TOPIC: Doubt or Certainty? Which Does YOUR World Revolve Around?

2005 editorial from Charles Krauthammer of TIME magazine

These things come in waves, of course, but waves need to be resisted, even if the exercise leaves you feeling like King Canute. The new wave is fashionable doubt. Doubt is in. Certainty is out.

The New Republic devoted a cover article to hailing the "conservatism of doubt." For the less bookish, Hollywood spends $130 million on a Crusader epic in which the heroes are 12th century multiculturalists, Christian and Muslim, who want nothing more than love, peace and interfaith understanding. (Such people inhabit 21st century Hollywood, but as columnist John Podhoretz points out, they were nowhere to be seen in 12th century Jerusalem.) And dare you have any "deeply held views" -- a transparent euphemism for religiously grounded views -- especially regarding abortion [or homosexuality or the war against terrorism].

The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers -- principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics -- bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong -- indeed, deeply un-American -- about fearing people simply because they believe.
It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.

What nonsense. The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unseemly religiosity. Why this panic about certainty and people who display it? It is not just, as conventional wisdom has it, that liberals think the last election was lost because of a bloc of benighted Evangelicals. It is because we a handful of years of moral certainty, and firm belief -- and that's about all secular liberalism can tolerate.

Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? Just days after 9/11, on this very page, Lance Morrow wrote a brilliant, searing affirmation of right against wrong, good against evil. A few years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics.

Enough. A new day, a new wave. Time again for nuance, doubt and the comforts of relativism. It is not just the restless search for novelty, the artist's Holy Grail. It is weariness with the responsibilities and the nightmares that come with clarity -- and the demands that moral certainty make on us as individuals and as a nation.

Nothing has more aroused and infuriated the sophisticates than the foreign policy of a religiously inclined President, based on the notion of a universal aspiration to freedom and of America's need and duty to advance it around the world. Such liberationism, confident and unapologetic, is portrayed as arrogant crusading, a deep violation of the tradition of American pluralism, ecumenism, modesty and skeptical restraint.

That widespread portrayal is invention masquerading as history. You want certainty? You want religiosity? How about a people who overthrow the political order of the ages, go to war and occasion thousands of deaths in the name of self-evident truths and unalienable rights endowed by the Creator? That was 1776. The universality, the sacredness and the divine origin of freedom are enshrined in our founding document. The Founders, believers all, signed it. Thomas Jefferson wrote it. And not even Jefferson, the most skeptical of the lot, had the slightest doubt about it.

TOPIC: Stop Glamorizing Guns and Their Use in Popular Culture
Article from christiansunite.com
Morality in Media President Robert Peters had the following comments in response to the many news stories pointing a finger at the availability of guns as the underlying cause of the Virginia Tech and similar senseless shootings:

• "Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in North Central Illinois I often felt left out when friends went hunting for rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, deer and more.

• "My dad never took us hunting, even though his father had hunted and even though we had a rifle in the home that he taught us how to use when I was in grade school. After my grandfather passed away when I was in college, we also had a shotgun and handgun in the home.

• "Fist fighting among kids was common, but never once did any of us (or our parents) use a gun to shoot someone else. To my knowledge, the community I grew up in was not atypical.

• "Not surprising, my own growing up experience makes me wary of those that point a finger at the availability of guns as the underlying cause of the dramatic increase in gun-related murders.

• "The depiction of guns back then in films and TV also had an impact on us. I still have a picture of my older brother and I with our cowboy six guns and holsters; and I still have fond memories of playing war in the woods with our toy rifles and my favorite gun, a plastic carbine.
  

• "But I think I am on safe ground in saying that we didn't grow up fantasizing about shooting other human beings in real life just for the sake of shooting them or for exacting revenge.
  

• "How then do we explain why so many young people today use guns unlawfully?
  

• "One obvious part of the explanation is the decline of religion and, along with that, the decline of morality. There is nothing more basic to morality than, 'You shall not kill.'
  

• "I think another part of the explanation was the abandonment in the 1960s of the Hays Code that governed the film industry for three decades. Among the Code provisions was one that regulated the depiction of murder. Murder was to be presented in a way that would not inspire imitation. Brutal killings were not to be presented in detail. Revenge was not to be justified.
  

