C. O. Baptista Film Collection & Archives

Christian filmmaking, done outside of the corporate Hollywood industry and produced for Christian churches, affected a significant audience of church people. Protestant denominations and individuals believed that they could preach and teach more effectively through the mass medium of film. Although suspicion toward the film industry marked many conservatives during the early 1930s, many Christian leaders came to believe in the power of technology to convert or to morally instruct people. Thus the growth of a Christian film industry was an extension of the Protestant tradition of preaching, with the films becoming celluloid sermons. Celluloid Sermons is the first historical study of this phenomenon. Terry Lindvall and Andrew Quicke highlight key characters, studios, and influential films of the movement from 1930 to 1986--such as the Billy Graham Association, with its major WorldWide Pictures productions of films like The Hiding Place, Ken Curtis' Gateway Films, the apocalyptic "end-time" films by Mark IV (e.g. Thief in the Night), and the instructional video-films of Dobson's Focus on the Family--assessing the extent to which the church's commitment to filmmaking accelerated its missions and demonstrating that its filmic endeavors had the unintended consequence of contributing to the secularization of liberal denominations.

Links film history with church history over the past century, illuminating America's broader relationship with religious currents over time Moments of prayer have been represented in Hollywood movies since the silent era, appearing unexpectedly in films as diverse as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Frankenstein, Amistad, Easy Rider, Talladega Nights, and Alien 3, as well as in religiously inspired classics such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. Here, Terry Lindvall examines how films have reflected, and sometimes sought to prescribe, ideas about how one ought to pray. He surveys the landscape of those films that employ prayer in their narratives, beginning with the silent era and moving through the uplifting and inspirational movies of the Great Depression and World War II, the cynical, anti-establishment films of the 60s and 70s, and the sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters of today. Lindvall considers how the presentation of cinematic prayer varies across race, age, and gender, and places the use of prayer in film in historical context, shedding light on the religious currents at play during those time periods. God on the Big Screen demonstrates that the way prayer is presented in film during each historical period tells us a great deal about America's broader relationship with religion.

Winner of the Religious Communication Association Book of the Year Award for 2008 Sanctuary Cinema provides the first history of the origins of the Christian film industry. Focusing on the early days of film during the silent era, it traces the ways in which the Church came to adopt film making as a way of conveying the Christian message to adherents. Surprisingly, rather than separating themselves from Hollywood or the American entertainment culture, early Christian film makers embraced Hollywood cinematic techniques and often populated their films with attractive actors and actresses. But they communicated their sectarian message effectively to believers, and helped to shape subsequent understandings of the Gospel message, which had historically been almost exclusively verbal, not communicated through visual media. Despite early successes in attracting new adherents with the lure of the film, the early Christian film industry ultimately failed, in large part due to growing fears that film would corrupt the church by substituting an American "civil religion" in place of solid Christian values and amidst continuing Christian unease about the potential for the glorification of images to revert to idolatry. While radio eclipsed the motion picture as the Christian communication media of choice by the 1920, the early film makers had laid the foundations for the current re-emergence of Christian film and entertainment, from Veggie Tales to The Passion of the Christ.

James Friedrich and Cathedral Films: The Independent Religious Cinema of the Evangelist of Hollywood, 1939-1966 looks at the religious sub-genre of independent cinema during the classical Hollywood period through the works of one of its most accomplished pioneers. Episcopal pastor James Friedrich used professional Hollywood casts and crews to produce over sixty short and feature-length religious films in the 1940s and 50s, with critics and viewers alike offering praise for their cinematic and theological quality. This book is a unique contribution to our understanding of the history of the American film industry, providing unprecedented insight into the way a small independent B-studio created and distributed religious films for the church, television, and theatrical markets, and anticipated and influenced the mid-century Hollywood biblical blockbusters and independent religious films that followed Friedrich's work.