Huckabee Wins in Iowa Caucus
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/297693.aspx
ABC News is reporting early caucus polling results in Iowa show Mike Huckabee as the Republican winner of the Iowa Caucus.
Supporters are cheering for their candidate and hope to hear from him soon.
More than half the Republican caucus goers interviewed Thursday night said they were either born-again or evangelical Christians and they liked Huckabee more than any of his rivals.
Romney Response
Huckabee's biggest rival in Iowa was former Massachussetts governor Mitt Romney. He told reporters he wasn't didn't see it as a total loss.
"I've been pleased that I've been able to make up ground and I intend to keep making up ground, not just here but across the country." Romney was referencing the fact that he was able to close the gap some with Huckabee from prior polls in the state.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has ridden leading rival Hillary Clinton's coattails, has been declared the winner of the Iowa Caucuses by The Associated Press. He has reportedly edged out Clinton and Edwards, who were neck and neck with the Illinois Senator earlier in the night. (http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/297694.aspx)
Religious vote vaults Huckabee to win
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_el_pr/caucus_poll;_ylt=Aqt2ta8oagwXFNSFJ4DSTWWs0NUE
Evangelical Christians and those who want a candidate to share their religious beliefs vaulted Mike Huckabee to victory and rejected Mitt Romney in Iowa's Republican caucuses Thursday night, a survey of early arrivals found.
In the Democratic contest, young voters turned out in big numbers and heavily favored Barack Obama, who also won many votes for his message of change. Older voters and people who gave high priority to a candidate's experience backed Hillary Rodham Clinton. John Edwards scored on empathy and electability.
Born-again or evangelical Christians comprised six in 10 Republican caucus-goers and nearly half of them favored Huckabee, according to preliminary results of entrance polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks. Only one in five favored Romney, who has been viewed skeptically by some religious voters.
Nearly four in 10 Republican caucus-goers said it matters a great deal to them that a candidate shares their religious beliefs. More than half of them favored Huckabee and barely one in 10 favored Romney.
In the Democratic contest, about one in five caucus-goers were under age 30 — about twice as many as typically vote in early presidential nomination events — and more than half of them expressed initial preference for Obama. More than half the Democratic voters were attending their first caucus and Obama led among that group, too.
About a quarter of Democratic caucus-goers were 65 or older — twice their number in Iowa's general population — and nearly half of them expressed initial preference for Clinton. She also won about half the vote from caucus-goers who, when given a choice from four personal qualities, said the most important was that a presidential candidate "has the right experience."
Edwards won nearly half the Democrats who said the top attribute was that a candidate "cares about people like me," and he narrowly led Clinton and far outdistanced Obama among those most concerned that the candidate has the best chance to win in November.
But half of Democrats said it was most important that a candidate "can bring about needed change" and half of them backed Obama.
The surveys were conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International as voters arrived at 40 sites each for Democratic and Republican caucuses in Iowa. The Democratic entrance poll interviewed 1,499 caucus-goers, the Republican survey 1,150. Each survey had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Lawmakers Vote Against Christmas Condemned
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Ackerman_Christmas/2008/01/03/61471.html
A New York-based group has sent a letter to constituents of Rep. Gary Ackerman condemning the Democrat’s vote “against Christmas.”
According to the letter sent by The Filangieri Society for Justice and Good Government, the House of Representatives on Dec. 11 overwhelmingly passed Resolution 847 recognizing the religious and historical importance of Christmas and acknowledging America’s Judeo-Christian roots.
Among the nine House members voting against the resolution was Ackerman, a 13-term Congressman representing New York’s 5th Congressional District.
In defending his vote, Ackerman reportedly said, “For the Congress to spend time talking about the coming of the Messiah really broaches the wall of separation of church and state.”
The letter states: “But Congressman Ackerman voted on October 2, 2007 for House Resolution 635 recognizing the commencement of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. Then on October 29, 2007 he co-sponsored and voted in favor of House Resolution 747 recognizing the religious and historical significance of the Hindu holiday of Diwali.
“Mr. Ackerman should be ashamed of himself. To vote in favor of Ramadan and Diwali and then to vote against Christmas is hypocritical, dishonest and arrogant at best and anti-Christian and anti-American at worst…
“Christmas is under attack in schools, office buildings, in the media, and public places in general across the country, and Christians are violently persecuted in foreign lands such as Sudan. Mr. Ackerman’s vote is disrespectful of the values of an overwhelming majority of his constituents.”
