The Ambitious Genesis Project Falls on Hard Times

More enthusiasm than cash for filming the Bible.

In 1975, the Genesis Project embarked on a 20-year task of filming the entire Bible word for word in three English translations. As the project nears its midpoint, the directors are holding their breath to see whether the advent of new communications technologies can help offset staggering production cost overruns. The company has a $17 million deficit.

So far, Genesis Project has produced the feature-length film Jesus and complete renditions of Genesis and Luke, each consisting of more than a dozen 15-minute films. Painstaking attention to detail—down to specially thrown pottery, rebuilt synagogues, and rewoven clothes—has won high praise from virtually everyone who has seen the New Media Bible, as it is called.

But sales figures have not matched the initial enthusiasm, and production costs have skyrocketed. The problem appears to be the price: for all 33 films (18 installments of Genesis and 15 of Luke) the cost is almost $10,000. Buyers—mostly mainline Protestant churches—tend to acquire it piecemeal, purchasing one or two $300 packages at a time.

The packages include a film, audiocassettes, a leader’s guide, projectionist’s script, and ten copies of Bibletimes magazine to accompany the script.

While cost overruns are higher than expected, according to producer John Heyman, the work is proceeding on course. Along with trust in the Lord, the people at Genesis Project are putting plenty of faith in new technologies that may eventually bring the New Media Bible within the grasp of individuals.

In mid-May, the Luke and Genesis chapters were made available on videotape, costing $1,500 each. The combined price for both books on video is one-third the price of the 8 and 16 mm. film versions. Video would be shown on television screens.

By Christmas, Heyman expects to be distributing his product on videodiscs as well, and he foresees the day when all 225 hours of the New Media Bible will be condensed on a microchip which would program television sets to show the Bible.

“I hope by the time we finish filming in 1993 or 1994 that we will be able to disseminate this as reasonably as an inexpensive book,” Heyman said. “These new technologies are a tremendous boon.”

Heyman’s optimism about new technologies is not shared universally, because many market uncertainties remain. For example, videodiscs exist in two varieties that are incompatible with one another. And the microchip is an idea scarcely off the drawing board.

Even the drop in price from film to videotape is a mixed blessing. Buyers still are not beating down the doors, partly because they anticipate even lower prices as other options become available. They remain cautious about sinking their money into video equipment that could be outdated quickly in a changing market, according to a former Genesis Project sales staff member.

At the project’s U.S. marketing office in Washington, D.C., indications are that Heyman is accurate in forecasting growing interest among individuals. Following a single appearance by project spokesmen on “The 700 Club,” more than 600 calls were received in 10 days. Many of these individuals said they have a specialized use for the videotapes, such as a prison ministry or home Bible studies.

Marketing efforts so far have attracted about 3,000 customers and many of these consist of “cluster groups” of churches that share the materials. United Methodist congregations account for 23 percent of the sales, followed by Baptists at 20 percent.

Genesis Project is a for-profit corporation funded by private investors. Heyman personally put up $2.5 million, and others, including Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, have invested $15 million.

People at Genesis Project view their product as Bible translation rather than entertainment or ministry. C.B. Wismar, director of the project’s U.S. operation, said “We are not a religious film company. We are Bible translators and have, in a sense, revolutionized the translation of the Bible by making it audio-visual.”

But rather than being an alternative to the old-fashioned way of studying Scripture, Wismar said he finds the films encourage people to return to reading. “People are drawn back into the written word with a new freshness,” he said.

Currently, research is being conducted that will culminate in the filming of Acts, Exodus, the remaining Gospels, and the rest of the Pentateuch. Heyman anticipates 93 consecutive weeks of filming during 1983 and 1984, on location in the Middle East. To pay for the next phase of production, Heyman must raise additional money.

He admits to having qualms about production costs, but says, “I trust absolutely that the work will be finished.”

Jerry Falwell Will Start Publishing A Magazine

In September, Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour will begin publishing a monthly magazine entitled the Fundamentalist Journal. The editor’s note in the first issue says the magazine will “create a forum to encourage Christian leadership and statesmanship to stand for the old-time religion in these critical days.” The magazine will carry advertising and is planned to be self-supporting in two years.

