(LifeSiteNews) — Rainn Wilson, an actor best known for playing Dwight Schrute in the popular American television series The Office, has highlighted the “anti-Christian bias in Hollywood,” pointing to the predictable villain status of Bible-reading TV characters.
“I do think there is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. As soon as the David character in ‘The Last of Us’ started reading from the Bible, I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain,” Wilson tweeted Saturday.
I do think there is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. As soon as the David character in “The Last of Us”
started reading from the Bible I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain. Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?— RainnWilson (@rainnwilson) March 11, 2023
“Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?” he continued.
Actor Stelio Savante voiced his agreement with Wilson on Twitter, asserting that “Christophobia & Christophobic sentiment are alive & well in our industry.”
I 🤍 this tweet my fellow ‘My Super Ex Girlfriend’ cast-mate & agree with you wholeheartedly. But unfortunately, Christophobia & Christophobic sentiment are alive & well in our industry. I do recommend @thechosentv on @Netflix bit of course I’m biased, I’m in the show. Much love.
— Stelio Savante (@StelioSavante) March 12, 2023
Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, concurred with Wilson as well.
The major villain in the post-apocalyptic show ‘The Last of Us,’ David, is the pastor of a cannibalistic cult that appears to incorporate Christianity. David uses Bible verses to support his cannibalism, and even to justify his attempted rape of the young protagnist, Ellie, according to Fox News.
A prominent YouTube film commentator observed that David is a “charlatan, masquerading as the leader of a cause that he doesn’t believe in because it makes him untouchable among his people.” He suggested, however, that this is not explicitly revealed but is his interpretation of David’s words and actions.
The fact remains that the elements of Christianity are far more often associated with malevolent or even pitiable characters than with protagonists. Examples in Hollywood and mainstream TV of Christian protagonists are few and far between, while villainous characters who appropriate Christianity and its imagery abound.
Crux has cited several such examples in Hollywood films: The villain in The Legend of Tarzan (2016) always carries a rosary in his hand, not for prayer but to use as a weapon; the lethal “Butcher” in Wanted (2008) wears a shirt emblazoned with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe; an albino monk is a red-eyed assassin in The Da Vinci Code (2006); a bishop is “complicit in Mengele-like human experiments” and molests underage girls in V for Vendetta (2006); a Scripture-quoting villain in The Legend of Zorro considers killing Hispanics to be “the Lord’s work”; and the examples go on.
While Hollywood’s negative depictions of Christianity and religious faith have become more prolific in recent decades, the film industry’s open disdain for Christianity stretches back to at least the 1970s, and it has eschewed Christian morals from its beginnings, with a kind of reprieve during the 1950s.
Wilson himself practices the Baháʼí Faith, which teaches the essential unity of all religions and of humanity.