Ackerman’s district includes part of Queens and parts of Nassau County.
The Filangieri Society is named for the 18th-century Neapolitan philosopher Gaetano Filangieri, whose writings about government promoted free speech, free trade, compulsory education and equal justice before the law.
Huckabee Entrusts Fate to Higher Power
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Huckabee_Entrusts_Fate_to/2008/01/03/61405.html
Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee called on supporters to pray for “God’s wisdom” as he entrusted his chances in Thursday night’s Iowa caucuses to a higher power.
The ordained Baptist minister appeared at a rally near Des Moines on Wednesday and was joined by martial arts star Chuck Norris.
He told the crowd that if he is to win the caucuses, “we won’t do it by going armed to the teeth and taking out the opponents. We will go to those caucuses having been on our knees and asking for God’s wisdom and standing to our feet and asking for His strength.”
Gary Walters, a Huckabee supporter and pastor who drove to Iowa from New Jersey to help the campaign, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “Mike Huckabee doesn’t have all the answers and he’s going to get on his knees sometimes and ask God for help. He’s the whole package and that’s a wonderful thing.”
The latest polls show Huckabee running neck and neck with Mitt Romney among Republicans in Iowa, and Romney has recently gone on the attack with ads branding Huckabee as soft on crime and illegal immigration.
Huckabee’s campaign manager Ed Rollins has adopted a more aggressive tone compared to Huckabee’s pious approach, saying the Romney is someone “whose teeth I want to knock out.”
Minister appeases Muslims on Temple Mount
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2289
Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, whose job it is to ensure the majority of his countrymen are able to live as Jews free from danger and fear, has bowed even further to the Muslim threat to use violence against Jews who wish to pray on the Temple Mount - Israel's holiest site.
Despite the fact that the place where Israel's first and second temples stood is under de jure Israeli sovereignty the Olmert government, like those before it, already acquiesces to the demands of the Waqf (Islamic Trust) to ban Jewish and Christian prayer on the hill.
The hours during which Christians and Jews can ascend the Temple Mount are severely restricted; non-Muslim visitors are searched and prevented from taking Bibles or prayer books into the site, and individuals are frequently arrested or at least forced to leave [as I was-Ed] if they are even suspected of praying.
Now, according to a report Tuesday in the leftist Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Dichter recently sent a letter to two religious Knesset members telling them that "a Jew is not allowed to pray in any overt manner whatsoever on the Temple Mount, even if he is just moving his lips in prayer."
While it "is not possible to arrest a person for 'conversing with his maker ... it is possible to carry out an arrest for expressions of outward and demonstrative signs [of prayer]," Dichter said.
He continued to explain that this interpretation "is in line with the rationale that bans Jews from praying at the site, in light of serious concerns that this will serve as a provocation, resulting in disorder, with a near certain likelihood of subsequent bloodshed."
The voices of the minister and the rest of the government were nowhere to be heard two weeks ago when the radio network of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas broadcast inflammatory Muslim sermons from the Temple Mount for the first time. These sermons almost always incite Muslims to violence against Jews.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, making concessions to conciliate a potential aggressor is defined as appeasement.
In their pain-saturated history, the Jewish people have often suffered most after efforts have been made to appease those out to destroy them.
Six days and counting 'til Bush arrives.
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2293
Thousands of American flags are being unfurled to line the routes along which he will travel, streets which will be made empty of all other traffic for the duration of his three day visit.
Small clusters of US security men can be seen making their way to and from the so-called western Jerusalem US consulate, their brash and noisy CC-plated vehicles rushing around the Israeli capital - even though it is not recognized as such by Washington.
The Prime Ministers' Office has assembled a special task force to prepare for his arrival, and there is little doubt that he will be made to feel very welcome indeed.
But what US President George W. Bush will not get, when he makes his first visit to Israel as the world's most powerful man next week, is more than just a taste of how many millions of Israelis feel about his reason for coming here.
They disapprove.
The purpose of his visit is to demonstrate physically his often verbalized "personal commitment" to creating an Arab state on ancient Jewish lands.
And it is in the interests of the Olmert government that Bush be made to feel the Israeli people support him in this.
Dissenting voices will therefore not be allowed, or will be cordoned off out of the president's way.
