Theologian and seminary president Albert Mohler is urging Christian families to stand firm on Scripture and against the tide of the “moral revolution” in the face of Hallmark movies and other romantic films that celebrate LGBT relationships.
Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said Tuesday that Hallmark’s movie The Christmas House and Hulu’s Happiest Season present challenges for Christian families who enjoy the genre. Each film is a romantic comedy that includes a same-sex storyline.
Hallmark movies and other “rom-coms” like them, Mohler said, are “being used as an engine for” the same-sex “moral revolution.”
The Hallmark Channel, in particular, is popular among Christian and conservative families.
The Christmas House is the second Hallmark movie – but its first Christmas film – to include a same-sex couple (two men) as a major storyline. In August, Hallmark’s movie Wedding Every Weekend featured a wedding between two women.
Mohler quoted Happiest Season actress Kristen Stewart, who said she was excited to see how her film could impact 10-year-olds.
Mohler noted the Hallmark Channel LGBT storylines comes one year after the network pulled a commercial featuring a same-sex couple. After a social media protest, Hallmark backtracked.
“It’s going to take an enormous amount of biblical conviction for Christians not to be pressed into conformity with this culture,” Mohler said on his The Briefing podcast. “It’s going to take an enormous amount of biblical conviction for Christians, for Christian parents, and for churches to stand against this tide and to resist this pressure. It’s going to take standing against virtually everything that Hollywood is going to be throwing at us and throwing at our ten-year-olds.”
The very nature of rom-coms – there’s always a happy ending – means the viewer can easily “get drawn in,” Mohler said.
“[It] actually does assure people that everything’s going to turn out fine. It looks like disaster is here, it looks like that awkwardness is there, it looks like moral stigma is over there, but don’t worry: For the rom-com to work as a rom-com, everything has to turn out in the end. … If it didn’t end that way, it wouldn’t be on Hallmark.”
Related:
Hallmark Channel Releases Its First LGBTQ Holiday Movie, The Christmas House
Photo courtesy: Hallmark Channel
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
