Watch: Chris Pratt Issues Powerful Proclamation About Famous Pro-God, Pro-Prayer Speech
In 2018, “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Parks and Recreation” actor Chris Pratt gave a speech at the MTV TV and Movie Awards in which he affirmed that “God is real” and “God loves you” — and the liberal media has been after him ever since.
Pratt has, in fairness, dithered a bit on this point over the intervening half-decade. However, that dithering seems to be done for. In a recent Instagram post, he made it clear he stood behind his remarks 100 percent.
Now, just to be clear about how hopping mad the media can get when a star evinces true religious faith, consider the original speech — which was obviously intended to be humorous.
During the speech for “The Generation Award,” Pratt had nine rules for those who were listening at home.
Some of those rules were obviously tongue-in-cheek advice; “Breathe. If you don’t, you will suffocate,” one went.
“When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won’t even know they’re eating medicine,” another dictum went.
I won’t even go into his advice regarding what to do if you need to use the bathroom at a party but don’t want it to smell too bad afterward.
However, other pieces of advice from Pratt were a bit more serious. “You have a soul. Be careful with it,” rule No. 2 went. “It doesn’t matter what it is. Earn it,” went rule No. 5.
Then came rule No. 6: “God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you. Believe that; I do.”
And rule No. 8: “Learn to pray. It’s easy, and it is so good for your soul.”
That speech led to headlines like this one from Vox: “How Chris Pratt became the internet’s least favorite Chris.” Here’s one of the voices it quoted from the internet, proving he was its least favorite Chris: “I hate his hypocrisy of playing the nice guy while supporting a homophobic cult.”
Pratt is a member of Zoe Church in Los Angeles, a congregation that “reportedly has anti-LGBTQ views,” according to Vox.
Now, Zoe is a fairly average nondenominational congregation familiar to anyone who’s gone to a large church with a vaguely hipster-ish liturgy, so it’s not exactly like he’s a disciple of Fred Phelps or anything.
What that individual meant, more accurately, was that the Bible says inconvenient things about homosexuality, and affirming the Bible means You Are Bad™.
But wait, it gets worse: As Elle magazine noted with undertones of slight horror a few years ago, “If you spotted Chris Pratt’s June 2019 announcement that he and wife Katherine Schwarzenegger had gotten married, you might have noticed it had religious undertones.”
“We became husband and wife in front of God, our families and those we love,” Pratt said in an Instagram post. “We feel so blessed to begin this new chapter of our lives.”
“While some may find Pratt’s faith surprising, it’s not the first time he has made public and blatant reference to his religion,” Elle went on to say. Yes — “blatant.”
Pratt seemed to backpedal a bit in an interview with Men’s Health last summer, saying, “I didn’t know that I would kind of become the face of religion when really I’m not a religious person.”
However, his definition of “religious” was rather amorphous.
“I think there’s a distinction between being religious — adhering to the customs created by man, oftentimes appropriating the awe reserved for who I believe is a very real God — and using it to control people, to take money from people, to abuse children, to steal land, to justify hatred,” the actor said. “Whatever it is. The evil that’s in the heart of every single man has glommed on to the back of religion and come along for the ride.”
That didn’t propitiate the lower-case-D deities of Vox and Elle and just confused other publications, however. (The Deseret News of Salt Lake City, for instance, asked after the interview, “Will the real Chris Pratt please stand up?”)
Well, he did in a post on Instagram last month: “Throwback to that time MTV honored me with ‘The Generation Award,'” he wrote, re-uploading the full video.
“I was given three minutes to impart wisdom to the next generation. Given the chance to do it again I wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe I wouldn’t try to eat the popcorn backstage.”
You can’t get any more “blatant” than that, I suppose.
Pratt has tried to clarify and bridge the gap between himself and the secular press — but, at the end of the day, he’s holding his ground.
As for his talk about not being “religious,” it’s clear he was saying that Christianity is about a Man, not a plan. He’s right. While religion has a place, any plan or organization that gets in the way of one’s relationship with God is necessarily evil. It’s unfair to mark Pratt as a man who’s waffling.
And from the sound of it, he seems to realize that there’s no way to make the media happy, nor is there any way to make a Hollywood that undermines traditional values at every juncture see the light.
So he continues to unapologetically proclaim the truth about his faith and about God instead. Good for him.
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