Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars

by Thomas R. Lindlof

Josh Baran’s experience with Sorting It Out prepared him for operating in this battlefield. He had seen the dark side of religious commitment, the tendency of some of its strains to erect a system of beliefs that denies the validity of other ways. Intolerance of any path but the one “true” way follows a similar story line everywhere, whether it is a cult’s perfect master demanding followers’ fealty to an ideal of spiritual purity or religious leaders asserting that the United States is destined to be a Christian nation. Baran saw it as his mission to use the tools of the public relations discipline to open up a space in people’s minds for the concept of freedom of expression—to remind them that it is legitimate in America to write and read varied interpretations of art and religion, to have one’s own internal definition of what is true.