This year, filmmakers tackled the God problem using a few different tactics. There's big-budget obliqueness, seen in Darren Aronofsky's choice to refer to God only as "the creator" in his telling of Noah's story from the book of Genesis. Heaven Is for Real, Left Behind, and God's Not Dead take a debate-team approach: All of them feature long speeches from characters about why God does/does not exist, attempting to persuade viewers to see the world from a theistic point of view. Son of God is a straight-up Bible movie, while Exodus hovers somewhere between action flick and theological challenge.

And each of these tactics is fraught. The enchanted world of Noah feels more like Middle Earth than early human civilization. The central question of Heaven Is for Real, Left Behind, and God's Not Dead is whether or not God exists, and even to believers, they may end up feeling more like propaganda than pieces of creative work. For those who don't—or do!—believe in the divinity of Christ, the literalism of Son of God might be a turn-off. And while Exodus is morally provocative, the bizarre sight of Christian Bale, who plays Moses, talking to a child version of God is distracting.

It's possible that these pitfalls indicate a lack of creativity on the part of the directors and producers. But it's more likely that filmmakers are in an impossible position when they make religious art. Believing in God is a sorting mechanism, separating those who do and those who don't into camps with totally irreconcilable world views. In America, the cultural particularities of religion take that sorting mechanism one step further: Some may believe in God, but may not want to display that belief in their public lives. For people like this, and for non-believers, art that is centrally concerned with the existence of God may be uncomfortable or not compelling; and for those who define themselves by their faith, any circumspect approach may feel like a personal attack.

Perhaps this would be the tension would itself be an interesting topic for a religion movie yet to be made. But for now, God deserves some credit for doing gangbusters in Hollywood.

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