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9 Ways In Which Movies Are Like Church

I was raised in a Christian family, going to church every week, but somewhere in my high school years my enthusiasm for church diminished greatly and my passion for movies awoke. In thinking about this transition, I’m not sure it was entirely coincidental. There’s an inherently spiritual component to movies, and all art but movies in particular for me, in that it stirs up a certain emotional response and a feeling of connectedness to another person and other people. It’s not unusual to experience an epiphany of some sort at a movie, spawning out of the ideas and images laid out before our eyes.

[h2]6) They each have their version of saints[/h2]

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Church has a pantheon of saints, whether they’re treated in a literal sense like the Catholics do, or in a less direct but still venerative way like other denominations. All seem to agree that certain figures in the Bible and beyond are fairly important, and have a special connection to the divine. There’s something to the status of a prophet that gives them a certain authority and demand our attention in a way few people can. They’re special.

The world of movies has stars. These are sometimes shockingly powerful people, treated like they are above the laws of mere mortals and are treated as the authority on subjects ranging from political affiliations to beauty products. There’s a reason the term “star worship” is so widely used in common parlance. There’s a spiritual aura surrounding celebrities (just watch an Oscar broadcast if you’re skeptical; it’s creepy), as though they’re demigods. Then it’s somehow shocking to see them in human moments. The satisfaction of seeing a god fall from heaven, I suppose.

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