Jesus Christ: Movie Producer?

What Would Jesus Do? Maybe start his own movie production company. Since the late 1990s, conservative evangelical production companies have released several surprisingly successful movies nationwide, using mainstream cinematic genres, familiar actors, popular music, and sophisticated special effects to promote a right-wing political agenda.

This represents a tactical change in the Christian Right's cultural struggle with Hollywood. The days of Christian boycotts and picketing are over, according to Producer Matthew Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Gener8Xion Entertainment: "Instead of doing something like a protest and organizing 25,000 people to set upon Universal Studios over here," Crouch told the Los Angeles Times, "just make a movie and support it and vote on it at the box office." The strategy seems to be paying off. Crouch's 1999 end-of-times thriller The Omega Code, starring Michael York, was the year's #1 independent film, grossing over $14 million. Its sequel, Megiddo, a dramatization of the battle between God and Satan described in the Book of Revelation, was released shortly after the terrorist attacks last September and earned $6 million in four months.

Now, the Christian Right movie business, inspired by the success of Omega Code, is beginning to compete on Hollywood's own turf, vying for the hearts and minds (and pocketbooks) of American movie-goers. Among the offerings:

One Day in May (Double-Edged Entertainment). Soon to tour the film festival circuit, this youth-oriented anti-abortion melodrama is touted as "Gen X Breakfast Club meets the ANTI-Ciderhouse Rules." Although pitched as a "debate" about abortion, the film's website contains only extreme anti-feminist and anti-choice propaganda linking abortion to pedophilia, crime, drug abuse, and suicide.

Left Behind (Cloud Ten Pictures; grossed $4.2 million). Based on the best-selling book series by Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye and conservative evangelical Jerry Jenkins, this right-wing interpretation of Biblical prophecy is billed as an "X-Files type thriller." The object of its paranoia? Omnipresent, satanic, world-government conspiracies. TV actor Kirk Cameron stars.

Hometown Legend (Jenkins Entertainment; grossed over $96k). Produced by Jerry Jenkins and released by Warner Brothers, this saga of a high school football team called the Crusaders is set in contemporary small-town Alabama. Its focus on "faith, football, and family" harbors a nostalgic longing for a simpler, more conservative era (i.e., the Reagan years).

And more are in the works. As audiences for these films grow, mainstream movie companies are taking notice. Recently, Artisan Entertainment announced that it has acquired the North American rights for the upcoming Jonah-A Veggie Tales Movie (based on the hugely successful children's cartoon promoting a "Judeo-Christian worldview"). The creator of Veggie Tales, Paul Vischer, does not grind the same ideological ax as some other Christian producers, but he does share their evangelistic mission. "What media can do is affect our entire culture on a massive scale," Vischer told Home Life magazine. "My goal is to take our entire culture and push it toward God. My long-term goal is to reintegrate the religious core of America with the media lifestyle of America."