Jeffrey Overstreet: Being a Non-Carolyn Post About a Carolyn Colleague and One That Was Originally Written for Carolyn's Boards, But Ran Too Long

I was so fortunate as to attend a Seattle Chesterton Society meeting recently at Seattle Pacific University, at which the featured speaker was Carolyn's Christianity Today Movies colleague, Jeffrey Overstreet.

His new book is Through a Screen Darkly, and, though I haven't read it all yet (being knee-deep in my beloved and highly prolific Gilbert Keith Chesterton), I am appreciating his ability to take seriously and explore this idea of Madeleine L'Engle's: "Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.'" (Walking on Water, p. 19)

Here are some interesting thoughts (at least to me): Why have almost all of the movies made to serve Christians as a niche audience failed at the box office? Why, with Hollywood suddenly desperate to gain the entertainment dollar of believers and throwing money into such production companies as Fox Faith, has very little come out so far that will not burn up as stubble in the fire? And why, in 2004, was Mel Gibson's The Passion not on the CT Movie reviewers' top ten lists?*

I think one answer to these questions can be found in the reality of living within a holy mystery. When I begin to accept the subtlety of God's hand -- His poetic reticence that booms out in the stillness of creation -- I can no longer be satisfied by the sort of artifice that tries to force a religiously relevant experience under the cover of entertainment. Jeffrey Overstreet's main point seems to be that, for the faithful, spiritual themes in any great movie can not help but be recognized, because all art is, at its fountainhead, an expression from that same creative force that spoke the universe into existence.

Mr. Overstreet spoke passionately and entertainingly about this recently discovered "Christian niche market" and his belief that there is so much more to be gained spiritually from great art produced by non-believers than from bad art produced by Christians. Christians are not idiots -- flocking en masse to a pandering parade of sentimentality and banality. We have held claim to brotherhood with the greatest artists the world has ever seen; and these created from the wellspring of revealed truth within and not with an eye on converting the lost and getting their theological ducks in a row.

This was a fascinating presentation, and I am so grateful I was able to attend. It is always surprising to me to find out how many wonderful writers whom I admire live up here in the Seattle area or greater Pacific Northwest region. What a blessing to get to meet so many of them in person!


*This is a great story that Mr. Overstreet related in his presentation. I do not know if he included it in his book, but I hope it's there. All I can say is that Mark Moring is a brave man with loads of integrity. Of course, we rather knew that -- he is a Carolyn fan, after all.