Jesus: Soul Man

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a new South African film portraying Jesus as a “modern African revolutionary”. I remember once hearing someone say that Jesus would have looked less like this and more like this.

Fine, as far as it goes. But the bigger question: is it a good movie? For 1200 years (from Constantine to the Reformation), the Church was the leading patron of the arts in the Western world (until the Puritan-types came along and ruined it all for us—see, it's not just sex!). And while religious art has had its ups and downs since, it's really only with the ubiquity of reproduction in the 20th century that insipid crap has become the norm for such things.

So the Passion movie and Narnia have been big hits, each for its own reason, including the fact that each in its own way was a well-crafted piece of work. In the long run, I'd like to think that high quality trumps good intentions.