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Evangelicals have inherited the word-based faith of the Reformers, but we find ourselves in a culture swinging back to a reliance on the visual, just as medieval culture was in so many ways a visual culture. Though the English Reformation put an end to the Corpus Christi plays, today Protestants are flocking to a twenty-first-century cinematic version of a fifteenth-century Catholic art form. Have we regressed? Or could it be that we, like the medieval Christians, have starving imaginations?

To what extent the medium of drama-whether on a portable stage in medieval England or on the big screen of a modern movie theater-can and should be used to tell the Christian story is a question still worth debating. And in this debate as in so many others, we cannot afford to ignore the voices that call to us across time.

Jennifer Trafton is a freelance writer living in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

—For the story of some unfortunate uses to which the medieval dramatic form of the Passion play was put in the modern era, see Collin Hansen's recent "Behind the News" newsletter for Christian History & Biography, "Why Some Jews Fear the Passion."

—For some thoughts on the historical accuracy of the story of Jesus' life as told in the Gospels, see Chris Armstrong's "Just a Closer Walk … with the Historical Jesus."

—On the question of whether those Gospel accounts are anti-semitic, see Steven Gertz's "Good News to the Jew First."

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