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When we watch old-fashioned westerns today, it is almost a sure thing that we will comment on the unfortunate, naïve caricatures of Native Americans. Similarly, we often fuss and flinch over movies just a few decades old that portray women in the confines of stereotypes, brainless beauties who exist only to serve men as objects of affection, damsels in distress, trophies for heroes, or as a mindless Mom.

But Christians are often shocked and dismayed over the stereotype that won't go away: the villainous, judgmental, legalistic Christian determined to spoil the party.

One particular instance of a film's portrayal of Christians—from 1960—has recently made the news. Inherit the Wind recounts the story of the 1925 Scopes Trial and was recently shown in a sophomore biology class at Shawnee Mission East, a Kansas City high school. When parents learned that the school was showing what they argue is a flawed and anti-Christian film, they went to the school board. The matter is now in the hands of a school district special committee.

The church is frequently portrayed on the big screen in an unflattering light. God, on the other hand, usually gets a positive (if shallow) portrayal. And angels needn't worry about their reputation either: in It's a Wonderful Life they're shown as kind and helpful, if a bit sentimental, and in Wings of Desire they're powerful messengers of comfort and pilgrims haunted by questions about spiritual mysteries and death. But why does the cliché of the scowling, ranting Christian continue?

In hopes of offering some consolation for persecuted Christians of the silver screen, I asked Film Forum readers to dig up some examples of Christians portrayed properly. The result was rather surprising. So many names were suggested that they overwhelmed the mentions of unflattering portrayals. It's enough to make me wonder if the days of the stereotype are numbered—or if the stereotypes were ever enough to merit complaint in the first place.

(I am indebted to Ron Reed, director of the Pacific Theater in Vancouver, B.C., for thinking and long and hard about the question. He responded with such an overwhelming archive of examples that I almost turned the column over to him.)

Our favorite portrayals of Christians in the movies are …

It comes as no surprise that the overwhelmingly favorite portrayal of a Christian in a film was Ian Charleson's role as the Olympic runner and missionary Eric Liddell in Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire. Charleson's performance could have been hammy and heavy-handed, but the actor gave the religious runner a tone tenderness, quiet grace, and just enough childlike enthusiasm to be endearing. The dignity Liddell exhibits in the presence of the ruling authorities who challenge him is played as a perfect balance of respect and confrontation. I think Liddell's brief sermon during a cloudburst is my favorite movie sermon of all time, as it is spoken with such sincerity and warmth, and comes so clearly from the heart, with affection.

Reed says, "If there was a movie that heralded the change from stereotype and condescension to at least occasional respect and recognition, it was Chariots of Fire, where audiences rooted for an unabashedly evangelical Christian, even cheering him on as he took a moral stand they would never themselves consider. Somehow, by some cinematic alchemy, Your Average Theatregoer perceived Eric Lidell to be a hero for refusing to run an Olympic race on the Lord's Day, and believing Christians sitting in those crowded movie houses, braced for the usual mockery of conservative Christian practices, experienced an intoxicating thrill as their values and standards were celebrated instead.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47