In his book, Inventing the Dream, author Kevin Starr writes: “Hollywood, as Horace and Daeida Wilcot envisioned their city-to-be, would be a model Southern Californian community: Christian, righteous, and very dry—no saloons, no liquor stores, with free land offered to Protestant churches locating within the city limits.” (p. 284) The city incorporated in 1903, eleven years after the death of Mr. Wilcot.

This year is the 100^th anniversary of the Hollywood sign. It used to say “Hollywoodland.”

But today the city is on hard times. A recent headline at deadline.com is, “Hollywood Jobs Down Nearly 20% This Year, & Not Just Because Of The Strikes, Study Says.”

The article notes, “Despite the now-resolved writers and actors strikes shutting down Hollywood production for several months, the loss of tens of thousands of Tinseltown jobs this year actually is part of a larger economic contraction, a just-released study claims — and those gigs might not be coming back.”

I see these constant stories on how Disney is producing one flop after another in the box office. In their effort to be as woke as possible, they purposefully violate the maxim that “the customer is always right.” They also seem to have forgotten the adage of “Let kids be kids.”

Whether you’re a person or a company or a nation, you can never escape from an important principle in life found in the Bible.

Paul said, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” We can never escape the consequences of our actions, good or bad. That’s why we need the Savior whose birth we celebrate at this time of year.

There was a time, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when the movie moguls were not at war against America, against Christianity, against Biblical morality.

Dr. Ted Baehr is an author and the publisher of Movieguide, which provides a Biblical perspective on the movies. I reached out to him for a statement along the lines of: “What, if anything, did the Church have to do with the Golden Age of Hollywood?”

His email to me was so lengthy I posted his whole answer here.

Read More