When Media Attack Christians, It's Not Just Whom, But Witch

Is America a Christian nation?

Britain just went through a controversy when British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to his own nation as a “Christian country.” He caught hell for it.

The same thing happens in America. The Los Angeles Times described the American reality in a similar way. According to Michael McGough, the United States is “where a president — even one who, like Barack Obama, trumpets his own Christian faith — would think twice before describing America as a Christian country.”

You can thank the media for the change.

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com 

A 2013 Barna Group study said America is increasingly “post-Christian.” It wasn’t alone. National Review Editor-at-Large John O’Sullivan made some excellent points in a December presentation, noting, “family breakdown is in fact the largest single social disaster plaguing the post-Christian society.”

Unfortunately, saying America is “post-Christian” is an understatement. What we are facing is much worse. Look at the major Christian news stories in the past few years. Hobby Lobby fighting just to keep its freedom of religion. Chick-fil-A skewered for its stance on traditional marriage. Catholic groups battling the government so they aren’t forced to violate their faith.

In every case, the media reaction is similar. Christians are “radical,” “bigoted,” or just hate women. One liberal “comedian” named Laura Levites used Twitter to comment on the Hobby Lobby case and say she “would personally like to castrate every male conservative Christian so that they have NO reproductive rights. Resulting media controversy? Almost nothing.

One Washington Post blogger wrote about how there are “Five Christian theologies scarier than Halloween.” Even “40 Days Of Prayer, Fasting And Repentance For Marriage,” get described by lefty Huffington Post as a “40-Day Fast Against Marriage Equality.”

The worst place for treatment of Christians is entertainment. If you want to mock the faithful, just included a bigoted stereotype in your TV show and fill in a plot around it. That’s what NBC did with its gay propaganda show “The New Normal.”

Katy Perry performs "Dark Horse" at the 56th annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP) 

When ABC did it, they renamed a show “GCB” after pushback that the original name was “Good Christian Bitches.” Just the first two episodes of that poorly written travesty attacked the Christian faith 72 times. But, hey, Christians are just overly sensitive.

Now WGN has decided it’s all grown up and wants to play with the big networks. So it launched the TV show “Salem” to much fanfare and an aggressive ad campaign including trade publications like The Hollywood Reporter.

The first episode of this occult rewrite of history featured sex, devil worship, and a satanic abortion. The Christians in good ol’ Salem are anything but. The town’s first guide in faith hangs people he thinks are witches and brands fornicators before becoming bewitched himself. The next one kills a man under a pile of stones – when he’s not seen in a graphic sex scene with what appears to be a prostitute.

All of that fun was delivered into your home … on Easter Sunday.

No, of course that wasn’t an accident. Few things in TV programming are accidental. Network execs study, analyze, test market, and focus group everything. WGN was trying to create controversy by bashing Christians on the holiest of days.

It did so with an over-the-top, ridiculous anti-Christian plot. Now they are adding new music – courtesy of gender-bending rocker Marilyn Manson who once produced the album “Antichrist Superstar.”

Musician Marilyn Manson attends the 6th Annual Revolver Golden Gods Award Show at Club Nokia on April 23, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Manson was quoted by Entertainment Weekly complaining about how witchcraft is poorly used in media. “The occult and witchcraft is so often used in cinema with a heinous disregard for even researching its origins,” Manson told EW. Yes, by all means we must get witchcraft depicting correctly because, Lord knows, the media never get Christianity right.

Manson’s career has been one long attack on Christianity. He even tore up Bibles on stage. He’s being added to “Salem” to get headlines. Apparently, sacrificing a baby to Satan in the opening broadcast didn’t generate enough ratings.

Welcome to post-Christian America.

Dan Gainor is the Vice President for Business and Culture for the Media Research Center. He has written for The Blaze Magazine and writes on media for TheBlaze.com.

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