By Dr. Ted Baehr
And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
1 John 5:5
By the grace of God alone, I am still asked to speak to governments and important venues around the world.
On July 25, 1995, by the miraculous call of God alone, I spoke at a meeting of the House of Lords called by Lord Orr-Ewing. Many members of Parliament had expressed a desire to clean the screens in the United Kingdom and several asked for our help. Within a week, I was interviewed on several BBC programs and in several newspapers about the state of the mass media of entertainment and its impact on the culture.
Two days after my talk, the BBC adopted tough new decency standards. Although these new standards were in the works for a while, the BBC interviewers claimed that my talk may have added significantly to the influences that were pushing for stronger standards. Of course, after several years, the BBC went back to salacious programming.
A week before speaking with the BBC, I spoke in Germany with some of the key evangelical broadcasters. They have asked me to return to speak to an ancillary meeting related to the German parliament, which I did.
Since we showed the Hollywood executives that the American audience wants more wholesome movies and television programs, they have said that they are making the strong sex and violence movies primarily for export. By assisting other countries to adopt strong decency standards, we are decreasing the demand for movies with perverse sex and violence movies outside the United States and, thus, influencing media executives to move away from producing salacious and violent films.
Years later, God brought about another miracle when I spoke at the European Parliament, which initiated a new division dedicated to protecting children in Europe.
Another year, at the request of one of the parties in the Norwegian parliament, I showed concerned Norwegians how to take an active role in helping to redeem the values of Hollywood.
I lectured in the Norwegian Parliament for hours at the conference entitled “Paradigm Shifts in Film and Telecommunications.” I spoke about the advances our ministry had made in the entertainment industry in over the last few years.
About 80 politicians, government officials, media leaders, corporate representatives, and scientists attended the conference.
I explained to them the successful approach that MOVIEGUIDE’s Christian Film & Television Commission® was taking in trying to transform the values that Hollywood’s opinion leaders use to produce the entertainment products which they transmit all over the world.
For example, by encouraging industry leaders to make more family-friendly movies, our ministry had been able to increase the number of family films released each year by more than 500 percent since 1985, from six per year to about 40.
I urged the conferees to promote media-wisdom, so that, together, they can change Hollywood for the better and for the benefit of future generations, their children and their grandchildren.
As a result of this discussion and presentation was that Norway was able to obtain permission from the European Union to reject explicit sexual nighttime Swedish television so that Norway could protect its children. As a member of the European Union, by the way, Norway was required to carry the television broadcasts from Sweden unless they could prove harm to children. They proved the harm to children by using our information.
That afternoon, I went to a TV network (TV Visjon Norge) that reaches 38 countries in Europe to record a one-hour television program about the mass media of entertainment and media wisdom.
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