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 A Christian group's anger over the trailer for an upcoming TV show, "Black Jesus," seems out of place, says Jay Parini.
July 30th, 2014
09:26 AM ET
What's wrong with 'Black Jesus'?Opinion by Jay Parini, special to CNN (CNN) - I've just been watching the trailer for "Black Jesus," a show that will premiere on August 7 on the Cartoon Network during its child-unfriendly late-night spot, which they call Adult Swim. Already at least one Christian group has begun to lobby the network to cancel the show, regarding its contents as blasphemous. (Cartoon Network is owned by Turner Broadcasting, which owns CNN.) From what I can tell, the series is a bit of a spoof, with some foul language. The general notion seems clever: A guy who thinks he is Jesus, who might even be Jesus, lives in a poor neighborhood of Compton, California. He's got a ragged band of followers - they look like winos and potheads - who follow him around with lots of bantering. The scenes shown in the trailer seem relatively funny, and it appears that nobody is quite sure whether this is a madman who thinks he is Jesus or maybe the Lord himself come back in a strange outfit and, indeed, black skin. Is this offensive? The jury will have to be out until we see whole episodes, but in concept—particularly if the rest of the show is like the trailer—it does not seem so. Let me explain. FULL STORY This tweet from Breanna Mitchell sparked a fierce debate over selfies and sacred spaces.
July 22nd, 2014
08:53 AM ET
Smiling for 'Auschwitz selfies,' and crying into the digital wildernessOpinion by Craig Detweiler, Special to CNN
A tour of a concentration camp, where so many Jews lost their lives, may move us to take photos or post responses - but few would include smiles, or selfies. But Mitchell is not the first teenager to generate Internet outrage by her response to the Holocaust. When Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank House last year, he wrote in the museum guest book, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber.” While many have ripped into Mitchell and Bieber for their insensitivity, I don’t think they intended to be disrespectful to the dead. Thanks to the ubiquity of mobile devices (mobiquity!), adolescent mistakes and hard lessons that used to be learned in private can quickly devolve into public drubbings. This is what happens when new technologies clash with ancient understandings of the sacred. The problem is so pervasive that a Tumblr site, “Selfies at Serious Places” is dedicated to such faux pas. We have very few spaces that our culture considers sacred, where an association with the divine results in a feeling of awe or reverence. Death may seem especially abstract to young people who haven’t been shown how to grieve, mourn or respect the dead. So how might we help the emerging generation to develop a digital decorum that accounts for sacred spaces? Can we incorporate electronic ethics into religious instruction?
June 28th, 2014
05:57 PM ET
How Muslims flipped the script in HollywoodBy Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] Los Angeles (CNN) – For years, Ahmed Ahmed’s acting resume read like a rap sheet. His first film role was Terrorist No. 4 in “Executive Decision.” His first sitcom part: Hakeem, a terrorist, on “Roseanne.” “I realized there was a big market out there for playing bad Arabs,” the actor said with a sarcastic laugh. Born in Egypt and raised in Riverside, California, Ahmed - a friendly, round-faced guy - carries no trace of an accent and doesn’t look particularly sinister. But he said he was rarely considered for parts playing doctors, lawyers ... or anything, really, but menacing Muslims during the early days of his career. Meanwhile, a pilgrimage to Mecca, the spiritual home of Islam, pricked his conscience. He felt responsible, in some small way, for the violent images of Islam broadcast across American screens. “I realized I was becoming a slave to the industry,” Ahmed said. The role in which the actor was regularly cast, an Islamic extremist, has become almost as familiar a Hollywood cliché as the noble savage or gold-hearted hooker. In films and television shows from “24” to “Syriana,” Muslims are the olive-skinned evildoers who cloak their violent schemes in religious rhetoric while cursing their American adversaries. Ahmed wanted no part of that anymore. He quit Hollywood and went back to waiting tables, where he compensated for the bad food with a bonhomie that would blossom into a standup comedy act.
May 10th, 2014
04:00 AM ET
The next chapter in faith films: comedyBy Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Contributing Editor (CNN) - A new movie genre debuts at the box office this weekend: the Christian comedy. "Moms’ Night Out" starring Patricia Heaton and Sean Astin is opening on more than 1,000 screens, and it aims to do something no other Christian major motion picture has endeavored to do: make you laugh. On purpose. There has been no shortage of laughably bad Christian movies. "Left Behind," anyone? From “The Passion of the Christ,” to “Fireproof,” to “Courageous,” the genre has historically leaned heavily on biblical epics and inspiration to stir the faithful, or evangelical fare designed convert the masses. But "Moms’ Night Out" is entirely different, a PG-rated comedy about the hijinks of middle-class Christian families, ordinary folks living ordinary lives. Astin called the movie "ballsy" for focusing on this demographic.
