The making of Jesus

Christian Century, June 6, 2001 by John Dart

Bright will leave an evangelistic empire based in Orlando, Florida, that now has 24,000 full-time staff and 553,000 volunteers worldwide as well as nearly 70 niche groups for athletes, prisoners, business executives, inner-city residents and others. Bright was the 1996 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, with the Jesus film counted as one of his principal achievements. This year the National Association of Evangelicals presented him, in absentia, with a lifetime achievement award.

If Heyman's suit puts the brakes on part of Campus Crusade's film distribution, or shuts it down, such a scenario might not disturb Bright greatly. Speaking in general about his ministry, he has said, "`We play games with God when we think we own anything. At best, we're stewards."

Despite his long fascination with film-making, Bright has been critical of the entertainment industry. In 1988, amid a widespread religious protest against director Martin Scorcese's film rendition of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ, Bright offered to raise donations to reimburse Universal Pictures for its monetary investment--reportedly as high as $10 million--if the studio would turn over all copies of the film for them to be destroyed. He said he anticipated that "concerned individuals across America" would contribute to cover Universal's costs. Lew Wasserman, chairman of Universal's parent company, MCA, declined, backed by other studio executives in saying that freedom of expression was at stake.

By 1998, Bright had a mellower view of Hollywood. It may have helped that his Jesus film has reached unprecedented audiences while Last Temptation has been largely forgotten. Furthermore, the highly rated CBS program Touched by an Angel and the DreamWorks animated film Prince of Egypt have demonstrated a friendlier attitude by studios toward religious and family themes. Along with sending a mailing to 30,000 churches encouraging a more positive approach to Hollywood, Bright formed a leadership committee of Protestant clergy that met with studio executives to extend an olive branch.

Regarding Bright's initiative, Movieguide publisher Ted Baehr said, "I think it says to Hollywood that they can make a film like Joan of Arc or Prince of Egypt and expect more communication and cooperation from the church." Baehr, who arranged Bright's meetings with studio heads, annually stages the largest film award show for moral and religious content. Though unwilling to criticize Southern Baptists for their Disney boycott on gay issues, Bright was quoted as saying, "I think working together we can accomplish a lot more than if we assume adversarial roles."

John Dart is the CENTURY's news editor.

How the critics see Jesus

WHEN JESUS PLAYED in theaters in 1979-80, the New York Times said it was "little more than an illustrated Gospel, with nothing in the way of historical and social context." The portrayal of Jesus by actor Brian Deacon was along "conventional" lines, the newspaper said. A handful of other publications, comparing the John Heyman-produced film to other movies of that genre, tended to regard it as superior to the remake King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), but falling short of Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977).