Pure Flix, a Christian movie studio now positioning itself as the Kirk Cameron of video streaming services, promises to protect Christian families from the evils of words like “hell” and “damn.” But it turns out it can’t save its subscribers from content that insults and demeans atheists, the LGBT+ community, and even victims of mass shootings.
The “family-friendly” Christian studio was co-founded by David A.R. White, who produced and co-starred in the atheist-bashing film God’s Not Dead (rated 4.9/10 on IMDB) and its equally offensive sequel (rated 4.3/10), in 2005. These films may not have sex or nudity, but they are filled with propaganda against “liberal elites,” and White is now streaming them into the homes of people expecting family-friendly content.
MTV’s Rachel Handler recently reported the following “moral lessons” from God’s Not Dead 2, which is currently the third most popular movie on the Pure Flix platform:
- “The most basic human right of all” is not, as popularly believed, “life,” but rather, the “right to know Jesus.”
- If you don’t like Duck Dynasty, sorry, but you are going to hell.
- Ivy League schools and legal settlements are impure.
- Blogging and reporting are impure, unless you are reporting historical facts about Jesus, or journaling about your own conversion.
- TV reporting is the most impure form of journalism, indicated by its willingness to express concern about the influence of Christian extremism on our national politics.
- But Mike Huckabee going on TV to talk about Jesus is pure.
- Psychological counseling is impure.
- Notions of being “offended,” “tolerant,” and “diverse” are impure.
- Dirty shoes are pure, shiny shoes are impure.
Handler’s report also included a review of Pure Flix’s most popular film, I’m Not Ashamed. It’s described as a “family-friendly drama” about the Columbine shootings. Unfortunately, the movie deals a huge blow to the victims of that tragedy and their families by distorting the truth to fit a religious agenda.
More specifically, the movie bills itself as a “true story” following the final days of real-life victim Rachel Joy Scott, pulling excerpts from her actual diary and blurring select facts with fiction. It goes without saying that Scott’s real story is horribly tragic, but this film does her a weird and gross disservice by warping her into a sort of Christ figure to further its political and religious agendas.
Handler further points out that I’m Not Ashamed doesn’t blame culture, guns, or Marilyn Manson for the Columbine massacre — as Jeff Sessions did. Instead, the movie (rated a whopping 5.5 on IMDB) “draws a straight line from Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris’s brutal murders of their classmates to the fact that their school taught them about evolution instead of creationism and that they refused to accept Jesus’s love.”
In I’m Not Ashamed, being a non-Christian is conflated with being “fake” or a “social plastic person” at best; at worst, it drives you to gleeful mass murder. If you feel uncomfortable with the idea of a film exploiting a dead teenager to hammer home “moral lessons” about the fatal dangers of secular humanism — and using her death as propaganda to further the falsehood that Christians in America are routinely persecuted for their beliefs, despite making up 70 percent of the adult population — congratulations, we are the same amount of pure, i.e., negative pure.
In sum, Pure Flix promotes and distributes movies that include mass murder, reinforce negative stereotypes about essentially all non-Christians, and minimize racial issues. They also feature propaganda against atheists, the LGBT+ community, and just about anyone who isn’t a rich white believer.
Is that really what Christians want their children to watch?
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