April 21st, 2014
11:00 AM ET
What Hollywood gets wrong about heavenOpinion by Drew Dyck, special to CNN (CNN) - The 4-year-old boy sees angels floating toward him. They start out as stars, then slowly become more visible, wings flapping behind orbs of white light. As they approach, they sing a melodious song. The boy cocks his head, squints into the sky, and makes a strange request. “Can you sing ‘We Will Rock You’?” The angels giggle. So do people in the theater. The scene is from “Heaven is for Real,” the latest in a string of religious movies soaring at the box office. Based on the best-selling book of the same name, the film tells the real-life story of Colton Burpo, a 4-year-old boy who awakens from surgery with eye-popping tales of the great beyond. The film took in an estimated $21.5 million in opening on Easter weekend. Even Colton’s religious parents (his dad, Todd, is a pastor) struggle to accept the celestial encounters their son describes: seeing Jesus and his rainbow-colored horse, meeting his sister who died in utero, and talking to his deceased great-grandfather, “Pop,” who, Colton exclaims, has “huge wings.” The book and film are part of a larger trend. Depictions of journeys to heaven have never been more numerous or more popular. There’s “90 Minutes in Heaven,” “To Heaven and Back,” “Proof of Heaven,” and “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” just to name a few. Does God have a prayer in Hollywood? So what should we make of such accounts? And what does their popularity say about us?
April 5th, 2014
08:56 AM ET
When God plays the villainOpinion by Joel S. Baden, special to CNN (CNN) - Most modern people tend to distinguish between the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the merciful God of the New Testament. In our age, the merciful God reigns - or so we like to think. But every so often, stories or books or natural disasters summon visions of a wrathful God, and nowhere is that more in evidence than in the biblical story of the Flood, now brutally depicted in Darren Aronofsky’s new film “Noah.” With our notion of a God who loves us all individually, especially the little children, we struggle with a deity who would wipe out all of humanity. Surely there were many innocent people, children, who died in the Flood? But let’s be clear: This is our problem, not the Bible’s.
March 28th, 2014
01:22 PM ET
Does God have a prayer in Hollywood?By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor Los Angeles (CNN) – Forgive Darren Aronofsky if he’s begun to identify with the title character of his new film, “Noah.” Like the infamous ark-maker, the 45-year-old director has weathered a Bible-sized storm – and it’s not over yet. Aronofsky’s epic, which stars Russell Crowe and boasts a $130 million budget (with marketing costs to match), rode a swelling wave of controversy into American theaters on Friday. Despite fierce criticism from some conservative Christians, "Noah" was the top box-office draw last weekend, raking in $44 million in the United States. Part Middle-Earth fantasy flick, part family melodrama, the film is an ambitious leap for Aronofsky, director of the art-house hits “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler.” Both of those films were showered with praise and awards. “Noah,” on the other hand, has sailed into a stiff headwind.
December 2nd, 2013
11:29 AM ET
Rush Limbaugh: Pope is preaching 'pure Marxism'By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN) - Pope Francis: Successor to St. Peter ... the people's pontiff ... Marxist? That's what conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh suggests, calling the Pope's latest document "pure Marxism." Limbaugh blasted the pontiff on Wednesday, a day after Francis released "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel), a 50,000-word statement that calls for church reform and castigates elements of modern capitalism. Limbaugh's segment, now online and entitled "It's Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It's a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists)," takes direct aim at the pope's economic views, calling them "dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong." The Vatican issued the English translation of "Evangelii," which is known officially as an apostolic exhortation and unofficially as a pep talk to the worlds 1.5 billion Catholics. Francis - the first pope ever to hail from Latin America, where he worked on behalf of the poor in his native Argentina - warned in "Evangelii" that the "idolatry of money" would lead to a "new tyranny."
November 12th, 2013
03:49 PM ET
Pope Francis won the Internet. Literally.By Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) - It's official: Pope Francis is the most talked-about person on the planet. More folks have been chatting about the popular new pontiff online this year than Edward Snowden, Kate Middleton or even the Internet's favorite bad girl, Miley Cyrus. That's according to the 14th annual survey from the Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based company that trackers top talkers on the web. The GLM says their rankings are based on an analysis of English-language blogs, social media and 275,000 electronic and online news media. The GLM broke their research into three categories: top words, top phrases and top names. Besides being the Internet's top name, the Pope's Twitter handle, @Pontifex, was the fourth most talked about word thus far in 2013.  Comedian Stephen Colbert roasted Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Thursday night.
October 18th, 2013
10:17 AM ET
Stephen Colbert roasts the PopeBy Daniel Burke, CNN Belief Blog Co-editor [twitter-follow screen_name='BurkeCNN'] (CNN) –– Declaring himself "American's most famous Catholic," comedian Stephen Colbert roasted church leaders at a charity event in New York on Thursday, taking aim at Pope Francis and Cardinal Timothy Dolan. "As an observant Catholic, I believe the Pope is infallible," said Colbert, a Communion-class teacher at a parish in New Jersey. "But he's also wrong about a lot of things." Colbert, whose bombastic persona on the "Colbert Report" often takes a conservative slant on Christianity, poked fun at the new Pope's humble lifestyle, saying that if the pontiff were in charge of the white-tie charity event, it would have been held at an IHOP, not New York's glitzy Waldorf-Astoria hotel. |
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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(CNN) - It is understandable why Breanna Mitchell’s sunny tweet from Auschwitz as “PrincessBMM” would spark a viral outcry.
