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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]8) They seem inherently conservative, or resistant to change[/h2]

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Religion largely relies on tradition, on old wisdom passed down from generation to generation, and so changing any dogmatic detail let alone major tenets is pretty much a no-no. They have their own word for divergent views: heresy! Step out of line with the majority of thinking in your sect and you’re a heretic and anathema and must go now. And this is understandable because they’re so deeply defined by their beliefs that changing them would change their entire identity and that’s wayyy to much work.

Movies are a bit more divided on these sorts of matters, granted. There will be a backlash towards the advancements made in 3D and digital filming technologies, but there are still prominent people pushing these efforts forward. I guess it’s more just the sense of nostalgia that pervades Hollywood, the idea that anything similar to the so-called Golden Age of cinema is awesome and things that try new stuff are praised in theory, but most often in reality shot down in flames.

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