Kirk Cameron's Faith Embraced on The View

The ladies on The View do know how to treat Christianity respectfully.  It just has to come from a former teen idol.

Kirk Cameron, aka Mike Seaver from Growing Pains, stopped by The View on May 28 to talk about his newly released autobiography, Still Growing.

 

Cameron wound up telling the story of how he became a Christian. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Cameron was willing to talk about his faith, as he's known for his role in the Left Behind movies, based on books by Christian writers Dr. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.  What was surprising is the mostly positive response he received from The View's panel. 

Sherri Shepherd did not shy away from the subject, bluntly asking Cameron, “You were an atheist when you were younger.  And something was missing, so what happened?”  

Cameron explained:

Well, when I was about 17 or 18, I pretty much had grabbed the golden ring. You know, I was making lots of money. I was pretty famous, I had everything I wanted, but I got to thinking about the fact that I was part of the ultimate statistic. 10 out of 10 people die. And I think it's good to think about that every now and then. And I thought if there's really a god who's blessed me with this wonderful life, I've done everything but say thank you. And I started asking questions and became convinced that there is a God and He's blessed me. And I want to live my life in a way that says thank you. And be the person He wants me to be.

In addition to Cameron's story of how he came to embrace Christianity, he revealed the strength of his character when Whoopi Goldberg asked him about Hollywood's reaction to his turnaround in lifestyle.  He replied:  

I had lunch with a guy who said “Boy, Kirk, you sure picked the one religion that's unacceptable in Hollywood, didn't you?” And I kind of laughed, but, you know, sometimes you can feel especially as a 17-year-old kid who's trying to formulate some convictions and stand on them. You talked about earlier being a hero as someone who will blow the whistle even when nobody else has got the guts to. There were times when I felt like, we're a family show and I want to do the right thing and I'm uncomfortable with this scene. Let's do something different. And sometimes it's viewed as a power play, especially from a 17-year-old kid who's on the cover of some magazines. That was tough.

The View's token non-liberal, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, couldn't resist calling Cameron's conversion to evangelical Christianity “one of the most shocking paths a child star can take.” Joy Behar questioned whether Christianity is really considered “unacceptable in Hollywood.”

Cameron's opportunity to speak out about his faith is similar to the treatment Eduardo Verastegui, star of the pro-life film Bella, received from NBC's Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford earlier this month.  Like Cameron, Verastegui appeared on a national morning talk show, Today, to promote a project and ended up speaking about how his faith transformed him. 

But this raises the question, can only heartthrob actors speak out favorably on Christianity?

Colleen Raezler is a research assistant at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the MediaResearchCenter.