Jerry Falwell will be listed as editor-in-chief. Other staff members will be Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, administrators at Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College, who will be senior editors; Nelson Keener, Falwell’s administrative assistant, who will be managing editor; and Ruth McClellan, coordinating editor.

The first editor’s note also says, “For too long fundamentalism has been misunderstood, maligned and misrepresented by those outside the movement. This magazine sets the record straight as to who we are and what we believe. We are proud of our fundamentalist heritage. It is time that we defended, from within, the movement that has made such a dynamic impact on America.”

Personalia

Tetsunao Yamamori has been appointed executive vice president and president-elect of Food for the Hungry. Yamamori will assume the presidency in 1984, when current president Larry Ward plans to step down. Yamamori has taught at Biola University and Fuller Theological Seminary.

Most Americans, sensitized by the Iranian hostage episode that began in 1979, are keenly aware of the rise of militant Islam. Far fewer have been alerted to growing Hindu aggressiveness in India.

A militant Hindu society, Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS, the Hindi words mean National Pure Service), rose from obscurity 20 years ago and now wields powerful influence on its own. It does so through some 50 affiliated organizations, including the Hindu Resurrection Front and the Temple Protection Front. The RSS political wing controls 8 daily and 40 weekly newspapers. Other militant Hindu groups also operate.

Over the last several years, rising fervor in Hindu observance has led to increased ostracism of the low-caste harijans, or untouchables. Numbers of them have reacted by bolting from Hinduism to Islam or Christianity where they could expect less doctrinaire discrimination. The defections fostered an untypical missionary zeal among Hindus, and rising stridency and recriminations on all sides.

As it gathered strength in the Hindu heartland of northern India, the RSS encountered government suppression in those states. This pushed it into southern India with its much larger Christian minorities. The Christians grew alarmed.

Last winter the tension erupted along the Kanyakumari coast, the southern spout end of the funnel-shaped subcontinent. This district has the highest concentration of Christians in the state of Tamil Nadu (perhaps 45 percent), and the RSS had targeted it for action. The district name is that of a Hindu “virgin goddess,” and the RSS charged that the Christians were out to make Kanya Kumari into Kanni (Tamil for virgin) Mary.

Along the shore is a historically low-caste group of fishermen that converted from Hinduism to Roman Catholicism during the time that Francis Xavier preached along this coast in the sixteenth century. Just inland are the Nadars, a relatively prosperous and predominantly Hindu cultural grouping. They include, however, a significant Protestant minority (attached to the Church of South India), converted after the British arrived in the nineteenth century.

Over the last year there have been several confrontations between the RSS and Christian Nadars.

Trouble began to build in February. A Hindu awakening conference led to the installation of an idol on a traffic island in the town of Thingal Chandai. When worshipers disrupted traffic, the highways department removed the idol, causing Hindu resentment.

Then the trouble erupted at the end of the month during the annual Hindu temple festival in Mandaikaadu, a Nadar village.

Celebrants customarily pass through the adjacent fisher village of Pudur to take a holy dip in the sea. Enroute they drop coins in the collection box at the small Christian shrine on the edge of the village. To encourage this, the fisher folk play music over the shrine loudspeaker.

This year at the Manaikaadu temple festival, RSS volunteers showed up to manage things—many of them dressed in uniforms resembling those of the police. Anti-Christian propaganda began to blare over the temple loudspeakers.

Incensed, the Christians at the Pudur shrine turned up their volume and pointed their speaker toward the temple.

The next day a fisher boy got in an argument with RSS men and was beaten up. The Pudur villagers responded by attacking men they presumed to be RSS volunteers—actually police. Routed at first, the police returned and shot at those villagers who were at the shrine, killing G and wounding 15.

The violence rapidly spread to neighboring villages. Fishermen attacked the Nadar village of Eetamozhi, razing a few of its shops. In turn, Nadars burned down the entire fisher village of Pallam, including all its beached catamarans.

In the months since the outbreak, the Tamil Nadu state government has held discussions with both Christian and Hindu religious leaders, has instituted a judicial inquiry, and has banned the public airing of religious propaganda over loudspeakers.

But the tensions remain, and India’s Christians have been served notice that Hinduism no longer fits its traditional passive image.

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