There are many signs that Christian entertainment is having a moment. But the biggest one is the beards, which are everywhere. Switch on “House of David”, a new series on Amazon Prime Video, and you will be offered biblically big beards, alongside biblically big battles, in a retelling of the story of David and Goliath. Tune into “The Chosen”, and you will get more big beards, this time starring alongside big bad Romans, in a retelling of the life of Jesus. Stream “Jesus Revolution”, a more modern offering about a Californian pastor in the 1970s, and you will get beards with flares and fixed-gear bikes.
Jesus’s viewing figures—much like Jesus himself—have risen. “The Chosen” has been watched by around 280m people worldwide. “Mary”, about the mother of Jesus, became the third most viewed film globally on Netflix after its release in December. Today “House of David” is the eighth most popular series on streaming services in America. New religious shows and films are in store: seven faith-based titles were given the green light by streamers in 2024, up from just one in 2021. More will be commissioned this year. Streamers’ catalogues have also become holier: in January they hosted 487 religious films, more than double what they had in 2022.
The deity being served by streamers is not only God, but Mammon. The huge popularity of “The Chosen”, which was seen as such an unlikely success that it was crowdfunded before its release in 2019, has helped convert Hollywood by demonstrating the merits of religious content. (The show’s fifth season will play in American cinemas starting March 28th, before moving to Prime Video in June.)
The broader social climate in America is suitable for Christian fare, too. J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, recently invoked Thomas Aquinas, an Italian theologian, when talking about immigration policy; Donald Trump has promoted a “God Bless the USA” Bible; and popular writers such as Jordan Peterson are flogging bestselling books about faith.
However, some film-makers argue that it is less that Hollywood has seen the light than that the world right now feels very dark. Over the past few years people have felt “frayed”, says Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten, the head of the Wonder Project, an independent studio that made “House of David”. Today people want to watch things that “restore faith”, which, she argues, is much “bigger and broader than just God”. The studio describes its mission not as making Christian TV but as “restoring faith in things worth believing in”.
Such as, say, profit margins. In a saturated streaming market, these films and shows are offering that most Christian of values—hope—to their makers. Faith-based shows have proved profitable for several reasons. The first is that they are relatively cheap and simple to make. The story of Jesus does not rely on many special effects (water, even when it turns into wine, is not expensive); nor do they need big-name celebrities (as founder of the world’s largest religion, Jesus offers name recognition enough). They can also tap into a large audience—some 2.4bn people globally identify as Christian.
Not all of these films and shows offer biblical stories. Some merely serve up what are called “Christian values”; in other words, they are low on sex and violence and high on the feel-good factor. They are the kind of programmes that “you could take your grandma to”, says Alice Thorpe of Ampere Analysis, a research firm.
It is not quite the case that these films contain nothing bad: Goliath would dispute the idea that Christian stories are non-violent, and Mary Magdalene, who appears in “The Chosen”, is widely believed to have had some R-rated moments. But in such series and films these scenes are muted in their depiction and—as in some crime novels—contained within a reassuring structure, with good eventually triumphing and villains being vanquished (if not in this series then at least off-screen in the well-known sequel, “Hell”).
It is easy to see why streamers might choose for their shows to diverge from the straight texts: adapting biblical stories can be tricky. God might have made Heaven and Earth, but he does not always make the best screenwriter. The Bible tends to be good “on plot”, says Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, a professor at the ALT School of Theology in Sweden, but it “doesn’t have a lot of dialogue”.
Nor is all of what the Bible contains useful. Some lines, such as Jesus’s cry in Luke 23:34 (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”), are ready for their close-up. But others, such as Leviticus 18:17 (“Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter”), require more than a little workshopping.
Different Christian shows and films, therefore, take different approaches to their source material. Some simply use it as a jumping-off point; others write scripts that sound more like scripture. Many of the lines of “House of David” are lifted directly from the Bible. But the series is likely to go lighter on other parts of that story, such as the moment when David, wooing a wife, “slew of the Philistines two-hundred men” then “brought their foreskins” and gave them to the king.
From medieval mystery plays to films, including “Quo Vadis” (a religious epic from 1951) and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), Christians have always pillaged sacred texts for entertainment and enlightenment—with varying degrees of critical success. The New York Times described “Quo Vadis” as a blend of “visual excitement and verbal boredom”. Mr Gibson’s “Passion” was so bloody that it was summed up as “a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie”.
Reviews of more recent fare have been similarly unchristian. “Mary” was panned by a critic as “the single worst film I’ve seen all year”, and “House of David” has been described as “wooden and cheap-looking, humourless and dull”. Such slings and arrows seem to make little difference. The “Quo Vadis” review glumly concluded that the film was such drivel that it would “probably be a vast success”. It became the highest-grossing film of that year. The viewing figures of “The Chosen” and “House of David” continue to climb, whatever critics say. In entertainment, as in history, a little persecution seems only to deepen Christian fervour. ■
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