The “wokeness” of Hollywood and the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Anora won for Best Picture at last night’s Academy Awards and five Oscars in all. According to NPR, the film is “the story of a sex worker who marries a former client and gets mixed up with some Russian oligarchs.” I had to quote them since I will not see the film due to its graphic nudity. It also normalizes prostitution, euphemistically called “the sex worker community.”

Great cinema is apparently in the eye of the beholder. And many of the beholders are not many of us.

The Atlantic headlined, “The Oscars Have Left the Mainstream Moviegoer Behind.” NPR reports that the more popular the movie, the less likely it is to win awards.

Then there are the politics. Host Conan O’Brien made a joke about President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying of Anora, “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” The audience cheered loudly.

Daryl Hannah voiced a traditional Ukrainian battle cry when she took the stage to present the award for Best Film Editing. Some actors wore Gaza “red-hand” protest pins that many Jews consider an explicit reference to a 2000 incident in which a group of Palestinians murdered Israeli reservists and then held up their bloody, red hands to the delight of a cheering crowd.

It wasn’t always this way.

Has “woke” content “killed the Oscars”?

When Marlon Brando protested Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans in 1973 by sending an activist named Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather, his gesture was met with mockery and boos. (Ironically, she was later found to have fabricated her claims of Native heritage.) In 2003, when Michael Moore used his Oscars acceptance speech to launch a tirade against George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, he was also booed.

However, as Kat Rosenfield writes in the Free Press, “The dawn of social media and the rise of Trump, as well as a media class that dutifully exerted itself to ostracize those who failed to support the proper progressive causes, made it increasingly untenable for actors even to remain neutral on political matters.”

As a result, the 2024 election cycle saw a political ad voiced by Julia Roberts, a Democratic National Committee headlined by Oprah Winfrey, and the cast of The Avengers assembling to campaign for Kamala Harris. (The former vice president was planning to appear at last night’s Oscars, but security concerns led her to stay home.)

One critic alleges that Hollywood’s pivot to “woke” content and advocacy has “killed the Oscars.” But many in Hollywood don’t seem to have gotten the message.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

By contrast, over the weekend, my wife and I watched Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. The film was released last November, but we missed seeing it in theaters and were deeply grateful to have caught it on video.

The movie tells the incredible story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German theologian and pastor who opposed the rise of Naziism and its takeover of much of the German church. He could have stayed in the US and protested Hitler from a considerable platform of cultural and theological influence, but he felt that he had to return to his native country to join the effort to end the Third Reich for the sake of the Jews and his own people.

As a result, he was hanged just two weeks before American soldiers liberated his concentration camp.

Given the political leanings of Hollywood these days, it is unsurprising that Bonhoeffer was not nominated for an Academy Award. But comparing it with the films celebrated last night raises a point worth reflecting on long after the Oscars are forgotten.

Why actors advocate for social causes

You and I were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and therefore have his innate desire to protect and improve his creation (Genesis 2:15). However, if we do not submit this desire to his Spirit, word, and will, we will use it to express our own “will to power” as our own gods (Genesis 3:5).

This is the lens through which I see the desire of many in Hollywood to promote social causes. They want to believe that they are making a difference that matters. They know, as actor Gabriel Basso said recently in criticizing politics in his industry, that they’re “there to entertain” and that their work makes no appreciable difference in the world on its own merits.

Movies don’t plant crops, build bridges, or end wars. And so they want to use their platform to influence people to do what they cannot do themselves.

I feel the same impulse. While I pray that the Spirit uses my words to change hearts and lives, I know that they do not plant crops, build bridges, or end wars. So I work with the aspiration that they will influence people to do what I cannot do myself.

The difference is the outcome we wish to see in the world.

What to do “if you board the wrong train”

I believe it grieves God deeply when movies lambast biblical faith and glorify sexual immorality, antisemitism, and self-reliant egotism. But it glorifies him when movies promote people and stories that honor him and advance his kingdom.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer called us to the latter: “Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.” He therefore taught us:

• We must stay yielded to his will: “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
• We must make any changes that are necessary to align with God’s purposes: “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”
• We must constantly put our beliefs into action: “Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”
• When we follow Christ fully, others cannot be the same: “Your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God.”
• Such a commitment comes at a cost: “Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.”
• However, such a life is worth all it costs and more: “Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”

As a result, Bonhoeffer famously claimed:

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

Has Christ called you today?

Quote for the day:

“The time is short. Eternity is long. It is the time of decision.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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The power to be “something you have never been”

President Trump has confirmed that the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles will be invited to the White House, stating, “They deserve to be down here.” The team has already said they will come if invited.

