Matthew Crouch is primping for the cameras. It’s a Thursday evening in Orange County, California, and the Trinity Broadcast Network’s studio is filled. Offstage, Crouch watches as a power-dressed pastor pumps up the audience. In the Christian film industry, apparently, it takes more than faith to market a movie.
Five years ago, Crouch, an independent producer and the president of Gener8Xion Entertainment, shocked Hollywood when his movie The Omega Code cracked the top ten in its opening weekend. Despite a slender promotional budget, the apocalyptic thriller rooted in scripture went on to gross more than $12 million. To sell it, Crouch relied heavily on the very same nationally syndicated TV show he is cohosting tonight.
Standing on the TBN soundstage, Crouch and wife Laurie are about to emcee the Praise the Lord program. In the tradition of any sharp Hollywood producer, Crouch has his hair...
The cinema usually is a bad place to learn history or Biblical truth. It is evidently too tempting for even sincere producers to inject un- or extra-historical notions for the sake of heightened drama, etc. These images can leave powerful impressions that may last a lifetime, overriding the written word in the mind.
"The book harks back to the Calvinist credo that success in business is a tribute to God. It’s an idea Crouch endorses wholeheartedly"
I wonder what Calvin was thinking when he forgot to include that in the Institutes? Surely it was worth a chapter, at least. He could have excised his chapter on the Trinity, or on Providence to make room for something as important as this evidently basic element of Calvinistic belief. But leave it to a televangelist to discover something about Calvinism that all the Calvinists never figured out.
Kevin Swanson | 10/4/2012
COMMENTS | 
john uk from wales: "
frank
very good scripture; thanks! it sounds like a true..."