A couple of things will be happening, but unless he reads about them or keeps his eyes peeled, the president will remain blissfully unaware of their opposition:
On Monday before Bush arrives, a small square near Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's official residence, which has been known for years as Paris Square, and which is the site of frequent political demonstrations, is to be renamed "Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square" in honor of the American Jew who spied for Israel and paid for helping to save Jewish lives by being incarcerated in an American prison for 22 years, so far.
According to the Jerusalem City Council, the square will keep its new name until Pollard, who is also an Israeli citizen, is set free and allowed to come home to Israel.
Meanwhile Israel National News reports that billboards all over Jerusalem will be plastered with a new poster on the eve of the Bush visit to Israel.
Pictured is a gigantic Bible, towering over the walls of the Old City.
The caption says: "Bush, read your Bible. God gave Israel to the Jews."
He did, of course. But observers have noted that Israeli governments live more in fear of the White House than in the fear of the Lord.
Terrorists' rockets reach new range
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2290
'"Palestinians" in the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip fired a rocket Thursday that flew further than any of the thousands of missiles fired from Gaza in recent years.
While over 2,000 Kassam rockets have been launched from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot since the beginning of 2007, the one that slammed into the ground north of Ashkelon Thursday was thought to be a Katyusha or Grad missile, which has a greater range than the Kassam.
No-one was injured in the strike, and no damage was caused.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed it had fired a rocket at a Jewish community called Shaked in northern Samaria (which Israel's enemies call the West Bank).
He said the Arabs in those areas would continue to manufacture rockets in response to Israel's "crimes."
The Brigades belongs to the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is run by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
IDF sources said no reports had come in of a missile hitting in or near Shaked.
Egypt allows Arabs to enter Gaza unchecked
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2291
One week after Egyptian government officials pledged that they would stem the "Palestinian" smuggling of arms and explosives into the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Arabs returning from Saudi Arabia were Wednesday allowed to walk unchecked into Gaza from the Sinai.
Cairo reportedly made the move at the behest of Saudi Arabia.
Israeli government officials were furious at this latest betrayal of trust from a Egypt, a country that hides behind its peace treaty with Israel to encourage a war by proxy against the Jewish state.
One official said the move threatened to create a crisis in already tense Egypt-Israel relations.
According to The Jerusalem Post, at least two dozen senior Hamas officials were known to be among the Arabs allowed in. They are suspected of personally carrying in tens of millions of dollars with which to fund Hamas, which has been widely boycotted since its violent takeover of Gaza six months ago.
Some of the terrorists were also believed to have undergone advanced military training in Iran - training they could now pass on to the terrorist cohorts in Gaza.
Egypt tried to duck the outpouring of Israeli anger, claiming it had coordinated the move with officials in Jerusalem.
But a senior Israeli told the Post that the whole thing had been perpetrated against all agreements between the two countries.
Israel's expectations for "Palestine" emerging
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2292
Six days before George W. Bush is scheduled to arrive in Israel on his first presidential visit, officials in Jerusalem are giving glimpses of how they expect security to be maintained in a future Palestinian state.
According to a report Thursday in the leftist daily Ha'aretz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will look for American approval for the Israel Defense Forces to continue operating against terrorists in Samaria and Judea (what Israel's enemies call the "West Bank") after the Palestinian Arabs have been given those parts of Israel's historical homeland.
Israel will want to keep a "tripwire" military force in the Jordan Valley to act as a deterrent against Arab aggression.
The new Palestinian state must be demilitarized, and Israel must have the right to fly over its airspace and to monitor who moves in and out of its territory.
Israel reportedly feels that it is being asked to give up tangible things while all the "Palestinians" have to do is promise to go along with these security demands.
From the Arab perspective, Olmert and his government are living "on another planet."
This was the response of a senior Palestinian Authority terrorist earlier this week after the Israeli premier said that his view of a Palestinian state has some of the largest Jewish communities in Samaria and Judea remaining under Israeli sovereignty.
"Peace and settlements don't go together. If this is his policy, he can forget about finding a partner on the Palestinian side," the unnamed official said.
Israel Attacks Palestinian Militants
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/297491.aspx
CBNNews.com - Israel attacked Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip with tanks and warplanes Thursday, marking some of the heaviest fighting in there in recent months.
