Why Faith-Based ‘True Story’ Movies Are So Often Untrue
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The film “Flamin' Hot” recalls the story of Richard Montañez and the birth of the spicy snack. (Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)
(OPINION) If Christians actually believe our beliefs are true, why do so many of the “true stories” we tell in our movies stretch the truth beyond the breaking point?
This has been a big year, not only for faith-based movies but specifically for faith-based films based on true stories. Whether it’s “Jesus Revolution,” “Sound of Freedom,” “Flamin’ Hot,” “Big George Foreman,” “On A Wing and A Prayer,” “The Hill,” or the upcoming “Ordinary Angels,” the vast majority of offerings from the faith-based film industry in 2023 has fallen under the “based on a true story” category. (And that’s not including Bible stories like “His Only Son” and “Journey To Bethlehem,” which Christians, myself included, believe to be true stories as well).
This is not an accident. Christian audiences have long rewarded “based on a true story” movies, from “I Can Only Imagine” to “Breakthrough,” “I Still Believe,” “Miracles From Heaven,” “American Underdog,” “Heaven Is For Real,” “Unplanned” and “Lifemark.”
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Kevin Downes, longtime producer of faith-based films and co-founder of “Kingdom Storybook Company” (behind such films as “I Can Only Imagine,” “American Underdog” and “Jesus Revolution”) had no problem openly affirming in an interview with Religion Unplugged that the company’s pivot to true story movies was based on the overwhelming positive response its has received over prior work.
“We made a movie called ‘Woodlawn’ a number of years ago … and we just noticed how different it was in telling that true story, how it really connected with the audience,” he said. “And then, our next film after that was ‘I Can Only Imagine,’ which really connected with the audience. So, it was at that point we decided, ‘OK, I think this is where our lane is, this is where God wants us to be, is to be able to tell true stories that showcase the power of the gospel.’”
And yet, the uncomfortable problem is so many faith-based true story films turn out to be either totally made up or highly deceptive. The “Flamin’ Hot” movie, for example, was immediately hit with credible allegations that the protagonist had made up the fact he had invented the spicy snack.
Former NFL star Michael Oher — the subject of the movie “Blindside” — recently claimed that the kind evangelical family who had supposedly adopted him never actually did. Instead, he claims the Tuohys tricked him into a conservatorship that allowed them to exploit him and his story financially. It should be noted that the filmmakers at the time were unaware of this alleged scam.
“Jesus Revolution” erased Lonnie Frisbee’s continued homosexuality after being born again and pretended that the Jesus movement of the 1970s led to a resurgence in the Christian faith, when the numbers of Christians in America didn’t even receive a small bump statistically during that time. People who worked for the organization featured in “Sound of Freedom,” Operation Underground Railroad, have alleged that the lead hero made up or exaggerated much of what went on in the film and its anti-trafficking activities since.
To atheists and non-Christians, this wouldn’t be at all a surprise. To many of them, Christianity is based on a lie that claims to be a true story, so it makes sense that Christians would be the type of people that would spread and eat up other fake true stories. But for Christians (like myself) this poses some problems. The Bible is explicitly against lying and repeatedly warns against being deceived.
Asking the tough questions
As I ponder why so many Christian “true story” films turn out to be untrue, it’s worth pointing out that sometimes — in some of these cases, anyway — the allegations of falsehood might themselves be false. Some rightly point out that there is bias against Christians and people who want to hurt Christianity’s reputation. Fair enough. A lot of the criticism of “Sound of Freedom,” for example, was embarrassing in its desperation to paint the movie as evil for being no more deceptive in its portrayal of sex trafficking than your average Hollywood film. In this case, it was largely due to disliking the politics of some of its creators.
Perhaps the allegations against Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad are untrue. Perhaps Oher’s allegations are untrue. Perhaps the allegations against “Flamin’ Hot” are untrue. Perhaps.
That said, not all these movies are so easily dismissed such, as “Jesus Revolution,” whose erasure of Lonnie’s sexual escapades during his ministry and the movement’s short- and long-term failures are a part of an uncontroversial historical record. And Angel Studio’s own website admits to “creative liberties” with how sex trafficking is portrayed in “Sound of Freedom.”
Likewise, the likelihood that these allegations are all untrue is very small. Most of these movies are made by different studios, Hollywood and non-Hollywood, conservative and liberal, and the allegations are coming from a similarly wide variety of places. Could some allegations turn out to be false?
Sure.
All of them? Most of them?
Not likely. And that still leaves us with enough untrue-true stories to leave us with the same question.
The second thing to acknowledge, of course, is Hollywood fabricates and exaggerates its “true stories” all the time, too. I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read debunking a popular Hollywood film for its historical inaccuracies, from “Braveheart” to “Pocahontas” and many, many more. (Lest we forget, “Blindside” and “Flamin’ Hot” were both Hollywood films).
We generally know why Hollywood takes creative liberties with history. It does it to entertain. It does it to make a boring story more exciting or make the people someone the audience can relate to more. Generally, it makes movies people will like and want to buy tickets to see. Since audiences know that Hollywood mostly exists to entertain, if they hear that a film studio lied about history, they mostly shrug it off.
Faith-based films, on the other hand, don’t pitch themselves primarily as attempting to entertain. They claim they’re telling true stories that you can base your life on — just like when Christians preach about Jesus’ death and resurrection. When “Jesus Revolution” shows how Lonnie and Chuck Smith sparked a revival, they’re telling Christians who hunger for revival that this is a historical example to use as a model. When “Sound of Freedom” tells a story about heroes fighting sex trafficking, it’s telling you to donate money and aid them in their cause. When “Flamin’ Hot” tells the story of how a Latino man overcame racism to become a self-made success, it’s claiming to tell you what politics to support.
