Rated R for Religious Hypocrisy

Growing up in a church obsessed with Hollywood but blind to hunger

Growing up evangelical I watched my church lose its mind over movie ratings while entire neighborhoods went hungry across town.

I was consistently warned about the spiritual danger of Rated R films. The phrase I grew up hearing was “trash in, trash out.” I would hear sermons on Hollywood’s agenda, and about the slippery slope of “worldly entertainment.” Meanwhile, our church parking lot was full of luxury SUVs, and I can’t remember a single sermon about economic injustice. Not one. We had a culture war to fight, and apparently Jesus was really concerned about whether or not I watched Titanic. Good grief.

I didn’t have language for it then, but I felt the dissonance. We could mobilize a prayer chain over a Supreme Court decision in minutes, but if Mrs. Johnson down the street lost her house to medical debt, we sent a casserole.

The Selective Moral Outrage Problem

Looking back, far too many churches have become experts at thundering. They know how to raise their voices about threats to “traditional values.” They can pack a school board meeting to protest a library book. They can organize a boycott before breakfast. The infrastructure is impressive, really. The email lists, the talking points, the righteous indignation on demand.

But ask those same churches to address the reality that wages haven’t kept pace with cost of living for forty years, and suddenly it gets complicated.

Bring up the fact that our criminal justice system disproportionately destroys Black families, and we start hearing a lot about “both sides” and “personal responsibility.”

Mention that our healthcare system lets people die because they can’t afford insulin, and someone will inevitably pivot to abortion.

The pattern is so consistent it’s almost predictable. Cultural sins…the ones that make us feel morally superior, the ones that require nothing from us except judgment…get the spotlight. Systemic sins…the ones embedded in how we’ve structured society, the ones we might actually benefit from…get a theological shrug.