Not a "Christian cinema" so much as Christians in cinema.

Beliefnet, home of a ludicrously mixed bag of spiritual tricks and treats (and of the last Bono interview about faith before U2's dissimulation policy was retired), has just published an excerpt from the new book Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith Film and Culture. I was interested as I read this to try and apply it outside the world of film, thinking of some artists I know who are Christian, as well as one group of rock musicians about whose work I blog. In the excerpt, Barbara Nicolosi of Act One writes "While Christian projects will not be defined by the topics they treat, we can expect that certain defining themes will inhere in our projects as the cinematic 'aroma of Christ.'" How's this for a list (I'll just give you snippets):

Affirmation of Spiritual Realities...."Created with a Christian sensibility, a movie should be haunted by the invisible world."
Connectedness.... "A Christian film should be imbued with the certainty that we are not alone.... We are connected to one another and to the One who yearns for us as the apple of his eye."
Good and Evil Are Not Equal... "A Christian dramatist needs to portray sin with the same intensity as does a purely secular dramatist... but ultimately lead viewers away from cynicism and toward hope."
The Culture of Life... "A Christian movie will reflect a reverence in its bearing toward the human person. Our reverence to persons will dictate not only the kinds of stories that we tell but also the method in which we tell them."
Juxtaposition of Joy and Suffering... "The weirdest thing about Christians is the way we can hold both terrible suffering and joy in our hands at the same time without any sense of contradiction."

Sound familiar?