From disapproval to delight

Novels and movies were once generally suspect in evangelical eyes, but now the emphasis is on discernment. Thirty evangelicals reveal their favorites | Marvin Olasky

In his pithy way of offering insult without falling into crudeness, Benjamin Disraeli—the Jewish-Christian 19th-century British prime minister who moonlighted as a novelist—once characterized a woman as having "guanoed her mind by reading French novels." That was the general disapproving reaction of the evangelical elite back then to thrillers or romances. (Disraeli said he personally avoided the abyss by authoring 18 fictional works: "When I want to read a novel I write one.")

Early in the 20th century the reaction of many evangelicals to the movies was similar: Don't go to productions viewed as tawdry or (at best) consumers of time that could better be spent at church picnics. But the appeal of lights/camera/action overwhelmed strict separationism, and films were increasingly seen as delights of life like vines and fig trees (some of which produced rotten figs and deserved to wither).