Truth vs. inspiration
Why do faith-based films often neglect the truth? We might get close to a clue by looking at one word: “inspirational.”
If you hear a word often trumpeted in the faith-based film community, it’s “inspiring,” with the synonyms such as “hopeful” and “hope-filled” thrown in. Christian filmmakers openly and constantly say their goal is to “inspire” audiences. Christian reviewers very often laud these movies as “inspirational.”
Why is inspiration such a big deal among the faith-based film audience? I suspect it’s because inspiration is a huge part of faith. It’s no secret that depression rates have been rising with each generation. Yet, even as the rest of the world gets more and more depressed, the most religious people are often the least depressed. According to a poll by Gallup, as the mental health of everyone in America plummeted during the pandemic, there was only one group whose mental health actually increased: People who attended church each week.
It’s no surprise that Christians would want the same thing they get in church from movies that represent their faith — true stories that made the world seem better than they often felt it was. The problem is, truth is not always inspiring. Sometimes it can be depressing. We want to believe, like “Jesus Revolution” tells us, that if we just allow God to work in us that he will fix the broken parts of ourselves and society.
We want to believe that God’s spirit will win in the end and that our hearts will be changed. We want to believe, like “Sound of Freedom” tells us, that the threats to our children come from “out there” in the world rather than “in here” inside our own families. We don’t want to talk about how most trafficking is perpetrated by family members and loved ones.
We only want to believe the things getting in the way of success are personal and systemic racism. If White people just learned to give opportunities to the marginalized, for example, we would solve all the disparities. That’s why we love stories like “Flamin’ Hot” or “Blindside.”
Now many of these beliefs we want to hold on to might still be true. But we have to ask ourselves, if they are so true, why is it we keep finding out that the “true stories” that we tell in order to show they are true keep turning out to be untrue?
Celebrated Christian author Dorothy Sayers wrote about this tension between truth and art in her essay “Toward A Christian Aesthetic.” She argued that Christian art was creative people expressing the truth as they experienced it by living in and observing life, without any conflicting agendas. In her mind, there were two main competing agendas that immediately poisoned art: entertainment and propaganda. Entertainment poisoned truth in art by incentivizing artists to change the truth to make the audience enjoy the art more (as we mentioned with Hollywood). Propaganda poisoned truth in art by incentivizing artists to change the truth to fit whatever beliefs or actions they wanted to inspire in the audience.
I asked Kevin Downes, an actor, producer and director, about the tension of balancing truth and inspiration. He replied this way:
“Yes, that's a good question. I mean, believe it or not, the stories that we end up choosing to tell, the most extraordinary parts of those stories are actually all true. I mean, sometimes it's the little fabric and the connective tissue that we have to bring that is not true. But people always ask us, ‘Oh, my goodness, did that really happen?’ And usually it did because that's what inspires us to want to tell that story within and of itself.”
I have no doubt Kevin is a great guy and that he means what he says. The trouble is, even on that level, the “connective tissue” is often precisely the problem. The connective tissue of Christian films is where they are often the most dishonest. It’s in the connective tissue that they portray the Christian life as one where, as soon as you accept Jesus, He carries you to live the Christian life rather than you working on it with great difficulty. It’s in the connective tissue that the movies minimize how bad sin can get or spend the majority of the movie on the happy moments and rush through the dark ones.
I wrote a review of the movie “Lifemark” in which I criticized the film for portraying a good Christian family without conflict, particularly where the young son goes through some deeply traumatic experiences and doesn’t get angry at the people — God and his family — who put him through that. What was interesting were the reactions from readers. Many, almost all moms, were quick to tell me that such a portrayal of a Christian family was not at all unrealistic and they knew that because their family is just like that and so is their son. They argued that that we needed portrayals of Christian families without conflict to give kids models to inspire them.
Meanwhile, I was getting many supporters, particularly young men, publicly and privately thanking me for saying these things — some of whom wanted to say them but couldn’t publicly because they didn’t want to offend their mothers or people in the faith-based film industry.
This is a quiet tragedy. The dishonesty of Christian films was validating and encouraging a culture in Christian families where young people — particularly young men — had to hide their feelings and experiences to protect the fantasy their families demanded of them. And because they can’t be honest about their feelings, they will probably find a religion — or no faith at all — where they can.
What do we do?
The only way this can change is if Christians start accepting and demanding more truth, even when it makes us uncomfortable.
How do we do that?
First, we have to overcome the lie that movies that tell us truths that we find depressing (or challenge our worldview) will cause us to lose hope or faith. That is, in fact, the exact opposite of the truth. According to sociologist Jonatahn Haidt, being exposed to things that scare us and we find challenging or difficult, far from making us worse off emotionally, help build our emotional muscles so that fewer things scare or depress us.
Second, as Christians, we should take comfort that we have all we need to have hope and inspiration. If we believe in Jesus, then we should be capable of bearing all truths — even uncomfortable ones — because our ultimate security rests on none of those things.
There’s a great exchange from a truly good Christian film “Believe Me” between two of the lead characters:
“Did you know that Einstein failed math in school?”
“Yeah, that’s actually not true.”
“Right. But people tell that story to inspire hope.”
“Well those people are stupid because there are actually true stories that are inspiration and also true.”“Right! But um … uh …”
This moment reminds me that we don’t need to lie in order to inspire. There are truly great and inspiring stories in the world. We can see this truth reflected in the inspiring faith-based movies that are true, such as “On A Wing and A Prayer” or last year’s “Father Stu.”
My prayer for Christians in America (and all people everywhere) is that we become so in love with the truth that we find that inspiring.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.com, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.