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September 9, 2019
By Jonathan Van Maren, LifeSiteNews, Sept. 6, 2019
September 6, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Every so often, a pop culture phenomenon reminds us just how thoroughly we have abandoned our Judeo-Christian heritage in the year of our Lord 2019. The latest example is an upcoming Downton Abbey film, a cinematic accompaniment to the wildly popular six-season period drama that followed the lives of the Crawley family and their assortment of servants in a magnificent Edwardian manor around the turn of the last century. Since the trailer was released, my Twitter feed has become littered with breathless news stories about a prominently featured gay kiss and speculations about the potential of a same-sex romantic storyline, many of them published by once prestigious news organizations.
This is nothing new, of course. Most TV shows and films now feature gay characters, and the LGBT lobby painstakingly takes note of these things and targets those film companies (like Disney, which GLAAD gave a “failing grade” on LGBT issues as recently as March despite Disney’s recent efforts) that are being too subtle in their attempts to mainstream the LGBT agenda. But the creators and producers of Downton Abbey have consistently gone the extra mile in their attempts to appease, kicking the series off with a same-sex kissing scene in the very first episode of the first season. The film trailer indicates that they intend to continue this track record, and LGBT activists are pleased with this state of affairs.
There is another aspect to all of this. Many fans of Downton Abbey noticed — I read about this first in Mary Eberstadt’s brilliant book It’s Dangerous to Believe — that Christianity was virtually absent in a period drama about a period where Christianity was still prevalent. As it turned out, the show’s historical adviser, Alastair Bruce, has revealed that this was intentional. According to the Telegraph, Bruce was explicitly told to “leave religion out of it.” Even the smallest references to religion were banned. In fact, the show’s producers refused to allow Bruce to have napkins folded in the shape of a bishop’s mitre on the tables, as even that religious reference was apparently too much for the show’s audience, which was clearly presumed to be emphatically post-Christian. …..
