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.