Barna survey shows ‘Passion’ had little evangelicalistic effect

Despite predictions that it would become one of the greatest evangelistic tools of its time, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” failed to capitalize on the opportunity, even though ticket sales made it the eighth highest-grossing domestic film of all time.

Those are the findings of a new poll from the Barna Group, a research firm which determined that less than one-tenth of one percent of those who saw the film stated that they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in reaction to the film’s content. More than 1,600 people were surveyed for the poll.

“Immediate reaction to the movie seemed to be quite intense, but people’s memories are short and are easily redirected in a media-saturated, fast-paced culture like ours,” George Barna, the director of research, said in a news release. “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.”

The poll also determined that the film, which portrayed the final 12 hours of the life of Jesus, failed to have an impact on people’s determination to engage in evangelism, with less than one-half of one percent of the audience saying they were motivated to be more active in sharing their faith in Christ with others as a result of having seen the movie.

One of the lessons from this situation, Barna said, is that major transformation is not likely to result from a one-time exposure to a specific media product.

“In an environment in which people spend more than 40 hours each week absorbing a range of messages from multiple media, it is rare that a single media experience will radically reorient someone’s life,” he said. “The greatest impact through media seems to come from constant exposure to a consistent message that is well-presented and is personally meaningful or useful.

“The ‘Passion’ was well received and stopped many people long enough to cause them to rethink some of their basic assumptions about life. But within hours those same individuals were exposed to competing messages that began to diminish the effect of what they had seen in Mr. Gibson’s movie. That does not negate the power of the movie or the value of the message it sent, but it does remind us that a single effort that is not adequately reinforced is not likely to make a lasting impression.”

Changed behavior
While the evangelistic impact was far less than envisioned, the movie did score well when it came to changing behavior.

“Don’t lose sight of the fact that about 13 million adults changed some aspect of their typical religious behavior because of the movie and about 11 million people altered some pre-existing religious beliefs because of the content of that film,” the researcher said.

In the survey, people who had seen “The Passion” were asked if it affected their religious beliefs in any way. Just one out of every six viewers (16 percent) said it had. When pressed to describe the specific shifts in their spiritual perspectives, the most common changes were the perceived importance of how they treat other people, becoming more concerned about the effect of their life choices and personal behavior, and gaining a deeper understanding of, or appreciation for what Christ had done for them through His death and resurrection. Each of those changes was named by 3 percent of the aggregate viewing audience.

Prayer, church attendance
The audience was also asked if viewing the movie had affected their religious practices. In total, 18 percent said some aspect of their religious behavior was different due to seeing the movie. The most common behavioral changes listed included praying more often (listed by 9 percent of those who saw the film), attending church services more often (8 percent), and becoming more involved in church-related activities (3 percent).

Overall, one out of every 10 viewers of “The Passion” (10 percent) indicated that they had changed some aspect of both their religious beliefs and practices in response to the movie.

Those figures, he said, translates to 11 million to 13 million people making some sort of change because of the film’s content.

“That’s enormous influence and you cannot fault ‘The Passion’ for not satisfying religious agendas that some people assigned to it,” Barna said.

“More than any other movie in recent years, ‘The Passion’ focused people on the person and purpose of Jesus Christ. In a society that revolves on relativism, spiritual diversity, tolerance and independence, galvanizing such intense consideration of Jesus Christ is a major achievement in itself.”

Impressive showing
A matter that has not been debated is the movie’s impressive following and, according to Barna, box-office receipts provide one measure of the popularity of Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus Christ. The survey discovered that nearly one out of every three adults in the country (31 percent) claim to have seen the movie. While that is considerably less than the numbers who said they had seen other recent mega-hits such as “Finding Nemo” (57 percent), “Pirates of the Caribbean”(45 percent) and “Bruce Almighty” (42 percent), each of those movies had the benefit of increasing its audience share through video and DVD rentals after their theatrical release came to an end. At the time of the survey, ‘The Passion’ had yet to be released for home viewing.

An even more impressive indicator of the film’s popularity is the quality rating it received from those who saw it. While the film critics of many leading newspapers and magazines trashed the movie, viewers raved about it. Overall, two out of every three adults (67 percent) said it was “excellent,” and most of the rest (23 percent) described it as “good.” Seven percent said “The Passion” was “average,” while a combined 2 percent rated it as “below average” or “terrible.”

As might have been expected, evangelicals were the most enthusiastic about the movie (89 percent said the movie was excellent) while the lowest ratings came from atheists and agnostics, homosexuals and liberal Democrats. Protestants were more likely than Catholics to give “The Passion” an “excellent” rating (78 percent versus 68 percent, respectively), the survey found.

While many people argued that the film was bolstered by the support of religious zealots, the Barna data indicates that Gibson’s movie drew a broad-based audience into theatres. There were no significant variances between those who saw “The Passion” and the national population related to age, gender, education, household income or presence of children in the household.

Demographics not surprising
The only population groups that were more highly represented at showings of “The Passion” than they are in the national population were single adults (48 percent of the 18-and-older population is single yet 53 percent of the movie’s audience was not married) and Hispanics (13 percent of the national population compared to 20 percent of the audience). Roughly half of the people who saw the movie (53 percent) were born-again Christians, which is somewhat higher than their incidence in the adult population (38 percent). Similarly, adults who are atheists or agnostics represent about 12 percent of the national population, but were just 4 percent of the viewing audience for this movie.

If the statistics concerning the spiritual inclinations of viewers are projected to the U.S. population, then the study would estimate that approximately 36 million adults who saw the movie were born-again Christians and an additional 31 million were not born again.

The Barna data in this report are based on a nationwide survey conducted by The Barna Group among 1,618 randomly selected adults during the last week of May.

Published, November 2004

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