• "Broadcast television helped further desensitize youth to criminal violence; and the advent of cable TV and home videos brought the unedited, amoral deadly violence of Hollywood directly into home. Hardcore rap lyrics also extol criminal violence, including use of guns.
  

• "And today, video games provide youth with on-hands instruction in how to kill.
  

• "Without question, the increased availability of weapons designed to take human life has contributed to the increase in mayhem, but typically supply follows demand, and what has helped create the demand for such weapons is a popular culture that glamorizes their use.
  

• "All this is not to say that society shouldn't restrict the sale of guns and perhaps prohibit the sale of some guns altogether. Even assuming that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of citizens to keep weapons (as I believe it does), reasonable regulation should still be permissible.
  

• "It is to say that we would have much less to fear from the availability of guns, if we would stop glamorizing their use in popular culture. On the latter point, I recall seeing a statistic that less than 5% of New York City police officers ever fire their guns. You'd never know that from popular culture depictions of life as a major city law enforcement officer."

Based in New York City, Morality in Media works to promote standards of decency in media.

TOPIC: Hollywood to Host International Prayer Event for Christians in Entertainment
An international prayer event will take place in Hollywood for Christians involved in the entertainment industry. Led by London members of Artisan Initiatives and a team from the Hollywood Prayer Network, the event will encourage people to pray for the industry, all the Oscar nominees and for Hollywood itself. The prayer event will be held during the Oscars weekend Saturday 24 February at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church from 6pm-9pm (PST).
Recently, Hollywood star Jennifer Hudson raised the bar of Christianity in Hollywood as she celebrated her success in the week leading up to the Academy Awards at her family’s church. The Oscar-nominated Dreamgirls’ actress said: “I’m not having no club party; I better have a praise party.” Hudson, 25, headlined a gospel concert, “An Evening of Praise With Jennifer Hudson”, accompanied by the acclaimed Soul Children of Chicago.

Source: ChristianToday.com

Speaking of Hollywood...
Top Hollywood Filmmakers Share Desire for Faith-Based Movies
Some of the biggest behind-the-scenes names in Hollywood film production have shared their dream to make more faith-based movies that eschew violence for violence sake and instead embrace great spiritually uplifting stories with positive content. Movieguide, an established family guide to movies and entertainments in the US, brought top producers and filmmakers in Hollywood together to share their thoughts on faith-based moviemaking at two special Movieguide Panels, reports Assist News.
"I want to do something that I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of," said panel member Leo Severino, formerly with the Producers Guild of America and the Fox Networks Group and first-time producer of Bella, a family-friendly Christian movie that became the surprise winner of the Audience Award at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival in September, 2006. "Good stories with good content. Beauty, art and morality go together,” he said during the panels, held at the recent Screenwriting Expo 5 in Los Angeles and sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. Severino pointed out that filmmakers spend huge amounts of time working on perfecting the colour and lighting of each shot but challenged, “How much time is spent on the moral content of a movie?"
The founder of Movieguide and author of So you want to be in pictures, Dr Ted Baehr, led the panels. "People want to see good news at the movies. People don't want violence for violence sake,” he said, adding that China and Muslim countries, which represent at least 50 per cent of the world’s population, do not allow sex or violence in their movies or on TV.
Joel T. Smith is a writer, producer and distributor who has worked on the TV movie Merlin and the TV series Tarzan. "There's a universality to Christian ethics that can be appreciated by many people," he said. "Christian products have universal themes that people in Spain, Germany and Scandinavia can relate to."
Dr Baehr also pointed out that films with morally and spiritually uplifting content and with positive Christian values and elements enjoy the greatest success at the box office. "People want good to triumph over evil. The average person wants to see people with hope." Smith said, however, that it was pointless to criticise the Hollywood studio executives for their overriding interest in money. "You don't criticise a tiger for having stripes," he pointed out. "Ninety per cent of independent movies don't make money [but] the Internet will open channels that aren't there just yet."
Dr Baehr ended with a core message for writers, producers and filmmakers who dream of making more faith-based films. "Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever,” he said, citing Daniel 12:3 and Ephesians 5:1-3 of the Bible. He continued: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people." Dr Baehr said: "Don't stoop to conquer.”
Other panel members include: Will Davies, Rob Hudnut, David Sams and Casey Wolfe.