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              by the Editors of ReligionToday

May 11, 2000


CBS miniseries leaves some questions

CBS will televise the miniseries "Jesus" (see link #1 below)
Sunday, May 14, and Wednesday, May 17, at 9 p.m. Eastern and
Pacific times.

...Hollywood veterans Jacqueline Bisset as Mary, Armin
Mueller-Stahl as Joseph, Debra Messing as Mary Magdalene, and
Gary Oldman as Pontius Pilate are joined by 25-year-old Jeremy
Sisto in the title role. The $24 million production uses Morocco
as a setting.

...Producer Lorenzo Minoli spent five years working on "Jesus."
He took the story line from John's Gospel and tried to balance a
human and divine portrait of Jesus, news reports said. Minoli
told Religion News Service that he is "a proud believer in
Christ" who was raised a Catholic in Italy, moved to the United
States 10 years ago, and married a Unitarian.

...Sisto, Bisset, and co-producer Judd Parkin had an audience
with Pope John Paul II in his Vatican City residence last year
and presented the pontiff with a video copy of the miniseries,
CBS said.

...The four-hour, two-part miniseries will take the Gospel to
people who aren't going to read the Bible, its proponents say.
The movie "renders an important service in presenting the life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ" to a large audience,
said A. L. Barry, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
(see link #2 below).

...Certain "liberties and embellishments" are taken in the film
for the sake of developing the plot that "although not biblical,
[are] not necessarily overtly offensive," Barry said.

...But two important misimpressions of Jesus are given, he said.
The first is that Jesus, after the death of his earthly father
Joseph, didn't know what to do with Himself, and later is unclear
about His mission. "Jesus Christ was never for a moment unsure of
His work," Barry said. He understood "full well" what He would
one day have to do, "go to the cross as the willing, obedient
Lamb of God to take the sin of the world."

...The movie also leaves a faulty impression about the purpose of
the crucifixion, Barry said. Sisto, as Jesus, says in the movie,
"I am in the hearts of men. I will die for the everlasting
kindness of the human heart, created by the Father, so that men
will make His image shine once again, and those who will want to
will find in me the strength to love until the end."

...This is "exactly the opposite reason why Jesus died on the
cross," Barry said. "God did not sacrifice His Son 'for the
everlasting kindness of the human heart.' He sacrificed Him
because the human heart, since the fall of Adam and Eve, has been
darkened with evil and plagued by sin."

...CBS refused to run a Christian Web site's advertising during
the miniseries. The network said it rejected advertising for
iBelieve.com because it "relates too closely" to the show and
could confuse viewers into thinking the ad and show promote each
other. CBS said it would not run the ads on the show Touched By
An Angel for the same reason.

..."A huge amount of theologizing is coming out of Hollywood,"
Steve Humphries-Brooks, a religious studies professor at Hamilton
College (see link #3 below), told PR Newswire. Such shows are
"very influential," he said. Many viewers who have only a passing
knowledge of Scripture base their knowledge of Jesus' life on
those films, not on the Bible, he said. "Films show the extent to
which the story of Jesus has been freed from specific church
dogmatic control."