Saturday, November 09, 2002

One other thing I noticed in Deceived is that they played with a popular stereotype of Christians. The script author transformed the traditional Hollywood stereotype of the hypocritical Southern Fundamentalist preacher into a hypocritical Southern New Age preacher. i know it's a stereotype that works in the media, I'm very uncertain that it's a good one to perpetuate.


Then again, it could also be taken as a statement of the fact that people of all religions can be just as hypocritical as Christians are accused of being. It could also be trying to make the idea of the Southern preacher regional rather than theological.


Of course, the problem with this is that the stereotypical Southern preacher is also generally "Pentecostal". If you actually listen to ministers, you see there's a great difference in the way that Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal fundamentalists speak. The Pentecostals sound like the stereotypical Southern Preachers. It's a mystery why when Pentecostal preachers get excited they sound like they're from the Deep South even if they were born and raised in Nova Scotia and never been to the South. I find myself curious as to whether Pentecostals in Africa or Asia encounter this issue. :)


Of course, the generally negative portrayal underlies a truth that most minister (pentecostals or not) are doing the best they can serve the Lord despite their faults. That's one reason I really liked Robert Duvall's movie, "The Apostle". Despite it's faults, it portrayed someone who did his best to serve the Lord and his fellow man. Anyway, I'll end this post before this rant gets any longer.

Received the latest Covenant News and the feature link proclaimed "The Problem with Pastorettes-Women as Pastors is Not of God". I'm not technically sure if that title's grammatically correct, but I did read the article.


It was such a red-herring. The author writes, "A lot of dumb stuff is going on with some of these latter-day female clergy coming out of the woodwork." Well duh (or dah as he later spells it in the article), and a lot of dumb stuff is going on with a lot of our male clergy. Every time I read an article about a minister performing a homosexual "marriage", it's generally a man who's doing it.


The author basically gives a couple of examples of some out of whack liberal feminist ministers and Covenant News turns it into a case against women in the clergy. For the reasons above, I think that case is unconvincing. You will find many well-trained, well-schooled and fairly sound women in the pulpit. There is a case that can be made against them but the one presented in Covenant News was just total bologna.


Covenant News on occassion provides links to some interesting articles, but they're a bit on the fringe and at times I worry that some ill-informed souls will read that and think that this page represents the mainstream of the Christian Conservative movement. They are not.


Also watched Cloud Ten Pictures movie, "Deceived". I've got to admit that Cloud Ten is producing some quality films. This is the first one that I saw in which they moved away from the end times genre and I hear they have another one and I'll want to see that. The only criticisms I have of the movie are: 1) I left not knowing what the exact purpose of the film was, and 2) most of the movie was shot underground and the actresses wore flashy nail polish which caused a lot of glare at times. Still, it wasn't like watching, TBN's "The Champion" which left me totally and utterly disappointed. (That movie was supposed to bring people to Christ how?)


I guess the overall message that a choice needed to be made was a lot stronger than the Champion which was basically a remake of Rocky with marginal Christian content. Bottom line is that if it is available, rent (or buy) "Deceived" today. And thus they get free advertising. Not that anyone ever reads this but... :)

Thursday, November 07, 2002

I'm recovering from Sleep Apnia (not spelled right I know). When you have Sleep Apnia, you don't dream much at all. As I've lost weight, I've started to dream more. All I seem to dream about is work. What exactly is the point of dreaming when all you can do is dream about work? *sigh*.


If you've got a few bucks, go and buy "Jesus Freaks" by DC Talk and Voice of the Martyrs. It's awesome (except for using the Message and CEV translations for some passages). I never used to be into Daily Devotionals but I needed something to do at work during the slow periods and found Promise Keepers "Men of Integrity" to be a great resource. After that one ran out and I don't have a subscription, I went ahead and bought this book so I'd have a devotional to read. I'm not sure if I'd consider it a devotional per se, though, more like an updated Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Still, it's easily worth the money.

Website promotion is getting frustrating. I'm not sure that going to every award on AwardSites.com is the best tactic to get my site promoted. There's got to be a better way. I haven't won one award. Of course, maybe the awards on AwardSites.com are so "good" that I can't win them. It's not so much a scary thought as a slightly depressing one. I know the site's a good one, I just need to find the right way to promote it.