If their toys are
dangerous,
make your own
Evangelicals create parallel culture
By
Gerry Bowler
Special to ChristianWeek
For the first half of this century North American Christians set the agenda for what was considered legitimate popular entertainment. Christian values determined what could be depicted on the stage or the movie screen. Pressure from the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant organizations forced Hollywood to censor itself and abide by the Production Code, a set of rules written by a Jesuit priest and a Catholic layman.
During this time Christians pressured governments to legislate control of the liquor trade–outright prohibition was tried and proved unworkable but most provinces still maintained a web of regulation to make the purchase of alcohol as inconvenient as possible. Christian holidays became the holidays of all Canadians and laws enforced the keeping of the Christian Sabbath as a day of universal rest with most commercial and leisure activities restricted. Christians ensured that the evils of gambling were suppressed or at least limited to the bingo halls or horseracing tracks, though a certain underground trade in Irish Sweepstakes tickets was usually tolerated.
Beginning of the end
But the 1950s saw the beginning of the end for the dominance of Christian values in determining the content of public entertainment. The decline of the studio system in Hollywood and the rise of independent filmmakers made the Production Code increasingly difficult to enforce. Words like "pregnant" and "virgin" were now heard on the screen and the depiction of sex, drugs and violence became more lurid.
Television remained a somewhat more conservative medium for a time, but by the 1970s censorship was a dead issue. Liberal-minded legislators in governments across North America gave up enforcing Christian values: there was vast revenue to be reaped in loosening the bans on gambling and alcohol; courts threw out Sabbath laws and shrank from enforcing anti-obscenity laws. Everywhere American pop culture was triumphant: rock music had won over generations of teenagers; those who ran the mass media now determined the values of public entertainment.
The idea that the home could be a bastion of resistance to this culture faded except amongst conservative Protestants. But even there the dislike of being seen as peculiar–or an inability to cope with their new status as a minority–led many to let principle slide, buy a television and take a more relaxed attitude to other entertainments. Even Christian colleges and schools, set up to inculcate the good old values, began to allow dances or mixed bathing or other once-taboo functions.