At least nine people were killed and dozens of others were wounded, including several children.
The Israeli army said it wanted to retaliate after a long-range rocket was fired from inside Gaza.
The attacks came just days before President Bush's first trip to the region.
He is scheduled to go there next week to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Hindu extremists convert 2,000 Christians in India
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/hindu.extremists.convert.2000.christians.in.india/15965.htm
A Hindu group claims to have converted 2,000 tribal Christians to Hinduism in Gujarat.
According to UCA News, the conversion ceremony took place late December, at Vyara, 1,300 kilometers southwest of New Delhi. The town is the headquarters of newly created Tapi district.
Hindu groups alleged through media that they converted some 2,500 tribal Christians at a public function. Jesuit Father Stanny Jebamalai, who works in the area, confirmed to UCA News that some 2,000 Christians had joined Hinduism.
Since 1998, when the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power, tribal belts in the state have witnessed sporadic tension during the Christmas season.
Christian missionaries have been accused by the Hindu groups of exploiting tribal property and trying to forcefully convert people to Christianity promising money and jobs.
For the reconversion, "Hindu groups brought tribal Christians from Gujarat's Dangs and Tapi districts, as well as from neighboring Maharashtra state. In speeches at the gathering, Hindu leaders reportedly accused local Christians of joining with Maoists to fight Hindu landlords and convert more people to Christianity," reported UCA news.
Meanwhile, Tapi's deputy collector, NS Halbe told media that the function had government permission and that local authorities have confirmed the conversions.
Father Jebamalai told UCA News the "induced and forced" conversion of tribal Christians was aimed at creating "a sense of fear among Christians and prevent missioners from working in the area".
Christian leaders in the state say that Hindu radicals fear tribal and lower-caste people receiving an education because it may lead them not only to stop slaving for upper-caste Hindus but also to question the idea of high-caste superiority.
Christians in Gujarat have been persecuted, beaten and imprisoned in the state due to the growing presence of anti-Christian elements aiming to subdue Christianity.
In 2003 the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules Gujarat, adopted the Freedom of Religion Act, in reality making any conversions illegal. Violators face up to three years of imprisonment and/or a fine of up to 50,000 rupees (around £650).
TobyMac wins Gospel Music Channel Video of the Year
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/tobymac.wins.gospel.music.channel.video.of.the.year/15951.htm
The first-ever Gospel Music Channel Video Awards gave away its top award to tobyMac's "Boomin'" for Video of the Year for 2007.
"Boomin'" comes from the Christian hip hop artist's latest album Portable Sounds, his third major solo release after Momentum and Welcome to Diverse City. All three albums were released by Forefront Records.
Other winners include Rodney Atkins' "Watching You" for Best Country Video; Relient K's "Must Have Done Something Right" for Best Rock Video; Mary Mary's "Yesterday" for Best Soul Video; Da T.R.U.T.H.'s "Who Am I" for Best Hip Hop Video; Chris Tomlin's "Amazing Grace" for Best Contemporary Video; and Latin sensation Face 2 Face's Que Puedo Darte for Best Latin Video.
Gospel Music Channel created the video awards to honor the top videos in six genre categories and overall Top Video of the Year.
Winners of the video awards were announced over the weekend after fans voted online at www.gospelmusicchannel.com.
Nominated videos were determined by the amount of airplay they received on Gospel Music Channel during 2007. "Boomin'" was chosen by a committee of Gospel Music Channel programming executives.
Gospel Music Channel is the US's first and only 24/7 all music television network devoted to the uplifting, inspiring and diverse music that is gospel/Christian music. It is one of the fastest-growing cable channels in television today; the network has doubled availability in 2007 alone and is now carried in all ten of the top ten markets and 22 of the top 25.
TobyMac launches his two-month "Boomin' Beyond Measure" tour in February with Jeremy Camp and special guest Matthew West.
Spiritual Movement Calls Men to Purity
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/296594.aspx
You can mark sweeps of God through the church -- like the healing wave of the 1940s and '50s, the charismatic movement, the coming of exuberant praise and worship.
But now in fellowships, churches and gatherings all across the Body of Christ, there's an emphasis on holiness.
Witness the 35-day "Highway to Holiness" campaign all along Interstate 35 this fall, with many ministries joining together to be a witness for a holy God and promoting purity -- living lives pleasing to the Lord and not soaked in sin.
