Disney is not Good News

In an article in the May-June 05 Issue of Prism Magazine (a publication of Evangelicals for Social Action), Peter Larson discusses the overwhelming influence that Disney has over America especially considering Evangelical Christians. He writes:

"What evangelicals failed to realize is that America has changed. The values of the average Christian are no longer based on the Bible but on shallow, mythological mush that Disney has spoon-fed us since infancy. The Jesus of the Bible has morphed, slowly but surely, into Mickey Mouse. George Barna, the evangelical pollster, makes this point when he writes, in a 2002 survey:
Over the past 20 years we have seen the nation's theological views slowly become less aligned with the Bible. Americans still revere the Bible and like to think of themselves as Bible-believing people, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Christians have increasingly been adopting spiritual views that come from Islam, Wicca, secular humanism, the eastern religions, and other sources. Because we remain a largely biblically illiterate society, few are alarmed or even aware of the slide toward syncretism--a belief that blindly combines beliefs from many different faith perspectives."

Not all mythology is mush but Disney mythology is. Myth is a powerful tool that shapes our identity, but when those myths do not match the principles that Christ gave us through his Word, and when we accept them without being critical of them or even aware of their power to shape who we are, then we have become a victim of our own indifference and are that much further away from looking and being like Jesus.