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The United States is the most deeply religious country in the western world, but movies and television programs are portraying a different picture, Christian media groups say.
Ever since the Protestant Film Office closed its advocacy offices in Hollywood in 1966, media portrayals of Christianity have become increasingly negative, even to the point where regular churchgoers seem almost nonexistent.
"Christians who are intelligent, educated, modern, sophisticated in modern urban America are nonexistent as far as modern television and movies are concerned," the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries, said in a broadcast aired on the "Coral Ridge Hour" Sunday.
"If you go back 30 years or more, Christianity was almost always portrayed by Hollywood and the media in a very positive and affirming way," Kennedy said. "Today, that is a rare exception."
Dr. Ted Baehr created the Christian Film & Television Commission to redeem the values of mass media. He said that within six months of the Protestant Film Office shutting down in Hollywood, movies went from some of the greatest stories ever told such as "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins" to sex and Satanism.
"The head of 20th Century Fox ... said if you take the salt from the meat, the meat is going to rot," Baehr noted in Sunday's broadcast.
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"And the meat rotted within three years," he said of Hollywood films after the church pulled its office.
Most evangelicals agree and believe anti-Christian attitudes are increasing in the country. According to a Barna Group study in September 2007, 91 percent of the nation's evangelicals believe that "Americans are becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity."
And media's negative portrayals of Christianity have played a major role in influencing Americans' views, Christian media leaders say.
The same Barna Group survey showed that 16- to 29-year-olds perceive Christianity more negatively than positively. Nine out of 12 perceptions of Christianity were negative, according to the study. Some of the negative views included Christianity being judgmental, hypocritical and too involved in politics.
The answer to the anti-Christian barrage in media, bestselling author Randy Alcorn says, is not getting overly defensive but asking whether there is a balance.
"If a professing Christian is portrayed as being a hypocrite ... okay, well, that's life. There are hypocritical Christians," Alcorn said on the "Coral Ridge Hour."
"But if that's all you ever see and you see people who are sexual predators who are quoting the Bible ... in real life, how many sexual predators are quoting the Bible? And yet there have been several films where it's been this person who appears to be scarred and really a perverted person because of a religious upbringing."
Hollywood often argues that they’re just giving the public what it wants or that it's reflecting what's already out there in society, the Christian media leaders point out.
But what Americans want and what's out there are rarely captured and put on the big screen, they contend.
Although about 40 percent of Americans go to church or synagogue every week, that is almost never seen on film, said Michael Medved, nationally syndicated conservative talk show host.
If Christians are portrayed in films, "what you tend to see is religious believers who are crooked or crazy or both – which appears very regularly in Hollywood film," Medved noted.
What’s in the movies doesn’t give a complete picture of American life.
“There are other parts of life that could be reflected,” said the late Kennedy, “but they’re not.”
