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Who are the movie-hating Catholic group behind the Good Omens petition?

Michael Sheen as the Angel (right) and David Tennant as the Demon in Good Omens - PA
Michael Sheen as the Angel (right) and David Tennant as the Demon in Good Omens - PA

To get 20,000 signatures on a petition directed towards the wrong company is quite an impressive feat.  Yet the Return to Order campaign’s petition for Netflix to cancel Good Omens has the subject of ridicule, after it became clear that the demands were directed at the wrong streaming service.

Good Omens, the six-part television adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel which stars David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale, was released by Amazon Prime last month.

But what The Return to Order campaign lacks in attention to detail, it makes up for in passion. An offshoot of the US Foundation for a Christian Civilisation, the campaign takes issue with the biblically-inspired series on several counts.

The first is that, “An angel and demon are good friends, and are meant to be earth’s ambassadors for Good and Evil respectively.” The second grievance is: “This pair tries to stop the coming of the Antichrist because they are comfortable and like the earth so much.” The third: “God is voiced by a woman.”

The list goes on, deploring the fact that The Antichrist is portrayed as a “normal kid” and that the four riders of the Apocalypse are “a group of bikers.” In short, it believes that the show “mocks God’s wisdom”.

Sheen and Tennant in Good Omens - Credit: Amazon Prime Video/PA
Sheen and Tennant in Good Omens Credit: Amazon Prime Video/PA

This isn’t the first time that the Return to Order campaign, and its controversial orchestrator, have concerned themselves with policing the world of entertainment.

Using John Horvat II's catchily titled tome Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society – Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here and Where We Need to Go as its sourcebook, the campaign spends a considerable amount of time objecting to pop culture it deems unchristian.

Horvat II is the Vice-President of The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), an organisation that calls itself “the world’s largest anticommunist and antisocialist network of Catholic inspiration.”

TFP has a history of protesting against plays, films and TV shows that it views as blasphemous. These include Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary (1985), Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the 1998 play Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. In 1999, TFP coordinated 300 protests outside cinemas to protest Kevin Smith’s 1999 film Dogma.

Crazy Rich Asians - Credit: Sanja Bucko /Warner Bros. Entertainment
Crazy Rich Asians Credit: Sanja Bucko /Warner Bros. Entertainment

A more recent release to come under fire was Crazy Rich Asians. In his blog post, “The Other Sexual Abuse Culture That No One Dares to Mention”, Horvat II criticised the blockbuster “that swept the nation with rave reviews”. He wrote: “One scene shows what Kyle Smith described in a National Review article as a ‘bachelor party [that] takes place on a huge freighter, in international waters in the company of bikini models from around the world.’

“Here is a case of implied actions by powerful, rich men with sexually suggestive women that would be outside the reach of the law in international waters. Audiences fantasize with playing out the sinful roles. Society is expected to be complicit, accepting these mortal sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments as normal. No one complains.”

The Return to Order campaign, which describes itself as a “a rallying cry for Americans to reject the frenetic intemperance of modern life and adopt a lifestyle of self-restraint and honor,” has also taken issue with Netflix, Walmart and an ice cream company called “Sweet Jesus”.

In 2017, they created a petition entitled “New Disney movie promotes homosexual sin to children!” It implored people to “Tell Disney to stop promoting homosexuality!” because Beauty and the Beast included the studio’s first ever gay character and love scene.

Beauty and the Beast - Credit: Disney
Beauty and the Beast Credit: Disney

The campaign gathered almost 38,000 signatures for a petition decrying Cards Against Humanity, and its appeal to “Protest: Walmart Selling Satanic Products!” was signed by over 75,000 people.

On the American retail corporation, they wrote: “Walmart has come under fire – the fire of hell – for selling satanic products. Their online catalog has 22 pages – around 440 items – of demonic merchandise.

“The products include demonic sculptures and figures; satanic pornography that blasphemes Christ’s crucifixion; numerous products and jewellery with pentagrams and other demonic images, and books that include the Satanic bible and books on spells.”

The Return to Order campaign also objected to Netflix’s The Chilling Life of Sabrina, a series about a half-mortal, half-witch teenage girl, on the basis that it’s an “unabashed promotion of witchcraft and Satanism.”

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Credit: Diyah Pera/Netflix
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Credit: Diyah Pera/Netflix

But Pratchett fans can sleep easy; Amazon Prime do not seem to be entertaining the idea of cancelling the series. In fact, it’s even been joking about the furore with its main competitor.

Yesterday, Netflix’s social media account quipped, “ok we promise not to make any more”, while Amazon joked about the mix up, “Hey @netflix, we’ll cancel Stranger Things if you cancel Good Omens.”

Although the streaming giant appears to have taken the petition in its stride, the tepid critical response to the comedy series may be a little more difficult to laugh off.