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Editor’s note: (Catherine Rickles (@kathrynreklis) is an associate professor of theology at Fordham University and co-director of the Comparative Literature Program. She is a Screentime columnist for The Christian Century. The views expressed here are her own.read more comments on CNN.)
(CNN) I’m not the target audience for “The Chosen One” popularmostly audience funding TV series based on the story of Jesus from the Christian Gospels. But I’m definitely the target demographic for people who have lived their lives constantly being told they should watch it – but, perhaps remembering all the mediocre Christian pop culture of their youth, haven’t brought themselves to do it yet.
I was a former home-schooled teen who grew up in the center of the evangelical counterculture of the 1980s and is now a cultural historian of modern Protestant Christianity, so it’s no surprise that people in many corners of my life insisted I read Strange. Here are some versions they say: “The characters are too complex and the story told too well. Not just Christian good; really good.”
Given my profession, and the fact that I also have strong opinions about what constitutes good TV (and a good rating in the “Christian good” category), I eventually gave in. I found “The Chosen One” to be a compelling form of storytelling that perfectly embodies the imaginary world of Christianity as I know it, but the question of whether it’s good TV will depend on whether viewers can jump outside those imaginary horizons.
As I watch the three seasons currently available, I keep thinking how perfectly the art of multi-season, world-building drama fits the show’s Christian imagination-building style. In this imagined world, the world Jesus inhabited seemed concrete and concrete, his loved ones seemed fragile and complex, and many Christians’ claims about what his life and death meant seemed solid and realistic. Rather than complicating contemporary evangelical orthodoxy, the show makes that orthodoxy seem very real.
“The Chosen One” Is the Pinnacle of an Ever-Evolving Style of Biblical Interpretation American evangelicals More than a hundred years.evangelicals appear in 18th century, mainly because forms of empirical reasoning and rational calculation—most people in the economic transition of modern colonial capitalism have experienced less lofty philosophical debates—seem more real than the miracles of Jesus or the mysteries of redemption.By the early 20th century, this anxiety had become central question For many Christians: the fear that the story of Jesus might be more of a myth or allegory, that the miracles and revelations of Jesus might be challenged by other standards of truth (such as scientific empiricism or religious pluralism), these The story doesn’t feel real like gravity is real or your mortgage is real.
For many evangelicals, becoming a Christian means committed to reality In all of these stories, double down on “this really happened” and try to live the stories as if they were true.So it’s no surprise that evangelicals are prevalent as entertainment technology evolves popular media — From radio, film and books to Sunday school lessons. The way these stories spread about reading the Bible has influenced many ordinary Christians, even if they don’t consider themselves “evangelical” in the survey.
In fact, the influence of the evangelical imagination is most evident in Christian popular culture, where it influences millions of Christians of all denominations and creeds. focus on family supply biblical advice Millions of Christians, including Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Mormons, are seldom considered evangelicals.
Children of these adults may watch “The Vegetable Story,” a popular children’s cartoon that uses anthropomorphic vegetables to retell Biblical Stories as Moral Parables, hoping to bring you a more comprehensive understanding of the Bible. “The Chosen One” creator and director Dallas Jenkins is the son of Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the wildly popular “Out of Time” series of books that may have single-handedly popularized a Evangelical Interpretation of Bible Prophecy About the end of the world that continues to fuel America’s culture wars. Falling Behind is understood by its author and many avid readers as a use of fictional techniques to make the whole system of theology seem real and compelling.
Jonathan Roumie, who played Jesus in Season 1 of “The Chosen One”
Likewise, in The Chosen One, what appears to be true is not just Jesus, but a whole set of schemes for interpreting Christianity as historically accurate, coherent, and not plagued by historical contradictions or inconsistencies. Buried in the show’s narrative arc are answers to nagging questions that challenge the veracity of the Gospels—like why Luke’s story includes the Virgin Birth while the other Gospels don’t, or why John’s Gospel begins so differently than the other Gospels. Many Christians flashback the episodes in the Hebrew scriptures as prophesying the life of Jesus, making the entire arc of Christian redemptive history seem like the unspoken unfolding of a good show, like someone figuring out how all the houses relate to each other. “game of Thrones.”
Anyone who has lived in the imaginative world of contemporary evangelical Christianity knows how strong the desire and pressure is to believe that all of this really happened. Every youth pastor I have worked with has tried to convince me and my peers of everything we are asked to do – abstinence before marriage, obedience to our parents, the ability to witness to our incompetent peers, patience, loyalty and humility —these will come naturally if we can trust our hearts with the certainty of those who have seen them. I’m sure I’ve had more than one friend recommend this show to me during my time and they’ve said with confidence that maybe that’s what made me — skeptical and regressive — actually believe in the end.
But is watching TV the same as what an orthodox evangelical might recognize as a true Christian? This may be where the medium of television transcends the forces of orthodoxy. On the one hand, watching “The Chosen One” is about replicating the transformation it dramatically portrays. On the other hand, that’s not how great TV works.
I asked some of my former and current students to watch the show and talk to me, and since most of them grew up outside the imaginary world of American evangelicalism, I was curious how they would react. They all found the merits of the show. One of them said that Jesus seemed a lot more friendly and even aggressive among the “chosen people” than he thought, given how narrow-minded and judgmental he thought most Christians were. “It’s not as good as Inheritance,” a former student of mine told me earnestly, “but it’s much better than reading the Bible.” Somewhere between Inheritance and the Bible might not sound like high praise , but she took that as a compliment, given her low expectations for reading the Bible and Christian pop culture.
But when I pressed her and the other students why they all felt the show was inferior to other TVs they liked, it had little to do with production values ​​or Christians making cheesy art. They both felt like the show wanted something from them. It’s not like other shows don’t want to be liked, they said. But the best thing about great shows is that you can disagree with them or debate their merits with others, or love and hate them at the same time. “I can say that this show really, really wants me to like it, and if I don’t like it, I feel like there’s something wrong with me,” one concluded.
One of the most archaic avenues of American evangelicalism is through art and literature, for these experiences tend to produce uncertainty and ambiguity that are ruled out by an imagination shaped by firm conviction. There are signs of this dangling interpretation in the show, such as when Jesus challenges religious authority and appears unpredictable, possibly even blasphemous.
My students love these moments the most. Of course, in the show’s overarching imaginary world, Jesus and his disciples insisting that he is the Son of God can all be radical or volatile, and the show is letting us see that for real. But if it’s really “good TV” and not just “Christianity is good,” then there’s no clear way to control how viewers interpret these characters, or which religious authorities their own transformative revelations might point to. A lack of confidence in how things are really happening can open up space for new things to happen now.
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