A minor controversy erupted earlier this week regarding Christianity Today‘s largely positive review of Sex and the City. Appropriately written by an intelligent, presumably young woman, the piece goes to great lengths to explain exactly why some young Christians, particularly women, relate to the joys and sorrows of Carrie and company (“the film offers much that will resonate with singles—and yes, even Christians—who see themselves not just as a demographic in a Barna poll but as sexual beings who wrestle with balancing loneliness and a desire for romantic love with a commitment to purity and platitudes like ‘true love waits.’”) At no point does the author praise the promiscuous sexual behavior or egregious materialism of the cast, and she is careful to warn that even some adults probably should not see the film.

The nuances of Ms. Courtney’s take did not, however, prevent many Christianity Today readers from questioning the magazine’s endorsement of “pornography,” and its commitment to “Jesus, the Bible, holiness, and Biblical truth.” Some demanded to know why a Christian publication would even review a film like Sex and the City. The magazine patiently defended its review, protesting the absurdity of the idea that no review longer than three words (“Don’t watch it!”) is acceptable in a Christian publication. Writing for the magazine, Mark Moring stood firmly by Christianity Today‘s recurring refusal to dismiss culture out-of-hand as immoral and off-limits (“To suggest that one cannot find redemption amidst the muck is preposterous; often the best kinds of redemption come from out of the muck.”) Mr. Moring noted that he had made a personal decision not to see Sex, though he defended other believers’ right to decide for themselves.

A few angry readers are an expected—and rather low—price to pay for reviewing a potentially offensive film. But their righteous ire was reiterated even more passionately by a prominent voice in Christian media: Ted Slater, the editor of Boundless, a site for Christian college students published by Focus on the Family. In an open letter to Christianity Today that can be described as raving, moralistic, and overall unusually ill-considered, Slater pouted that Sex and the City received more stars than Prince Caspian, described the film as “sexual perversion,” and demanded that Christianity Today “repent.”

Patrol takes no position on the merits of Sex and the City itself, artistic or otherwise. Like many popular films, it contains graphic sexual content that many Christians will certainly find offensive, and we understand their decision not to see it. We would observe, however, that many films with similar content are enjoyable, enlightening, and powerful experiences, and we would equally understand a culturally-engaged Christian individual’s interest in seeing Sex and the City. But the point is not the film’s value or lack thereof. The point is Mr. Slater’s insulting insistence that the righteousness of believers who see this movie—or any movie—should be held in question, as if a specific piece of popular entertainment can serve as a litmus test for true religion.

Mr. Slater’s post is marked with virtually every tiresome cliché and Scriptural misapplication that the religious right has ever produced in discussions of art, but it depends primarily on two fallacious hypotheses. The first is that one is what one watches. The second is that modern men may directly speak for God on whether or not a piece of art is fit for Christian consumption.

The first is a point that seems obvious to anyone outside the evangelical culture bubble. In her mixed review, Slate film critic Dana Stevens took note of Sex and the City’s abhorrent morality:

The show’s values are reprehensible, its view of gender relations cartoonish, its puns execrable. I honestly believe, as I wrote when the series finale aired in 2004, that Sex and the City is singlehandedly responsible for a measurable uptick in the number of materialistic twits in New York City and perhaps the world.

Note that Ms. Stevens was fully cognizant of the message being presented, as any intelligent adult should be, but did not consider simply observing its presentation to be either an endorsement or a tacit acceptance of its values. It provided the opportunity to analyze and comment. No more than watching Man on Fire is an endorsement of vengeful murder or Mary Poppins a hurrah for activist feminism, simply seeing Sex and the City does not signal approval for sexual affairs and compulsive shopping. It also does not, contrary to popular evangelical notion, inherently signal a desire for sensual imagery or a “shared experience” in sexual immorality—no more than watching a graphic onscreen killing indicates a deep-seated desire to be a bloodthirsty Samurai. It is possible to view a sex scene as part of a story, and for its effect to be limited to those terms. One might be said to be what one habitually watches, but the morals of one film’s cast are most certainly not imputed to all members of the audience upon their entrance to the theater.

Secondly, Mr. Slater claims in several instances to be channeling the voice of Jehovah himself, a notion that we find offensive. He calls merely seeing Sex and the City “sin,” “evil,” and “immers[ing] [one]self in sexual perversion.” It would be folly to suggest that Christians may not draw some line on what is and is not contradictory to Scripture, but seeing a film—an act only covered by broad applications of specific scriptural principles—is arguably beyond the purvey of Biblical sand demarcations. Not only does Mr. Slater emphatically insist that he has the right to declare a movie distasteful to God (always presumptuous, irreverent territory), but he claims to “join Paul” and “join Jesus himself” in denouncing Sex and the City. He refers to Christianity Today‘s review as “satanic counsel” —also a painfully ill-considered utterance—before twisting the context and wording of Romans 3:8 to footnote his opinion.

Equally disappointing is Mr. Slater’s apparent ignorance of the plight of the young, postmodern Christian, who struggles to keep affirming the value of commitment and morality in the age of, as the New York Times has aptly dubbed it, “modern love.” Mr. Slater may be correct that consumption of such licentious behavior “pollutes the soul,” but his universal cost-benefit analysis (“Whatever insights one might get into modern society isn’t worth the cost of acquiring such pollution” ) suggests he may not have experienced modern society, where such pollutants are even for Christians inescapable bullet points on the daily agenda. His blanket judgments ignore the fact that such things may not be all that shocking to the depravity-numbed culture shaper, who is likely to be more interested by the ultimate portrayal of monogamy as superior to the Sex girls’ bed-hopping lifestyles. In other words, the armchair strategist’s cries of horror and outrage at sight of blood are likely to be ill-received by the gore-splattered warrior, which is how many young Christians feel when presented with this sort of frustratingly out-of-touch analysis. We are numb to the moral offenses flashing on our culture’s surrounding screens, perhaps even too numb, but without a degree of numbness we would be unable to truly grapple with the questions of our time.

While this critique of his comments has been deservedly harsh, Patrol affirms Mr. Slater’s right to object to Sex and the City on moral or religious grounds. We only hope that in the future, he will make his complaint with grace and with utmost caution.

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