Unsurprisingly, The Gospel Coalition loathes the Wicked movie

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 5, 2024.

One of the most noteworthy theological trends in 21st-century pop Calvinism has been the rehabilitation of the patriarchy. From Josh Howerton to Mark Driscoll to John MacArthur and more, iconic pastors are now routinely given platforms and sympathetic backstories that attempt to complicate categories of good and evil. This has dovetailed with the rise of the “glory plot” and a narrative fixation on how dehumanizing choices (let’s just call it “patriarchy”) can be explained by the gospel.

In case you haven’t noticed yet by my purposefully plagiaristic introduction, this is a response to The Gospel Coalition’s latest diatribe against the movie Wicked. Based on the stage musical inspired by the 1939 film The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Wicked tells the story of Elphaba Thropp, otherwise known as “the Wicked Witch of the West.” Part One follows Elphaba from being born green to meeting Galinda the Good and eventually the Wizard. Part Two will be released in December 2025.

I probably could get a head start in writing articles for 2025 simply by checking out what movies are scheduled to release. There’s nothing more predictable than TheoBros writing negative reviews about movies that explore healing from the trauma caused by patriarchal men and the institutions they build that use and abuse people. And Brett McCracken’s review of Wicked for TGC is perhaps the clearest example yet that contemporary pop Calvinists struggle with the category of evil.

Scene from “Women Talking.”

Brett McCracken’s back story

As a refresher, McCracken is the guy who was fuming in 2023 over the movie Women Talking, which was based on a true story about 100 Mennonite women who were being raped by eight Mennonite men. When the women woke up with bruises and bloodstained beds, the men claimed the assaults were part of their “wild female imagination” and possibly the work of demons. Women Talking shows the women discussing amongst themselves whether they should stay and fight or leave, and what the implications of leaving their faith community might have on their eternal souls.

Brett McCracken

According to McCracken, however, the movie was “an advocacy piece — celebrating the virtues of feminism, collective action and liberation for women and LGBT+ people in a cisgender, patriarchal world.”

In other words, McCracken feels insecure about patriarchy’s image. So he dismissed Women Talking because it causes Christianity to be “seen more as an oppressor than a liberator.”

Then he demonized Women Talking as showing “previously silenced women now having the power to speak into being whatever reality they desire.”

“He’s doing so as part of a long pattern of wanting to silence and subjugate women while defending the power of a penis-centered patriarchy.”

The next month, when Josh Butler released his book Beautiful Union, in which he said a man giving the gift of his semen “not only upon but within his wife” is a picture of Jesus giving the Bible to the Church, McCracken called it “the Protestant magnum opus on sexual ethics we’ve been waiting for.”

So when McCracken fusses about Wicked, he’s doing so as part of a long pattern of wanting to silence and subjugate women while defending the power of a penis-centered patriarchy.

Arianna Grande as Galinda in “Wicked.” (Photo by Giles Keyte/IMDB)

No one mourns the wicked

Wicked opens with the scene from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the West’s hat is lying on the ground in a puddle of water after getting doused by Dorothy. Then all of Oz begins celebrating, “Good news! She’s dead!”

Munchkinland breaks out into song, “Let us be glad! Let us be grateful! … No one mourns the Wicked! No one cries, ‘They won’t return!’”

Instead, the Munchkins celebrate how good conquered evil, as they roll out a wooden statue of Elphaba and set it on fire.

Interestingly, McCracken doesn’t reflect on this point at all. Instead, he claims the movie opens with the question, “Why does wickedness happen?” And to be sure, that’s an important question. But watching people celebrate justice as violent retribution against an enemy can’t be missed here, especially in light of white evangelicalism’s “comfort-prioritizing complicity” in the reelection of Donald Trump.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.