SOUND OF FREEDOM IS A CLARION CALL FOR MORE CHRISTIANS IN THE ARTS

Posted on July 19, 2023 by abyssum
Sound of Freedom Is a Clarion Call for More Christians in the ArtsBy Titus Techera
 
This year’s Fourth of July moviegoing experience was a surprise. The top draw at the box office was not a feel-good blockbuster but a thriller about child sex trafficking. It’s called Sound of Freedom and stars Jim Caviezel, of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ fame and the Jonathan Nolan AI-and-vigilantes CBS series Person of Interest. Sound of Freedom cost only $14 million or so and has already grossed more than $40 million in its first week, attracting audiences to the story of Tim Ballard and his Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit anti-trafficking organization.

The major attraction of Sound of Freedom is that it’s said to be based on a true story about a sting operation in Cartagena, Colombia, in 2014, saving children and arresting those who enslave and molest them. The story offers the traditional relief of a happy ending but also introduces a subject the movies cautiously avoid, one of the last images of evil that people find disturbing—the abuse of children. Strangely, this has resulted in elite liberal or progressive outlets like Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and even the Washington Post trying to smear the movie as “adjacent” to conspiracy theories, which makes you wonder whether there are any moral questions on which we can stand together these days.

The audience of Sound of Freedom seems to be primarily Christians and conservatives, who are especially concerned with the rare portrayal of good and evil replacing the entertainments that usually distract people from serious concerns. They are also likeliest to be proud of or inspired by the movie’s success. It’s in wide release, on almost 3,000 screens across the nation, and on July 4 it did better business than the new Indiana Jones extravaganza, which is a sad feminist flop, an epilogue to a once-beloved and successful franchise of manly derring-do.

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About abyssum

I am a retired Roman Catholic Bishop, Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi, Texas
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