Faith at Sundance
2014 has been described as the year that Hollywood found faith. But if the first-ever panel on faith and film at the Sundance Film Festival is any indication, the discovery of theological depth is still quite a ways off.
A panel of marketers and PR professionals involved in films such as Soul Survivor, Heaven is for Real, and God is Not Dead might better have been titled, "How to Make Money Off Christians." For the most part, the only tightrope of nuance the panel walked was about how to avoid offending an audience while still maintaining some semblance of a story.
The panel was nearly unanimous in conflating the category “faith” with “uplifting” and “family-friendly” content. It was clear that, practically speaking, this meant the scrubbing of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. One panelist even highlighted an ideal case of a film that included a sex scene but made sure that nudity was creatively removed from each shot.
