Most historians of film remember organized religion as one of American cinema’s classical antagonists, especially in the early half of the twentieth century. They recall the vitriol leveled by conservative Protestant and Catholic groups against the “juggernaut of destruction” ((George Detweiler, “As to Moving Picture Shows,” Evangelical Visitor, February 5, 1912, p. 2.)) known as the motion picture. One writer summed up much of conservative Christianity’s sentiments quite succinctly: “Nothing has ever been introduced to the public, of such gigantic proportions, as a means of poisoning and debauching the mind and morals of the young, as the ‘moving picture show.” ((“Primary Causes,” Evangelical Visitor, August 7, 1911, p. 15.))
But not all conservative religious groups and leaders were utterly opposed to the new cultural phenomenon. As Terry Lindvall points out in his well-researched and cleverly written Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christian Film Industry, fundamentalist revivalist Billy Sunday was in fact a promoter of the early motion picture.
Lindvall recounts one of Sunday’s endorsements, this of the D.W. Griffith film The Two Orphans:
The power of the moving picture should be used to inculcate warnings and lessons that the world needs. . . . [The movie is a] sermon of the highest value. Would that every story carried on the screen might have a lesson as powerful, and as useful, a motive as praiseworthy. ((Quoted in Terry Lindvall, Sanctuary Cinema: Origins of the Christ Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 107))
The idea that a movie could be used as a “sermon of the highest value” would not gain significant momentum within much of Evangelical Protestantism until the 1951 release of Mr. Texas, a fiction film produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as an evangelistic tool for use in churches, at Christian youth functions, and at Graham’s crusades.
But Sunday’s remarks suggest that, despite mainstream Protestant objections to film in the early decades of the twentieth century, church leaders were able to distinguish between the morally neutral technology of filmmaking and the often violent and sexualized imagery of Hollywood productions—a distinction some other conservative Protestant groups (like Mennonites, Brethren in Christ, and similar Anabaptists) could not draw.
Another factor in this question has to be Bob Jones Sr., evangelist friend of Sunday and founder of Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC. In the 1950s the university produced several cinematic versions of its founder’s sermons and later produced feature films, one of which won an award at Cannes. The university’s film department still supports a major in cinema and produces films from time to time. One is in production currently:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=235519&id=616031755#!/pages/1920s-Baseball-Film-Project-Unusual-Films-Production/176700494008
Any mention of Bob Jones, Sr. in Lindvall’s book?
What avenue did these conservatives use to show the films? Was it simply in the theater with the typical movies they condemned? The craze of showing Christian films at a church didn’t seem to appear until decades later as technology improved. Just curious….
Thanks for the post, Devin.
Another book that is very useful for understanding fundamentalists’ complex relationship to mass culture is Carl Abrams’s Selling the Old-Time Religion: American Fundamentalists and Mass Culture, 1920-1940 .
As you point out, fundamentalists were able to embrace the medium of film while condemning Hollywood’s imagery. I think this is an important bit of evidence in the argument, made by Sandeen and Marsden and almost everyone since, that fundamentalists were evangelicals adapting to (or even adopting) modernity rather than fundamentalists reacting against modernity.
But as you point out, many Anabaptist groups could not make that distinction. What do you think that says about their relationship to modernity and to other fundamentalists?
Unfortunately, Lindvall’s book doesn’t mention Bob Jones, Sr. — I would certainly like to hear more about his use of the medium. (Thanks for the resource, Dan!)
Despite what I might have indicated with this post, Lindvall’s book is primarily concerned with identifying and explaining how mainline churches developed a “Christian film industry” in opposition to, as an alternative to, or (sometimes) in concert with Hollywood. Thus, while he mentions fundamentalists like Sunday, he doesn’t dwell on them (which perhaps explains his neglect of Sunday). He does include some discussion, toward the end of the text, on the emergence of evangelical cinema in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and beyond (beginning with Billy Graham and concluding with Trinity Broadcasting Network’s “Omega Code” and the like). He certainly doesn’t mention Anabaptists. After all, as his book’s subtitle indicates, he is interested in the “origins of the Christian film industry.”
@Jonathan: Interestingly, Protestant and Catholic groups were showing films in churches in the early decades of the twentieth century. Lindvall has a particularly interesting section wherein he discusses the “seat-filling” competition that emerged between film promoters/distributors and the Church as early as 1911: In one instance, a Los Angeles church staged a screening of “Pollyanna” while across the street a theater competed with a screening of a new Lon Cheney film. Fascinating!
@Lincoln: I’ve encountered Abrams’s book but haven’t taken the time to delve too deeply. I’ll need to remedy that soon.
My interest in this post was in showing that, at least early in the century, fundamentalists (who purported separation) were in some measure engaged (and, it seems, even supportive of) Hollywood efforts. D.W. Griffith was probably the biggest name in Hollywood when Sunday “endorsed” his film.
But your point about fundamentalists being evangelicals “adapting to (or even adopting) modernity” is well-taken.
Regarding the Anabaptist/fundamentalist connection, I think Joel Carpenter put it best in the introduction to his book Revive Us Again: we should see fundamentalists as “wounded lovers,” rather than “true outsiders”–Anabaptists and other nonconformists. Thoughts?
@Dan: An often repeated bit of Bob Jones lore is that a Hollywood director offered Bob Jones Jr a screen test to see if his Shakespearean stage-acting skills would translate to film. He turned down the opportunity, though not as far as I’ve heard from any scruples against the film industry.
@Lincoln: Likewise, DG Hart goes a step farther and turns the usual construction of fundamentalism and modernism on its head, claiming that the ostensible modernists (liberal Protestants) were actually Victorian romanticists while the fundamentalists were the true modernists.
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