One of the main organizers was Heartland Ministries outside Dallas, where Jeff Baldwin serves.
"Purity is our protection. Without purity, no one can see the Lord. 'Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart,'" Baldwin said.
Maybe God's emphasizing holiness now because the church has become so much like the world.
"The reason the world is not running to Christianity is because they see no difference. They see no difference in Christianity and the way they're living," said Steve Hill, Heartland's senior pastor.
Pastor Steve Hill says Christians living holy lives will be an irresistible draw.
"I was a drug addict and an alcoholic for years, and believe it or not, what attracted me to Christianity was holiness, the purity," Hill said.
He says when he started hanging around Christians who were living a life committed to Christ and didn't need drugs or booze to find joy, it wooed his heart.
"And I'm going 'whoa, I like this. These people don't have to get some artificial high to be happy.' And so that actually attracted me to Christianity," Hill said.
Sarah Sanders works at Heartland and bubbles over with that kind of joy that wooed Hill.
"Jesus has put that joy inside me because I'm living holy before him, I'm living pure before him so that He's able to move through me to where my whole life is exciting. I've never had a boring day in years," Sanders said.
But Sanders points out sin throws up a barrier between a holy God and us.
"If you have sin inside of your life, you can't have that relationship because there's a big block there," she said.
The difference between Christianity and other religions is a sin-free Jesus dying on the cross for us, to take our sins away.
"It was so that we could live free from sin. He broke the bondages, He broke the chains, so that we would be able to live free from that," Sanders said.
"Ask Jesus to wash you, Jesus to cleanse you, ask Jesus to make you brand-new!" Heartland's senior pastor Hill said.
Joshua Williams decided at a young age to live a sexually pure life before God and to never date or kiss a girl till she was his bride.
He believes one reward of that was God sovereignly arranging his marriage to Kerry, a Scottish lass halfway around the world -- a story detailed in their book, "The Perfect Date."
Williams believes a key to living holy is living wide open and transparent before God and fellow believers.
"Scripture talks about that if we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin," Williams said.
And wife Kerry says you must open your life up wide to the Lord.
"There's a scripture in Titus 2. It says the grace of God has appeared and it teaches us to say 'no' to ungodliness. And so really it's just allowing that grace to come into your life and to say no to those things. It is possible, " Kerry Williams said.
Maybe this emphasis on holiness is a sign the Lord's return is near. The Bible says he's the bridegroom and he'll return for a bride without spot or wrinkle.
"We are called to prepare ourselves for that marriage in heaven, to make our robes clean, to make our robes white, to prepare ourselves and to be pure and spotless for him," Joshua Williams said.
Orange County California's Steve Arterburn co-authored "Every Man's Battle."
The well-known Christian counselor lays out practical steps for living lust-free in a sex-soaked culture.
"We become all the things that we look at, read, see, hear," Arterburn said.
So he says we should learn to bounce our eyes away from the figures and media that would cause us to lust.
"When you could look at something, you say 'not mine' and you look away," Arterburn said.
Then, Arterburn says you need to soak yourself in some relevant scriptures you can toss in the Tempter's face.
"Learn a few passages, a few scriptures that help you in a time of temptation," he said.
Dr. Dennis Frederick counsels porn and sex addicts in Washington state.
The author of "Conquering Pornography" says the first step to freedom is you must repent with your whole heart.
"A repentant heart that says I know this is not just an issue. It's a sin," Frederick said.
Then he says you have to take decisive, practical steps with anything that can entice you.
"DVDs or CDs or toys or books or magazines. that all has to go to the dump," he said.
"Put the computer in a public area. It shouldn't be in an office where you can lock the door."
Then both men say you need to find believers you can confess to, be accountable to.
"Pride cometh before a fall. So I want to make sure I have a lot of brothers keeping me where I belong," Frederick said.
"What do we do when we mess up? Confess? Do we connect with other people? Or do we hide in shame, just exactly the way Satan wants us to?" Arterburn said.
The key, they say, is staying humble and open with both fellow believers and God, and that will open up a deeper walk with the Lord, make you better able to hear his voice and follow his leadings.
But Arterburn says that's only possible if you get to know and love the true God -- not the detached, disinterested one we often imagine, but the real God ".connected to me, wanting the best for me, truly loving me."
That's a God who's love will truly woo you.
