To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.
 
 
iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
Should I be concerned about religious bigotry in the media? 
 
Answer: 
 
The question about how people’s faith and values are portrayed and 
how religion is portrayed in the media is very important.  
 
We all know about the cartoons which were anti-Muslim, and the 
threats of violence, and all of that. But the fact of the matter is that 
during the 1930s there was an attack on a specific religious group—the 
Jews, because of their belief structure—by the Germans. 
 
What they did is, they mocked them, they made cartoons about them, 
and then they made movies about them portraying them as being the 
villains. 
 
This instituted religious bigotry.  
 
We’re upset in our society about all sorts of bigotry, as we should be. 
We’re upset about racial bigotry, but we should be just as upset about 
religious bigotry. 
 
Religion is something, a deeply held belief, so in the old days we had a 
standard in movies and television that you wouldn’t mock anybody’s 
beliefs, that you wouldn’t portray a Rabbi as being evil or foolish or 
whatever. Not because there weren’t bad people in every religion, but 
because this was a sensitive subject.  
 
 
 
It’s a subject that we should talk about, we should debate, we should 
evangelize, and we shouldn’t be constrained to tell them “We believe 
this, because of these reasons.”  
 
But when you put it into the media, you can often get in that situation 
where you deride it and it bypasses the filters of logic and perception, 
and it becomes a way of developing prejudice.  
 
Prejudice erodes the civility, the structure of society. Religious 
prejudice is a very serious issue, because most of the wars throughout 
history have been religious wars. 
 
I wish the media would take responsibility. I wish you could see 
movies like Syriana and Munich that would really be sensitive to these 
issues in a better way than they are.  
 
But since they’re not going to do that, you’re probably not going to get 
them to not express their opinions on this issue in a way that’s too 
subtle to filter it out. 
 
You need to help your children to think through “What does it mean to 
be of my faith, of my belief, and to suffer this type of ridicule?”  
 
People have gone through this for a long time. If you look at some of 
the older movies about the Amish and the Mennonites, those were 
movies about people who were persecuted people that had to stand up 
for their beliefs. 
 
I suggest for you to get a movie called The Hiding Place, about Corrie 
Ten Boon. Or get Schindler’s List for older children to help them 
understand what happened with the Jews during World War II, and 
help them deal with religious bigotries. And keeping your beliefs—not 
being closed to changing—but not being susceptible to manipulation, 
bigotry, and prejudice.  
Baehr -2- 
To download a printable version of this transcript, click here.