way, why would someone want to see it on television?
If you want to do it on television, it better be a fresh visual, emotionally connecting way of presenting the sacred text. And I think that’s what we did. Rather than telling you the rules from the Bible, we tell stories and the moral underpinning and rules are evident in the stories of the interaction with the characters. And that’s what we’ve done. And it just took a while to figure out exactly how to do it.
Ten hours of television is nearly the equivalent of half a season. That is a gift-wrapped blessing in Hollywood. What stories did you tackle?
Mark Burnett: They are not going to give us 100 hours, you know, which is what you’d need. So obviously, if you were approaching this as almost a Sunday school greatest hits, there’s certain things you’ve got to do, right?
What we outlined was Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Saul, David. Then on to Zedekiah, which led nicely into Daniel and Cyrus and the releasing of the Jews from Babylon and Daniel’s dream about the coming of the Son of Man which was the entry point, naturally, into the New Testament. The New Testament is through the Gospels and then dealing with Stephen, his martyrdom, and dealing with Saul/Paul and on to Revelation.
As we were filming, we realized something had to give. Eventually the story we didn’t film was Joseph. It was Moses or Joseph and we had to do Moses. You just have to because of the parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments and leading into Joshua, because otherwise, that’s the entry point of how you meet Joshua at Jericho. Obviously we wanted to do more, but that’s how we did it.
Roma, how much praying did you have to do through all of this because everything didn’t go as planned? I’ve got to assume there was all kinds of headaches. What was it like going through this process with your husband?
Roma Downey: The fact that we have gotten through the project and we haven’t killed each other yet, I think, is a testimony to our faith. [laughter]
And our God is a good God. We had a few moments where the challenges were great. There were logistical challenges on the set. We filmed in Morocco. We were there from the beginning of February to the beginning of July. We crossed all seasons and all kinds of terrain and there were snakes and scorpions and there were casts of hundreds and herds of sheep and chariots and horses. You can imagine the endless things that might go wrong and they did go wrong, but ultimately I think the hand of God has been on the project from the beginning. We have great teams of people who have been praying with us and for us and in the way that the sea parted for Moses, unbelievably things just kept turning up for us and the right people kept arriving for us and things that we did not know how to do, suddenly somebody was there who did know how to do it. And even in terms of casting, we were challenged right up to the last minute with finding the actor who would play the role of Jesus for us, which was our singular most important cast member.
Very understandable. That’s one casting decision you want to have serious faith in. [laughter]
Roma Downey: We were just a month away from filming and we hadn’t found him yet. We were praying, we were looking for Jesus everywhere. And we had everyone we know praying for him. And then, he just remarkably showed up and he was the perfect actor and he brought all of the qualities that we were hoping this actor would have for this most important part. We cast a Portuguese actor called Diogo Morgado and he is simply sensational. He brings the qualities of the lion and the lamb to this role. And his natural charisma and his natural humility and his natural strength all come off the screen in this beautiful and authentic way. No one has ever played Jesus like this before and I think that his performance is going to touch the hearts of millions of people around the world.
That was a very key piece of casting for us. And there were other moments, too, where God just kept showing up.
One night we were filming a scene where Nicodemus asks Jesus about the kingdom of God and Jesus tells him that he, too, can see the kingdom of God – that he has to be born again of the Spirit. Nicodemus doesn’t fully understand what that means and Jesus describes to him how the Spirit can blow like the wind and it goes where it wishes. And suddenly, as if on cue, the most amazing wind on this very still night blew in through the camp as if God was saying, “Here I am, I’m right here.”
Everybody had hairs stand up on their arms and we all looked at each other in awe. And thankfully, the actors never broke concentration for a moment. And even though the trees were blowing behind them and the hair of the actor playing Jesus was blowing, they both held the moment and it’s just a fantastic moment on camera where it really felt like the Holy Spirit showed up. And there were numerous moments like that for us throughout the experience.
You filmed in Morocco. You’ve mentioned a Portuguese actor and a British actor. What was the international flavor of the rest of the cast?
Roma Downey: The cast is mostly made up of UK actors – English, Scottish, Welsh, and a good healthy sprinkling of Irish.
