The truth is, the prevalent attitude in most criticism of The Passion that I read—and I read quite a lot of it—seemed to follow this line of thinking: “I hated the philosophy behind it, therefore it had no artistic value.” It’s strange that this attitude is growing among mainstream media critics at the same time that so many Christian critics are moving in the other direction: learning to value films for their aesthetic value, not just their moral content.

The general consensus went something like this: Okay, Michael Moore fabricated much of his “documentary,” and yes, the evidence shows that Alfred Kinsey may have had a little problem with incessant cheating on his wife and with self-mutilation (and then there was that other little problem with unethical research, including sexual experiments on infants). But aren’t those just the kind of men we need to help shake things up in this hopelessly prudish country, especially after an election in which voters seemed determined to take us all back to the Stone Age?

What movie critic could take seriously a maker of dishonest “documentaries”—a repudiation of everything a documentary is supposed to be—unless the critic has decided that pushing a certain point of view is so important that no artistic principles should stand in the way?

At that point, the critic is no longer judging art. He’s applauding propaganda.

Perhaps it is the Christians who will revolutionize film criticism—maybe even the film industry as a whole. A colleague who has attended several press screenings of recent films tells me that the Christian critics are gaining a reputation as the ones asking all the serious questions about the movies...