Christian Post Runs Cover For The Chosen

Last Monday Evangelical Dark Web was among the first to cover The Chosen allowing and then glamorizing pride flags on its set. Late to the part on this is predictably, The Christian Post which featured an interview with Dallas Jenkins defending the pride flags on set. The article itself reads like a press release/ rebuttal written on behalf of The Chosen rather than accurate reporting.

The article titled ‘The Chosen’ director doesn’t impose on crews’ beliefs, is happy to be a witness of Christ contains in the permalink “the-chosen-creator-explains-why-he-hires-non-believers” which implies that this may have been the original title. This denotes that Christian Post views this as an issue of hiring unbelievers on a supposedly Christian project. Yet this is a grossly incomplete view of the issue. The issue is that The Chosen tolerates anti-Christian material on set and then glamorized it in a behind the scenes video.

Christian Post has a recorded interview with Dallas Jenkins, the showrunner for The Chosen, which predates the article they did run. However, they aborted the article Dallas Jenkins responds to controversy over LGBT ‘Pride’ flag on ‘The Chosen’ set in an apparent effort to reframe the issue on behalf of The Chosen. From the article they did run, they begin:

Amid reports over the appearance of an LGBT pride flag on the set of the Christian series “The Chosen,” creator and director Dallas Jenkins says he is willing to hire individuals who do not share his spiritual views and doesn’t enact tight restrictions on how they can express themselves.

According to Dallas Jenkins the hiring practices at The Chosen are merit based

Jenkins clarified that the knowledge that God knows he is a sinner does not mean he is exempt from continuing to strive for righteousness. Going off of that point, the Evangelical Christian stated that there is no “religious or political litmus test” the cast and crew must undergo to assist in telling the story of Jesus and his disciples. 

“We are not a church in which all of our employees are going to fit under one particular mission statement, one particular belief system,” he said. “We are a for-profit company; we’re a media company; we’re a public company. We have investors and all of that.” 

He said the people hired to work on “The Chosen” often come from a “broad spectrum of beliefs” and an individual’s qualifications and willingness to work are considered when hiring someone for the project. 

“When we hire someone to work for us, our No. 1 objective is who is the best person for this job?” he said. “We made a decision from the beginning that our standards is going to be ‘will you work hard?'”

Yet despite claiming to not be a church rather a for-profit company, The Chosen puts out devotional material that would emphasize its profession of faith as a venture. The issue is not that The Chosen hires nonbelievers, giving relatively no-name actors a break to play Bible figures. The issue is that as a company, they practice secular neutrality.

The director and co-writer clarified that if someone is vulgar or harming someone else, that’s not appropriate in a professional environment. However, Jenkins said he does not discriminate against people regarding their personal belief systems. 

“When it comes to their personal belief systems or what they wear, we’re not going to do what we’ve seen other people do, where sometimes you’ll see a Christian not allowed to wear a hat or express themselves or put a sticker on their desk that expresses their beliefs,” he said, commenting that it’s “unfortunate” when employers engage in that type of behavior. 

The neutral workplace has given way to being a gay workplace because neutrality is a myth. Christian Post, then denounces the controversy citing Jeremy Boreing.

This week, media reports highlighted how a photograph recently surfaced of an LGBT pride flag attached to a camera during the filming of the fourth season of “The Chosen.” On Wednesday, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing took to Twitter to apologize for an article his outlet published about the incident. 

Christian Post was entirely unprofessional in their handling of The Chosen, which is unsurprising given that they have heavily promoted the series for years to the detriment of their credibility.