Abstract

Many believers are fearful of feature films for a variety of scriptural, moral and psychospiritual reasons. Despite the cinema being the artform of the 20th century and the basis of a moving image culture that will dominate well into the 21st century. Anton Karl Kozlovic had previously explored the religious film fears associated with Satanic infusion, graven images and iconographic perversion, and then followed this by an exploration of the fear of cinematic sinfulness . However, even more varieties of religious film fears abound. Using textually-based, humanist film criticism as the analytical lens, the critical film and religion literature was reviewed and the additional fears of being sacrilegious, criticising or devaluing the faith was copiously explicated and documented herein. It was concluded that popular films are a worthwhile and exciting pedagogic tool, but they require constant monitoring, vigilance and control by faith communities for integrity, protection and quality assurance reasons. Biblically-based counter-proposals and other anti-film defences were proffered to address this tangible concern. Further research into the exciting interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film was recommended