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Comment by verve_rat | Hacker News Reader

Christians can be a fandom, just like Veronica Mars. Surprised it took this long for something to be this successful.

There is a terrible tendency in Christian TV / movies from the US I've seen to hire actors like Dean Cain, Kevin Sorbo and Kirk Cameron. I suspect it's because they're politically correct (In the original Leninist sense) for their target audience - or cheap, or both.

And none of them are renowned for their acting chops.

The problem is the amount of liberties Christians will allow in the portrayal of Jesus. This show works around the problem by making it more about his disciples and immediate followers, and how their lives are impacted by him.

I think most mainstream Hollywood studios are not interested in depicting extent religious mythology because it's bound to incur protests from someone or other. So it stays on the margins of the industry with only True Believers willing to tie their career prospects to material that's bound to be so polarizing and opinionated.

> I think most mainstream Hollywood studios are not interested in depicting extent religious mythology because it's bound to incur protests from someone or other.

Why? Maybe it just doesn't sell. The fastest growing religious belief in the US is agnostic (or was as of a year or two ago).

Now it's QAnon.

Which is pretty close to some christian extremists.

For most any value of creative "X", "Christian X" is going to be populated by those retreating into the niche because they're emphatically not good enough at "X" to achieve mainstream success, to the point that chasing a built-in but significantly smaller audience looks attractive.

I think there are Christian artists who could make it in the mainstream, but who focus on Christian themes out of devotion/passion, in spite of the smaller audience.

I do have to give the actor who played the kid on 2.5 Men credit for walking away from acting and renouncing that role when he got back into religion.

From my reading of the NT, there's a lot of walking away from worldly things by those who chose to follow Yeshua, so I do respect it when those to talk the talk actually walk the biblical walk.

> so I do respect it when those to talk the talk actually walk the biblical walk.

Self sacrifice can be noble, though in my experience it can also become destructive. Biblical teachings--sometimes explicitly--proscribe things like putting unverifiable authorities above ones closest family and friends, poverty, never closely associating with non-believers, and faith without evidence.

The surprising thing is there hasn’t talk really been anything like this. Christian content is almost universally inauthentic for a variety of reasons.

Does _March of the Penguins_ count?

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