I recently saw a movie called “easy A,” which was an entertaining enough teenage comedy about a girl who pretended to lose her virginity. Although that was the main theme of the movie, when I left the theater, all I could think about was the terrible way the movie portrayed Christianity. I am a Christian so I felt especially offended by this particular portrayal, but we are bombarded with degrading religious jokes almost daily on television and social media sites.

The movie depicted a high school Christian group who were the most judgmental people at school. They were portrayed as snobby know-it-alls who went around putting their peers down for being so sinful. Because I am Christian, I can look at the movie and know that those are not traits that Christianity teaches, but if I was not affiliated with the religion, I would definitely turned off by the traits I was shown.

I have many non-Christian friends who already feel that Christians are judgmental and hypocritical, so when they see these portrayals, their feelings are supported and validated. I offered just one recent example, but we are actually bombarded by these bad advertisements for various religions regularly. It is typical to see a thief or drug dealer in a movie to be wearing a cross necklace or for an alcoholic father quoting Bible verses at their child. Stereotypes are often fulfilled and supported by Jewish or Islam characters. It seems that there is no escaping the negative and often just erroneous to the real teachings of the religion.

Although I feel immune to the way Christianity is portrayed because of my personal beliefs, I am guilty of seeing a character affiliated with a certain belief system and taking the portrayal to be an accurate depiction.