Video: A tale of three Janes

Videos that censor Christianity from classic literature | Pamela Johnson

The wholehearted reception of several film versions of Jane Austen's novels has inspired Hollywood to pursue other stories of the same genre. Since it takes approximately two years to go from script to screen, it's not surprising that the next wave of 19th-century British romantics is flooding big and small screens alike.

This is a welcome development when these stories are imbued with the Christian worldview that permeates the original novels-but not when filmmakers censor the Christianity and contort the plots to reflect their own humanist worldview.

Readers who appreciate Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, a heart-rending story of a young woman's struggle to grow up and find her life's purpose and place in the rigid class system of Victorian England, were sorely disappointed in last year's cinematic release, directed by Franco Zefferelli and starring a bloodless John Hurt and existential Charlotte Gainsbourg. The script put forward the politically correct view of God, women, and well-to-do gentlemen, which is to say the writer dumped the book and filled the time with clichés, desperate characterizations, and flat contrivances never raised in the novel.