I can’t say that prohibition of movies and plays comes up at all in sermons or pronouncements of the church leadership. They might bark about the content of the performance, but doing away with them entirely is simply not in their headspace. The C&MA in particular likes to throw together huge musical and performance extravaganzas around the major holidays.

The key, as with anything, is how you interpret the source. If a denomination likes to cherrypick single verses devoid of context, then you get ridiculous things like prohibition of performing arts based on a biblical injunction not to lie.

If you use proper hermeneutics and consider the source in the context of its surrounding paragraphs, the epistle it is a part of, the author, the social and cultural environment it was written in, etc, then you realise that Biblical prohibitions against lying are generally restricted to personal moral conduct, as opposed to the performing arts.

Additionally, when Jesus spoke in parables, he wasn’t always speaking of events that had actually happened. Sometimes he used hypothetical examples to illustrate a larger point — which is exactly what the performing arts do too (to greater or lesser degrees of success).

That said, there an awful lot of people who do not take a hermeneutic approach to Biblical study — that’s how we ended up with 1 Corinthians 13 being used as a scrupture reading for weddings, despite the fact that the author, Paul, isn’t talking about marital love at all. The previous chapter and the following chapter all discuss “spiritual gifts” and how church members ought to treat each other. In chap. 13 Paul is emphasizing that any “spiritual gifts” must be exercised with love. He didn’t have a massive derailment of his train of thought and go off into a tangent about marriage in that one section.

The guys that don’t take the time to understand ancient text and understand their whole context are the guys that end up with the wacky ideas. This stuff was written in ancient languages, by cultures that no longer exist. It takes time and effort to understand it.

Based on this comment, I’d estimate…alot.

So, who wants to submit the question “The ‘Cleveland Steamer’…okey-dokey or forbidden? How about the ‘Hot Karl’?” I’m tempted.

- Crying when you’re sick is okay as long as it is not accompanied by wailing. So ah, have some powerful painkillers handy.

- Watching sports is not okay, and subscribing to sports channels is right out.

- If your wife isn’t enough of a hottie, bigamy is okay because it’s easier for the woman to bear than divorce.

Somebody has spent an awful lot of time thinking about these things.

All you have to do is use the search function on the mosque’s site, it’ll be link #4 in the Sections: results.