Perhaps the impact of The Passion of the Christ was bigger than I was initially led to believe. The Mighty Barrister seems to think the survey results are biased.
"Despite marketing campaigns labeling the movie the 'greatest evangelistic tool' of our era, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of those who saw the film stated that they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in reaction to the film's content."
Surprised? I was at first, but not once I did a little digging. It turns out that George Barna, “Founder and Directing Leader of the Barna Research Group, Ltd.,” is a born-again evangelical.
Barna's religious preferences appear to have colored his conclusions, if not the survey's methodology itself. Take, for example, the last sentence in the quote above. It is almost guaranteed that nearly all of the people who saw the movie were believers in Christ before they saw the movie. He tells us that 53% of the people who saw the movie were “born again Christians,” but he doesn’t tell us how many were Catholics. In fact, the only time he mentions Catholics at all is in a slightly disparaging remark, noting that “Protestants were more likely than Catholics to give The Passion an “excellent” rating (78% versus 68%, respectively),” – and this is mentioned right after he says that the groups most likely to disparage the movie were “atheists and agnostics, homosexuals and liberal Democrats.” We are in fine company.
Funky Dung
Comments 4
Another hidden effect is that it provided the worst press the evangelical community has had in ages.
Two hundred million dollars were made off of people who just couldn't pick up on the fact that they were being manipulated.
The goulish aspects of it were also disturbing.
The evangelical community came across as not being overwhelmingly bright or particularly wholesome.
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Posted 03 Aug 2004 at 11:19 pm ¶Another hidden effect is that it provided the worst press the evangelical community has had in ages.
Given the liberal bias and occasional hostility toward religion exhibited by the media, that doesn't surprise me.
Two hundred million dollars were made off of people who just couldn't pick up on the fact that they were being manipulated.
By whom? Pardon my ignorance, but I follow neither where this came from nor where it's going.
The goulish aspects of it were also disturbing.
Scourging and crucifixion weren't pleasant. Gibson may have exaggerated the number of lashings, but he actaully skimped out on the bruising and bloodshed. Besides, I've seen action and horror movies that have shown much worse but didn't elicit a peep from the media. In fact, I hadn't seen the media whipped into such a frenzy since Robocop.
The evangelical community came across as not being overwhelmingly bright or particularly wholesome.
And liberals came off as paranoid fear mongers with their half-baked prophesies of violence toward Jews that was "inevitible". As it turned out, the evangelicals, and other conservative Christians, didn't display the prejudice and hatred their opponents predicted. Rather, those opponents showed how much they hated all religion that wasn't all warm fuzzies and feel-good platitudes.
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Posted 04 Aug 2004 at 12:49 am ¶John, Gibson made more like 400 million by manipulating folks like myself, not 200 million.
And I'm glad that you found the Passion disturbing, by the way. I'm glad slasher flicks haven't completely numbed us. It's not good that such things happen to people–recall that Peter told Jesus that He should not suffer and die. But in this case, the suffering and death lead to our salvation. Hence Jesus told Peter "Get behind me, Satan!" when Peter wished that Jesus would not suffer and die.
BTW, thanks for the nod on my FT appearance, Funky. You too, Quenta.
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Posted 04 Aug 2004 at 1:08 am ¶I was one of those manipulated by "The Passion" — I sat in a movie theater and was manipulated to the point where I finally felt I understood a little bit of Christ's pain.
By the way, every effective use of communication is a form of manipulation, making the vital question "what purpose does the manipulation serve?"
In this case, one of the purposes it serves is to wake up Christians to an important part of the reality of who we're supposed to emulate; for those who don't yet believe, it serves to illustrate the greatest of love for a world that (especially nowadays) has no clue what love really is.
We spend our lives subjected to manipulation by politicians, corporate branding, and other less worthy causes — we could do much worse than to allow ourselves to be manipulated by the forcefulness of Jesus' suffering.
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Posted 05 Aug 2004 at 1:50 pm ¶Post a Comment