However, there is history between the Eagles and Mr. Trump, and not just because he picked the Chiefs to win the latest Super Bowl and he supports Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany. After the Eagles won Super Bowl LII in 2018, the team and Mr. Trump publicly clashed and no visit took place. But their past is apparently not restricting their future.

In other political news, Democratic political veteran James Carville writes in the New York Times that his party should “roll over and play dead” in the face of Republican domination of the political landscape. He advises his fellow Democrats to “allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” Then they should “make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular.”

One more story contributes to the theme I’d like to discuss with you: Country singer Kelsea Ballerini recently stopped a concert to scold fans for cursing out her ex-husband, Morgan Evans. When she performed her song “Penthouse,” widely believed to be about her 2022 divorce from the Australian country singer, fans apparently shouted an obscenity about Morgan.

“Guys, we have to stop saying that,” she told them. “Seriously, we’re three years past it, everything’s fine now.” As the crowd cheered, she continued: “Alright, for everyone that’s moving forward with their life, will you sing this with me?”

The moral dilemma that frames our culture

Past behavior is often identified as the best predictor of future behavior, but this does not have to be true. A strategic consultant to our ministry once told our team, “When you get new information, you can make a new decision.”

The Philadelphia Eagles and President Trump are apparently making a new decision. Kelsea Ballerini is obviously charting a new path regarding her former marriage. James Carville, by contrast, continues to advocate the acerbic politics for which he is famous.

At its heart, we are dealing with a moral dilemma as old as Western culture.

1. Bradley Thompsonis an author and political science professor at Clemson University. In his latest “Redneck Intellectual” column, he explainsthat Plato and Aristotle posited very different approaches to selfishness, which he calls the “moral issue of our time.”

In the Republic, Plato advocated for acting selflessly for the sake of others as our highest moral obligation. In the Nicomachean Ethics, by contrast, Aristotle taught that our first and most important relationship is with ourselves as we seek to act in the noblest ways and to possess what is objectively good.

To summarize his discussion: Should we do what is best for others or for ourselves?

Christianity answers, “Yes.”

“Martyrs” or “terrorists”?

The problem with both Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories is that they have no objective referent outside the individual who seeks to follow them. How are we to know when, for example, forgiving others is in their best interest? This seems to be the kind of sacrificial service Plato would commend. But if our forgiveness only reinforces and facilitates destructive behavior, it is in neither the best interest of those we forgive nor ourselves.

I’m sure James Carville would say that for Democrats to “forgive” Republicans and try to work with them would harm the nation and, ultimately, the Republicans who live in it. By contrast, the Eagles and President Trump seem to feel that forging a new relationship is in everyone’s best interest. Kelsea Ballerini certainly thinks so with regard to her former husband.

On the other hand, Aristotle wants us to do what is most noble and to possess what is objectively good. But how are we to define each? What the Islamic State calls “martyrs,” the rest of us call “terrorists.” Wealth can be either a means of doing good in the world or an idol that possesses those who possess it.

And, even when we know when it is best to forgive and sacrifice for others, or when we can identify what is most noble and best, how do we find the character and strength to follow through on these choices?

We have had the moral theories of Plato and Aristotle for two millennia, but we’re no better as a race than we were. What are we missing?

“Harking back to what you once were”

The central “brand promise” of Christianity is that we can be “born again” (John 3:3) as a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) by the grace of Christ through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9). The living Lord Jesus can make us the children of God (John 1:12) and manifest in our lives a character that changes us and changes our world (Galatians 5:22–23). When we submit to God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), he guides us into “all truth” (John 16:13) and empowers us to do what we then know to be best (Acts 1:8).

Of course, the skeptic might protest that, as with Plato and Aristotle, we have had these biblical teachings for two millennia as well, but the human race does not seem to have improved. How are we to respond?

This decision to submit our lives to God as a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1) runs against the “will to power” that dominates our fallen nature (Genesis 3:5). This is a daily “dying to self” that positions and empowers us to experience and emulate the “abundant life” only Christ can give.

1. K. Chesterton noted, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

But when it has been “tried,” it has changed hearts and lives. It has turned cowardly followers into courageous apostles (Acts 4) and prejudiced skeptics into grace-centered evangelists (Acts 9–11). It “turned the world upside down” (John 17:6) and birthed the mightiest spiritual movement the world has ever seen.

In light of such grace, Oswald Chambers’ observation is both relevant and empowering:

“Beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you have never been.”

Will you follow his advice today

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