Dallas Jenkins: Why are Christian movies so bad?

It’s a question I’ve heard a lot Christians ask. And it’s a legitimate question. I recently saw a blog post from Dallas Jenkins, producer of Hometown Legend and director of Midnight Clear, where he tries to answer it. He brings up some good points, but I think it’s a complex issue, one that has a lot of different historical forces playing into it. One of the things he doesn’t mention – which I personally think is an unrecognized culprit – is the general divorce between theology and practice that, in the artistic world, has given us a simplistic and disconnected aesthetic. Most Christians today (including evangelicals) dimly comprehend the theological structure to the world, and instead interpret reality through the grid of gnostic modern culture. I think this is one of the main reasons that Christian films have become “message” films: there is not an honest, theologically-driven aesthetic that seeks to explore Christianity through the filmic medium. Instead, Christian films often show us a simplistic, inaccurate view of life that somehow lacks the hard knock of truth. (Secular media does the same thing, just with bigger budgets, veteran writers, and higher production values.) If we can begin to explore the theological aesthetic, then try to apply it to film, perhaps Christian filmmaking can move in a healthier direction.