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iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
Why can't Christians just have their own movies and TV shows and 
forget about the secular media? 
 
Answer: 
 
It’s a good question about why Christians don’t just retreat from 
society. In fact, there’s a film festival organized by a friend of mine in 
Texas that just does that. It wants to set up an alternate media and 
entertainment industry. That’s not a bad idea. 
 
The Church has always had five different ways to react toward culture.  
 
One way is to retreat from culture. The Amish and the Mennonites—
who we all love dearly, and we love to look at the Amish culture—
retreat from culture. Unfortunately, with the shootings of those little 
Amish girls some time ago, you know that you can’t always retreat 
from the culture. 
 
Number two is to fight with the culture. The thirty years war—there 
have been many points in history where the Church has fought with 
culture. 
 
There are some times that it’s called for to fight for the rights of the 
homeless and the indigent, to care about people enough to be 
compassionate. But again, that’s not a “full-orbed” response. 
 
Another response is to just live within a culture, to tolerate everything, 
including some of the worst abuses and criminal activity. 
 
 
 
That didn’t work in Germany. When that happened in Germany 90%+ 
of the Church went along with one of the worst and most gruesome 
activities in history, which was the Holocaust.  
 
The next is to redeem the culture, to be “salt and light” in the culture. 
I encourage people to get involved in the media. If you are good at 
creating or if you are good at communicating, learn your craft, get into 
the media, actually engage in the media and make the great movies. 
 
One of the best filmmakers in Hollywood, John Lassiter, heads up 
Pixar. He’s a Boy Scout leader, he goes to church, he’s a believer, he’s 
got five children, he’s wonderful. We all love his movies.  
 
Finding Nemo, he said, “This is actually just a set of Bible stories which 
was woven together.” Many of those people in Pixar are people of 
great faith and values.  
 
So you need to understand that as a believer. Now, does that mean 
not to make movies for schools or for churches? I’m the head of a 
department at Berkley; I hope they’re going to continue to make 
educational films.  
 
But if you’re called to make the difference, go into the real world of the 
big media and make a difference. If you’re called to make educational 
films and Internet films, do that.  
Baehr -2- 
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