Baehr: Christians Can't Get a Fair Shake in Ridley Scott's Kingdom
by Ed Thomas
May 23, 2005
(AgapePress) - MovieGuide founder Ted Baehr feels there is an obvious and overt bias against Christians in the new, highly publicized movie, Kingdom of Heaven. He says despite its big budget and famous cast, the film uses the same old Hollywood tactics to attack Christian character.According to Baehr, director Ridley Scott's new film paints a politically correct and historically incorrect portrayal of Christians during the era of the Crusades. The pro-family movie critic and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission contends that this new Hollywood epic attributes to Christians character traits and religious dogma that resemble Muslim teachings far more closely than they do anything found in biblical Christianity.
"The movie Kingdom of Heaven generally portrays Christians in a very negative light," Baehr observes. "The more Christian you are, the more villainous you are," he notes, and he is convinced this is no accident.
Baehr says Ridley Scott revealed in a New York Times interview that his intent was to use the movie's portrayal of history to show how stupid the Christian fundamentalists were. The film industry watchdog says Scott therefore "created a vehicle where he said he leaned over backwards to be nice to the Muslims and, in the process, leaned over backwards to be mean to the Christians and misrepresent the situation."
Among Kingdom of Heaven's inaccuracies, according to the MovieGuide publisher, are misrepresentations of Holy Land geography, the actual facts of the battle over Jerusalem, weapons used by armies of the time, and the attempted portrayal of Muslims as having a rightful claim to the city. Then, of course, there is the way the film portrays Christian ideology.
"The only so-called Christian who can be considered halfway decent is the one who's an agnostic and [who] curses God at one point," Baehr says. Also, he notes, the film has one monk stating, "If you kill an infidel you'll go to heaven." But in fact, the Christian critic says, the concepts attributed to Christian faith in the movie are "concepts that apply to the Koran and are things that are inflaming the Middle East today."
Kingdom of Heaven's director has admitted his bias against Christian fundamentalists, Baehr says, and the characterizations in the movie are obviously designed to show the filmmaker's dislike for that group. So, the Christian Film & Television Commission chairman contends, those who go to see Ridley Scott's new film can expect to sit through plenty of politically-correct portrayals of Christians and Muslims -- and a lot of revisionist history about the crusades as well.
Other AgapePress articles on Kingdom of Heaven:
Ashamed of the Kingdom of Heaven
Elusive Kingdom -- Mankind's Persistent Failure to Create Heaven on Earth