By Don Feder, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
April 1997 – “Hollywood doesn’t like religion, does it?” asked a caller from Colorado. I replied that if she meant traditional faith, she couldn’t be more right – as just about every film touching on the subject in the past 20 years illustrates.
Which is not to say that Hollywood is anti-religion. From spirits and reincarnation to telekinesis and the occult, the movie industry is in the grip of a New Age mania.
Consider the re-released Star Wars trilogy. I’m probably taking my life in my hands criticizing the pop icon. In truth, after 20 years, the visual effects are still stunning. However, if Shirley MacLaine played Obi-Wan Kenobi, its theology couldn’t be more balmy.
There’s the Force, “an energy field created by all living things” that humans can connect with to accomplish incredible feats of valor – karma-coated popcorn.
In an interview in the February 10 Time magazine, Star Wars creator George Lucas disclosed, “I believe in God, and I guess that’s reflected in the movie.”
A Judeo-Christian God, Time asked?
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Lucas. “My spiritual perspective, I think, is broader than the Judeo-Christian.” Infinitely.
The same issue reports on celebrities coming to the aid of the Church of Scientology in its dispute with the German government. The defense is led by America’s foremost followers of the feel-good cult created by a science-fiction writer – John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
While Hollywood of a generation ago produced classics of faith like The Song of Bernadette and The Ten Commandments, today it rolls out one piece of New Age schlock after another – Phenomenon, Powder, Dragonheart, Little Buddha, The Craft, and The Frighteners, in the past year alone.
When it tries to interject a figure from Western religion, the result is frequently appalling. The Christmas flick Michael featured Travolta as a grunge version of the Archangel – a beer-guzzling, foul-mouthed, skirt-chasing celestial being.
Of late, Hollywood has shown a particular interest in the paranormal messiah-cum-martyr.
In last year’s Phenomenon, described as New Age Capra, Travolta played George Malley, a gentle, small-town guy who sees a blinding light in the sky and is transformed into a genius with an IQ off the charts.
Malley reads five books a day, learns Portuguese in 20 minutes, can move small objects with his mind and devises one ingenious invention after another.
In the end, it transpires that his brilliance is due to a brain tumor (and not an alien encounter) that ultimately kills him – but not before he endures fear and loathing at the hands of yokels and FBI oppression, and imparts his bargain-basement Buddhism. He’s not dying, Malley tells his girlfriend’s kids, his life energy is assuming a different form.
Powder has much the same muddled theme. The title character’s mother was struck by lightening just before his birth, producing an eerie albino with super-powers, who is shunned by locals and persecuted by peers.
The colorless character performs miracles through mind power (intellectually, he’s where we’ll be millennia hence, science teacher Jeff Goldblum explains) and finally merges with the cosmos.
Hollywood loves religion, as long as it’s non-Western. Richard Gere (who meditates with Tibetan masters) and Oliver Stone are Buddhists. Travolta and Cruise, disciples of L. Ron Humbug. Shirley MacLaine clones, like Oscar-winner Jon Voight, are practically tripping over each other.
Try naming a prominent Christian or a religious Jew in the industry. I can think of only two: Mel Gibson (an unapologetic Catholic) and Steven Spielberg, an orthodox Jew who gave us Schindler’s List.
That Hollywood is fertile soil for these shamanistic seeds is understandable, given the flakes who inhabit Lotus-land. Normative religion is too staid for them. They need color and excitement, magic and marvels, smoke and mirrors.
The New Age is an elixir that goes down easy in between sessions with the personal trainer and dips in the hot tub. Here are spirits without spirituality, religion without commandments, a faith that deifies the self and raises ’60s cliches to a theology.
In short, it’s an ideal belief-system for romantic sybarites with a surfeit of wealth and a paucity of common sense.
Just as the ’30s were Hollywood’s Golden Age, the ’90s are its New Age. The next time you see the industry attacking the Bible, castigating clergy or stigmatizing believers, consider the source. 
