Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey said last week that he’s personally witnessed Christian friends in Hollywood hold out on expressing their faith publicly at risk of potentially losing out in their career.
During a podcast released Thursday with host Joe Rogan, McConaughey recalled fellow actors he has prayed with holding their applause when he thanked God during award speeches.
“I have had—and I won’t throw any people under the bus—but I have had moments where I was on stage receiving an award in front of my peers in Hollywood, and there were people in the crowd that I have prayed with before dinners many times, and when I thanked God, I saw some of those people go to clap, but then notice that, ‘bad thing on my resume’ and then sit back on their hands,” McConaughey said.
“I’ve seen people read the room and go, ‘whoa, that wouldn’t bode well for me in the future,’ if for getting a job or you’re getting votes or what have you,” McConaughey continued. “I have seen that; I’ve witnessed that. … I don’t judge them for it, I just wish, you know—that it seems like a silly argument.”
McConaughey tied the bias against Christians to the “illiberal” Left “condescending and patronizing” to half the population.
“One of the things that … some people in our industry, not all of them, but there’s some that go to the Left so far—as our friend Jordan Peterson [says]— that go to the illiberal Left side so far that it’s so condescending and patronizing to 50% of the world that need the empathy that the liberals have,” the actor told Rogan.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a professor, a clinical psychologist, and an author who describes himself as classically liberal and has been critical of authoritarianism from the Left.
Touching on cancel culture, McConaughey noted that it’s wrong to “illegitimize” someone “because they say they are a believer, it’s just so arrogant and in some ways hypocritical.”
Personally, the “True Detective” star said, he doesn’t think his career was hurt by being openly Christian, later noting in the podcast that he “slipped through the net” and had developed his career to a point where he was invulnerable to such bias.
Earlier in the podcast, McConaughey proudly told Rogan that he is a “religious” man, outright rejecting the descriptor of “spiritual and not religious,” notably associated with Hollywood liberals.
When discussing with Rogan why he is a believer while also believing in “science,” McConaughey said he saw no contradiction between the two.
The actor also emphasized that he objects to throwing out the Bible just because parts of it have been “bastardized” by some people to promote division.
WATCH (relevant comments begin at the 1:04:00 mark):
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