There is no denying the anti-Christian pressure coming out of Hollywood. Even Matthew McConaughey sees it.
The 50-year-old actor opened up about his experience with faith in the movie-making industry, telling podcast host Joe Rogan he’s seen fellow celebrities too nervous to publicly acknowledge God, fearing it could strain their careers.
“I have had moments where I was on stage receiving an award in front of my peers in Hollywood,” McConaughey said. “And there were people in the crowd that I have prayed with before dinners many times.”
But when he has thanked God from the stage, he’s seen those same peers often stop themselves when they instinctively begin clapping after he credits the Creator for his success.
“When I thank God,” he explained, “I saw some of those people go to clap, but then notice that, ‘This could be a bad thing on my resume,’ and then [they] sit back on their hands. I’ve seen people read the room and go, ‘That wouldn’t bode well for me in the future for getting a job or getting votes or what have you.’ I have seen that, I have witnessed that. I don’t judge them for it.”
He also called out cancel culture across the board, rebuking the increasingly progressive trend in Hollywood, where liberals are moving so far to the left, he said, they’re becoming “illiberal.”
“We’re making people personae non gratae because of something they do that is right now deemed wrong or it’s the hot point in a hot topic right now,” McConaughey told Rogan. “You can’t erase someone’s entire existence. Where the heck does some forgiveness go?”
Later in their conversation, the “Dallas Buyers Club” star said there are some who “go to the left so far” they become “condescending and patronizing to 50% of the world that need the empathy that the liberal side gives and should give.”
“To illegitimize someone because they say they are a believer is just so arrogant, and in some ways, hypocritical to me,” McConaughey said.
He also told Rogan he pulls many valuable life lessons from the Bible, noting he doesn’t see science and religion as incompatible with one another. Instead, he sees science as a valuable tool for believers.
“Science is the practical pursuit of God,” McConaughey explained. “The two are not exclusive. They dance together; they go together, belief and science. I never saw those as contradictions.”
What else?
McConaughey later talked about the Black Lives Matter push to “defund the police,” telling Rogan people have to get to the place where we agree there is a need for law and order while also acknowledging there are “a few bad apples” in police forces around the country who “either need to be trained better” or “need to be removed.”
“Also,” he explained, “the cops need to go to their communities and go, ‘Can y’all remember and understand our point of view, that we’re like the tow truck driver? We’re not called when there’s good news; we’re called when it’s bad news. So we’re coming in looking for trouble, alright? So we’re already under stress, even if we get a call. So can y’all help us in our way that we communicate? Can we get trust again that, if a cop says, ‘Hey, stand still, take your hands out of your pocket, hold ’em up,’ … that something’s not gonna happen to us that shouldn’t?'”
McConaughey told Rogan he doesn’t see how stripping law enforcement of its funding “repairs the relationship between the community and the police force.”
“I don’t see how that’s gonna rehabilitate that relationship. Now you have spite on both sides,” he said, later adding he would rather see police forces reallocate their own money for better training and to rebuild broken relationships with their respective communities.
Rogan told McConaughey he “couldn’t agree more,” noting law enforcement officers are under “insane stress every day,” worried they could be killed at any given moment.
“The human mind is not designed to deal with that kind of stress day-in and day-out,” he continued.