The movie Avatar's demonic content?

Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill megachurch in Seattle, spent part of his Feb. 14 sermon [.pdf] arguing there os throughout "Avatar." The argument was part of his sermon entitled "Luke: Jesus And Demons."

Critic Menachem Wecker not only takes Driscoll to task and concludes by casting aspersions on his motives:

I know the headlines that come along with speaking of the devil must be tempting to Driscoll (as they are for Robertson), but maybe the devil resides not in Haitian voodoo and in Avatar, but in the knee-jerk invocations of the devil which seem to keep popping up. The Na'vi offer blessings over the animals they kill for food. Could there be a better reference to Christians praying for their enemies (the animals often try to kill the Na'vi) and Jews, Christians and Muslims thanking God for their food?

What do you think?

The applicable text from the sermon is:

The world tempts you to sin, to use people, to disobey God, to live for your own glory instead of his own, to be a consumer instead of generous, that's the world system.

And if you don't believe me, go see Avatar, the most demonic, satanic film I've ever seen. That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me. I logged on to christianitytoday.com and the review was reflective of Christianity today, very disappointing. See, in that movie, it is a completely false ideology, it's a sermon preached. It's the most popular movie ever made, and it tells you that the creation mandate, the cultural mandate is bad, that we shouldn't, we shouldn't develop culture, that's a bad thing.

Primitive is good and advanced is bad and that we're not sinners, we're just disconnected from the divine life force, just classic, classic, classic paganism, that human beings are to connect, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds and that there's this spiritual connection that we're all a part of, that we're all a part of the divine.

It presents a false mediator with a witch. It presents false worship of created things rather than Creator God in absolute antithesis to Romans 1:25, which gives that as the essence of paganism. It has a false incarnation where a man comes in to be among a people group and to assume their identity. It's a false Jesus. We have a false resurrection. We have a false savior. We have a false heaven. The whole thing is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals. Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.

[H/T: Monica Guzman]

An 'ill-informed' blogger's retort

Who are the unnamed, unnumbered ill-informed bloggers referred to amid the Mark Driscoll kerfuffle?

Peter Lumpkins identifies himself as "presumably" one. Then takes down by name and hyperlink several Southern Baptist bloggers who "have stepped into the batter's box" for Driscoll. And who have done so while arguing that they aren't quite on Driscoll's team, because they are "by no means endorsing all he does or believes." Thus it follows:

. . . had those of us who chose to disagree had left the content of the diagreeables innocous, as do the defenders, we'd all just be one, big happy family!

Baptist Press kicks the hornets' nest

The Southern Baptist Convention's (SBC) Baptist Press (BP) news service stepped on the heels of an enthusiastically received Feb. 6 appearance in North Carolina by Mark Driscoll. They published a critical piece on Feb. 11, while the bloom of that appearance was still on the rose.

The story was "assembled" from a Jan. 9 New York Times Magazine article about the dynamic Seattle pastor, other previously published reactions and some original quotes.

Mark Driscoll

Presented to an audience rich in recently inspired Driscoll enthusiasts under the headline Driscoll's vulgarity draws media attention, it was the equivalent of kicking a hornets' nest.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS), which hosted the Feb. 6/7 conference where Discoll spoke, blogged disappointment with the "inaccurate content and harsh tone" of the article.

Ed Stetzer of the SBC's Lifeway Research stepped forward to obliquely defend "my friend Mark Driscoll" from unfortunate coverage in general (BP was mentioned only in comments by others).

Jonathan Merritt was less gentle in his North Carolina Biblical Recorder op-ed piece Unfair, Unbalanced, and Unacceptable. He blistered BP, and also recalled how release of the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative (SBECI) in March, 2008, drew immediate reaction from BP:

“Less than 24 hours after the story appeared in national media, Baptist Press had a story distancing the denomination from the document,” the Christian Index reported. They went on to note that Baptist Press “generated an additional 13 stories over the next 8 publishing days. The majority of those took issue with the topic. . . .” During this time, I left multiple voice mails and sent several emails to BP Editor Will Hall to clarify journalistic inaccuracies an offer the other side of the story, but I received no reply.

"No reply," yet one of the most redeeming values of good American news journalism is communication with the subjects of stories and correction of errors and omissions.

Reply is a newsroom requirement, like the correction of errors.

"No reply" is not an option.

Everyone trained in the field knows that. And experience teaches that prompt reply, and appropriate corrective response when one errs, are both required to protect one's reputation for quality and win community loyalty.

BP appears to have neither replied nor made satisfactory corrections in the earlier case cited by Meritt, and made some changes but offered little response to the Driscoll matter.

Corrective passion flowed into blogs and environments like and including twitter, as it would have to some degree no matter how BP responded. Snowballing blog commentary is summarized by Timmy Brister's' annotated list of selected links.

Amid the fire and brimstone, we did find one comment in defense of BP.

From this old newspaperman's point of view, the story doesn't look malicious, as some seem to us to have implied by calling it a "hit job." Just incomplete and outdated by facts immediately available to both an important part of the audience and perhaps, with some effort, available to the author.

As a result, a vocal segment of the audience felt poorly served. In our opinion, it was, as usually happens with dated, incomplete stories.

In an environment rich in other sources of information, the audience's protest will be corrective. In part because, as they demonstrated, they're no longer simply the audience. They also publish.