Based on the History Channel "The Bible" TV series in planning stage. While I don't care about the movie, what bothers me is that Church organizations, such as that of Joel Osteen and some other "MegaChurch" pastors have either already purchased or have pledged to purchase megabucketloads of tickets in what I view as an effort to make the movie appear to be more popular or successful than it actually is. I witnessed the same effect when the movie "The Passion of the Christ" was released. My local theater was flooded with people who watched that movie, and even though it was only scheduled to be shown twice a day at staggered times, and there was another movies scheduled to be shown in the same theater room immediately after, the church group that had attended stayed and flooded the hallways listening while one of their pastors set up a podium and started preaching instead of allowing people who wanted to see the next movie, which they had paid for (coincidentally being The Da Vinci Code). I think this was intentional disrespect as there was a lot of local upheaval by local religious organizations that The Da Vinci Code was even being shown at all.
I object to the way church groups get involved in these acts of deception. Like all the BS over Duck Dynasty when their star voiced his opinions about gays and the network pulled him for a short period. I call it the exploitation of Christianity. I see it as church groups trying to make that show more about religion than about entertainment. I actually used to watch that show before it started getting all the attention because they prayed at the end of each episode. (something I had not even noticed it until religious groups started using that feature of the program to get the show a bunch of undue publicity which did not exist until the praying was exploited to artificially inflate the show ratings.
Honestly not trolling here, just voicing my opinion. I have voiced similar concerns regarding people exploiting Buddhism in the past, which I practice. I have even written emails to heads of Buddhist organizations requesting clarification of things I perceive to be inappropriate at Buddhist Temples around the U.S.
19 Feb 2014, 10:31 pm