I love it. I’m a seventh generation Irishman in the United States so that warms my heart. [Laughter.]
Roma Downey: Oh, you are, really? So I have to tell you that King Saul is Irish. Our Moses is Irish. And I stepped myself into the role of Mother Mary. And as you know, I am Irish.
Splendid. I was going to ask if you crossed lines from co-producer to actress.
Roma Downey: I hadn’t planned to play the part, but we had cast the younger Mary through the annunciation and through the Nativity – a beautiful young English actress. And we knew that we would have to find someone that would bear some resemblance 30 years later to the actress picking up that role through the mission of Jesus and then through the Passion of Jesus and so on.
Sounds like a perfect fit.
Roma Downey: Mark said to me, you know, of all these actors that we’re considering for the Mother Mary role, you actually look more like the young actress than any of them. Would you not consider playing it yourself? And I hadn’t really considered playing any part at that time. I had my producer’s hat firmly on my head, but I thought, well, I’ll pray on it. It was the right thing to do and I’m so glad that I did. It was just such a fantastic experience for me. I have loved Mary my whole life.
Oh, believe me, I’m a big fan of her’s as well. I’m glad you took the role.
Roma Downey: It was maybe through loving Mary that I really came to love Jesus. My own mother had died when I was a little girl and the role of Mary in my life became very much like a nurturing mother figure that I didn’t have.
I simply love that. Let me shift gears here. I think a lot of people would be surprised to discover that there is a very vibrant faith within the Hollywood zip code and in the creative world.
Mark Burnett: Let me say that what we’ve done on this project is the best collective work of our entire careers. And that means everything from Roma’s incredible portrayal early in her career of “A Woman Named Jackie,” playing Jackie Onassis, as well as “Touched by an Angel,” “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” “The Voice,” “Shark Tank,” the Emmys, all the things we’ve done. I don’t lightly say this, the Bible project is the best work we have ever been involved with or made.
That is quite a statement. Are people surprised to discover that the guy who created “Survivor” and “The Voice” is a Christian?
Mark Burnett: My answer is, why not? Why would you assume that because someone was really good at making commercial television they wouldn’t be a Christian? Why would that matter? You’d be pleasantly, happily surprised at the enormity of people of Christian faith within the creative community. That is not the challenge. The challenge is to actually get something about faith on television.
People are very quick to want to put shows on which call faith into question or shows that might say was Jesus married, was the parting of the Red Sea a phenomenon of nature, all these sort of shows are on TV that you’ve seen. Why would they do those? Because, I guess, they think it’s sensational and shocking. But when you want to make the story of God’s love for all of us, people are a little slower for whatever reason to buy into it. Well, we were called because we’ve got great credibility and people think we’re really good at our jobs and we got the opportunity and we’ve made it and we are really grateful to History Channel to seeing that and stepping up for us and with us. No one in our zip code in Hollywood will be surprised that Roma and I are Christians and have made this.
But I wanted to let you know how deep the community is and that many of us who choose to walk in the creative arts also have deep faith. And every now and then you get an opportunity to live that out in the project.
How do you hope the viewers who usually turn to the History Channel for “American Pickers” will experience your project on the Bible?
Roma Downey: Well, the over arching embrace is of God’s love for us, it’s woven through every segment of the show, leading through, of course, to the New Testament, that He loved us so much that He sent His only Son to redeem us. So it’s a beautiful story of love and redemption. And it is our hope that the series goes out and that it touches people’s lives and that it is a great reminder that God loves them, and that it draws people back to the book itself, that they are reminded of how amazing our story is because it is our story, you know, we are those characters.
It’s as current today as it was when it was written. We all go through the same journey. The situations have changed but the feelings are the same, the challenges are the same, the hopes and dreams are the same. So it’s our story. They mirror us. There is such an opportunity here for the faithful, yes, but for people maybe who have never opened a book or who have never stepped inside of a church, but who will get to turn their television set on and see something like this. It’s just a very exciting prospect for the Kingdom.
I should say it is. Thank you both so very much for your time.
Roma Downey: Good. We appreciate you. Thank you for your partnership on this, in helping us to spread the Good News.