"Then you're going to want to experience holiness because you're going to want to draw closer to Him."
How Safe is Your Privacy in the US?
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/297526.aspx
A recent survey revealed the U.S. was one of the worst countries at protecting personal privacy.
According to researchers, individual privacy is under a wider threat around the world as governments increase surveillance and information gathering on their citizens.
The Washington Post reported the FBI is building the world's largest computer database of people's physical characteristics.
The new system will give the government unprecedented capabilities to identify people in the U.S. and overseas.
It will also include fingerprints and digital images of faces.
Is the Tide Turning in Hollywood?
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/297270.aspx
CBNNews.com - As Tinsel Town gears up for the next academy awards, are family, faith, and freedom friendly films being ignored?
"They repeatedly overlook films that could be making a great amount of money at the box office because it doesn't accord with their political agenda," the head of Liberty Film Festival, Govindini Murty, said.
Libertas Web site blames Hollywood's gatekeepers. Major studios and distributors, Murty says, are run by 60s-era executives with a left wing point of view.
She cites an industry bias in the recent rash of war pictures, that give harsh portrayals of America's troops.
"Very anti-war films, six films that show our brave troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as rapists, murderers, people who kill innocent civilians. People who are psychopaths who come back to America after their war service and commit more murder. It's really disgusting, and that's the only view of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan coming out in theaters this fall, versus the films we saw back in WWII that showed our troops as brave and heroic," Murty said.
She says family and faith themes are also dismissed. It took Mel Gibson's personal wealth and celebrity to get the blockbuster Passion of the Christ to the big screen.
"The Passion really showed how an independently financed film with a very bold vision could connect with a large portion of the American audience that so far has not been going to theaters, has been very alienated from movie theaters over the past 30 years - and that is the conservative public," Murty said.
Movie producer Sean Wolfington said, "It's a $30 million film in a foreign language about Jesus. Foreign language films don't do well and historically films about Jesus haven't done well."
He says The Passion blazed a trail for films like Bella, an independent film he co-produced that took top honors at the Toronto film festival.
"Normally a film like ours would get picked up that night. But for a year, distributors were reluctant to distribute it because we heard often it didn't have enough edge," Wolfington said.
Shut out by the studios, Bella's makers followed The Passion's lead. They took their leading man, Eduardo Verastegui, on the road in a grassroots marketing campaign targeting religious and Hispanic groups.
"We are a very small budget, little film with a big heart that is competing with films that are giants. And the studios, they have agreements with theaters, so it is very hard to have a film like Bella to survive through Thanksgiving unless a miracle happens," Verastegui told CBN News.
"What the faith community can do is give an advantage to faith friendly films because unfortunately there is a disadvantage, and critics don't historically like what they call soft films," Wolfington said.
Films like Bella, The Passion, and The Chronicles of Narnia show movies with morals do make money.
But without studio backing, most still struggle to be seen in theater chains nationwide.
For example, Amazing Grace - a film on abolishing the slave trade in Britain that won rave audience reviews - lacked major studio support, according to the film's producer Ken Wales. He said the film suffered from limited theater release.
"We only had it in 800 theaters. All the big films had 3,000 to 3,500 theaters, four or five times as much. And yet when the tallies came in for the first week, we had $4.3 million, and per theater average is what really counts. So the number two and three films had 5,700 per theater average. We had 56 - only a hundred dollars less than number 2 or 3, and yet we had a fifth of the theaters," Wales said.
Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, star of the upcoming film The Bucket List, told CBN News that even film legends find it hard to get some projects produced. He says Clint Eastwood's controversial Million Dollar Baby with its $30 million budget was rejected by his own studio.
"So clout is -- I don't know how you would define it. If Clint doesn't have it, who does?" Freeman said.
Freeman himself launched a production company, and formed Clickstar to distribute films online.
But producers of films Hollywood finds less politically correct face a tougher challenge.
One answer may lie in cutting-edge technology that allows them to bypass the screeners to make movies of their own.
Murty said, "When films are shot on 35 mm, the cost of film stock and processing the cost can be upwards of $35 million. Now with digital filmmaking, you can make a great feature film for under $100,000. You can make a great documentary for as little as $25,000.
If independent film makers are successful, it could pressure Hollywood to produce movies with a different kind of message. And that means more choices for what moviegoers can see on the silver screen.
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