Day 30. November 13, 2006
Movement 3. Jesus Christs
Lecture 14. The Silent Cinematic Lives of Jesus (Part 3)
Lecture 15. Jesus in Depression and War, 1914-1945 (Part 1)
DeMille's The King of Kings was an explicitly evangelical work which he sold with glamour and sex appeal. By the film's release in 1927, Woodrow Wilson's political crusade to make the world safe for democracy had fallen flat and disillusionment and isolationist reaction had set in. The Great Depression and then the 'Good War' introduced to the 'Greatest Generation' the federal government as a great competitor to organized religion and welfare capitalism in the work of caring for people. Within American Christianity Jesus faced new competition from God the Book as the Fundamentalist Movement, in reaction to the Social Gospel and efforts to set the Bible in cultural context, recrafted the Bible as the paramount and inalterable object of belief.