There is a new Superman film in cinemas these days. Since it's a comic book movie at a time when comic book movies are almost guaranteed to make big money (even Green Lantern made $219,000,000) it ought to be treated with suspicion. But what is more suspicious is a company I came across while reading about Man of Steel.
The company is called Grace Hill Media, which describes itself as "a dynamic, full-service PR and marketing firm originally established to reach an enormous and underserved population – religious America." Is there nothing profane? Is there nothing that Christians won't Christianize? If Bill Hicks is anywhere close to being right then marketing is not a practice worthy of the gospel. That a company like this exists is just further proof that western Christians are blind and numb to the ways that we try to serve both God and mammon. Just to rub salt into the wound, here is what a member of Grace Hill Media is quoted as saying at the end of a piece on the company:
I don't know if you've seen a contemporary church service lately but they're pretty big, modern places with lots of TV screens, definitely not your grandfather's church with an organ. If you're a pastor and you just paid $35,000 (£22,000) for a massive hi-tech screen, you don't just want to screen out the lyrics to 'Our God Is an Awesome God'. Now, if they want to tell a story about hope they can use a clip from The Shawshank Redemption.
If you are a pastor and you just heard or read one of your flock talking like this, it is high time for some pastoral care - full cavity search. The plot has been lost, and a clip from The Blind Side will not save souls.
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