Tuesday, August 16, 2005
"Jesus", the Movie, Coming to your Mailbox
Millions of dollars to spread the word. The Lord will take care of the hungry and homeless...if they are Christians.
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According to a New York Times report by Shaila Dewan, evangelical Christians have taken a page out of AOL's direct mail campaign. Christian organizations plan to mail a DVD of the 1979 movie "Jesus" to every household in certain target States.
Excerpts:
"However dated its production values, "Jesus" has come to be viewed by many evangelical Christians as a singularly modern tool for spreading the Gospel. It speaks, though without special effects or quick editing, to a populace fluent in Hollywood. It comes in multiple languages on one disc. It concludes with a "salvation prayer" the viewer can recite with the narrator. Its local distributors consider it so effective that millions of dollars have already been spent toward the goal of delivering a copy to every household in the United States, as if it were free trial software from America Online."
"..................Over the years, the effort, which began using direct mail after Alabama, has been criticized by people who objected to Jesus' being played by a white actor, or who said the money could be better spent on the poor, or who felt that the mailings were unwelcome proselytizing. Perhaps the most vigorous objections came in 2000, when a mailing was done in Palm Beach County, Fla. Thousands of videos in heavily Jewish West Palm Beach were returned, some taped to bricks in hopes that the sender would have to pay the postage, according to news reports."
While some viewers might be persuaded to embrace Jesus, other recipients of the DVD
would do what I do with the AOL software---toss it into the trash container.
Excerpts:
"However dated its production values, "Jesus" has come to be viewed by many evangelical Christians as a singularly modern tool for spreading the Gospel. It speaks, though without special effects or quick editing, to a populace fluent in Hollywood. It comes in multiple languages on one disc. It concludes with a "salvation prayer" the viewer can recite with the narrator. Its local distributors consider it so effective that millions of dollars have already been spent toward the goal of delivering a copy to every household in the United States, as if it were free trial software from America Online."
"..................Over the years, the effort, which began using direct mail after Alabama, has been criticized by people who objected to Jesus' being played by a white actor, or who said the money could be better spent on the poor, or who felt that the mailings were unwelcome proselytizing. Perhaps the most vigorous objections came in 2000, when a mailing was done in Palm Beach County, Fla. Thousands of videos in heavily Jewish West Palm Beach were returned, some taped to bricks in hopes that the sender would have to pay the postage, according to news reports."
While some viewers might be persuaded to embrace Jesus, other recipients of the DVD
would do what I do with the AOL software---toss it into the trash container.
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