Faith Crowdfunding Liſts
‘Faith Market’ Producers raise millions for movies, TV shows.
J BY MAGGIE MACFARLAND PHILLIPS
esus revolution and the Chosen are not just Christian dramas but part of a revolu- tion in faith entertainment.
The former, a feel-good movie
about hippies who returned to Christ during the 1970s, starring former Cheers and Frasier actor Kelsey Gram- mer, has grossed more than $52 mil- lion since its debut this year — the most successful film released by studio heavyweight Lionsgate since 2019. But the instructive parable may be
its predecessor. Since its release in 2017, the television series The Chosen, portraying a charismatic Jesus and his youthful disciples, showed it didn’t need Tinseltown’s blessing. Through crowdfunding, its pro-
ducers have raised millions of dollars from thousands of fans, and the show is now in its third season. The show has been breaking view-
ership records, screening in theaters and on streaming platforms. It is tout-
ed as “the largest fan-supported enter- tainment project of all time” by the Religion News Service. A parallel Christian entertainment
industry — movies, music, books, tele- vision, and radio shows created for and by Christians — has existed along- side the mainstream for decades, but until now, Christian media generally has operated under the radar. Yet a 2020 study conducted by
National Research Group (NRG) identifies a target audience of 41 mil- lion people aged 16 and over, with an additional 18 million who could be reached “given the right marketing.” “In the last 15 years, a ton has changed,” said Terence Berry, COO of Wedgwood Circle, a nonprofit that connects investors and creators to develop projects informed by their Christian faith. “We’ll call it the ‘faith market.’
It’s largely been outside of the Hol- lywood system.” Wall Street Journal film critic Kyle
Smith said: “There is a major market for biblical stories. We saw that back when Passion of the Christ sold $600 million in tickets, and yet there was no rush in Hollywood to do anything similar.” The California-based Come and See Foundation now funds the production costs for The Chosen, as well as the translation and distribution to enable the show to be available worldwide through tax-deductible donations. The NRG study said that only one
in three members of the target audi- ence for the faith-based market iden- tifies as Christian, which bodes well for His Only Son, a movie from Angel Studios, which also helped launch The Chosen. His Only Son, about Abra- ham’s last-minute reprieve from a divine mandate to sacrifice his son, is a story that appears in both the Chris- tian and Jewish bibles, and in a differ- ent form in the Quran.
First-Ever Religious Charter School OK’d A
BY NICOLE STELLE GARNETT | Manhattan Institute
school board in Oklahoma has voted to approve the first religious charter school in the nation. The school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic
Virtual School, is a joint effort of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa and would serve students throughout the state as early as fall 2024. The application makes clear that St. Isidore
will be a Catholic school, top to bottom. The goal is to bring a high-quality, authentically Catholic education to students who would otherwise lack access to it in a large rural state with many underserved communities. Until now all states have required charter schools to be
“nonsectarian” in their operations, and most, including Oklahoma, also prohibit them from being operated by or afiliated with a
38 NEWSMAX | AUGUST 2023
religious organization. In December 2022, Oklahoma Attorney General John
O’Connor said these prohibitions likely violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, clearing the way for St. Isidore’s application. But the school faces an uphill battle.
O’Connor’s successor as attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has withdrawn O’Connor’s blessing on state constitutional grounds. And a diverse array of advocates and
reformers are opposing St. Isidore. Rachel Laser, president of Americans
United for the Separation of Church and State,
vowed to take legal action, and Nina Rees, the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, issued a press release stating: “All charter schools are public schools, and as such must be nonsectarian.”
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