CenLamar | Est. 2006

Another Rebuttal to the Notion that Hollywood Isn’t Interested in Marketing Christian Films “ There’s also money. The literary world has been reaping profits for decades with religious fare. The biblical “Left Behind” novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, for example, have racked up sales of more than $650 million and spawned four movies. But it wasn’t until “Passion” arrived in theaters in February 2004 that major studios saw their own stairway to financial heaven. Before Mel Gibson’s telling of the Crucifixion, “we all knew we had a lot to learn about this market, which was obviously underserved,” says…

Liberals taking over Natchitoches? Have you been to Natchitoches recently? It’s rockin’! If the anti-religious, anti-conservative musings of Richard Taylor and Bill Shaw represent the prevailing philosophy of Natchitoches Parish, Alexandria is on the verge of being toppled as Central Louisiana’s capital of liberalism. I love this fundamentalist device: If you write anything that criticizes (or even analyzes) their worldview, you’re suddenly anti-religious. It’s as if this writer myopically believes her religion is the only religion in the world. Also, this is a really weak argument: IF Richard Taylor and Bill Shaw REPRESENT a “prevailing” PHILOSOPHY, then Alexandria is on…

In From the Night: Premiering Sunday, April 23 on CBS. Five years ago, I enrolled in a personal essay class at Rice University. The instructor, Dr. Marsha Recknagel was a Louisiana native, and at the time, Dr. Recknagel was finishing her memoir, If Nights Could Talk. The memoir recounts Recknagel’s strained relationship with her family and the experience of adopting her sixteen year old nephew, Jamie. Jamie shuffled through schools and hospitals before finally landing on Marsha’s doorstep in Houston. It’s a fantastic book, and it has received numerous accolades and awards, including an LA Times Notable Book of the…