NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)—As the eighth highest-grossing domestic film of all time, “The Passion of The Christ” was viewed in theaters by 31 percent of adults in the United States, according to a report by The Barna Group. But the film’s impact may be far less than many evangelical leaders had hoped for. Barna found that two out of every three adults who saw the film said it was “excellent.” Most of the rest described it as “good.” The Mel Gibson movie drew a wide variety of Americans to theaters, and the study estimates approximately 36 million adults who saw the movie were born-again Christians and an additional 31 million were not born again. The discouraging news to some evangelicals is that just one of every six viewers said the film affected their religious beliefs in any way, and less than one-10th of 1 percent said they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior in reaction to the film’s content. Furthermore, less than one-half of one percent of the audience said they were motivated to be more active in sharing their faith in Christ with others after seeing The Passion. “Immediate reaction to the movie seemed to be quite intense,” researcher George Barna said in a July 10 news release, “but people’s memories are short and are easily redirected in a media-saturated, fast-paced culture like ours. The typical adult had already watched another six movies at the time of the survey interview, not including dozens of hours of television programs they had also watched.”
