Six Principles for Making a Life of Christ: The Chosen and its Forerunner

ANDREW: Master, they are not taking this at all well. You will lose your following if you say such extraordinary things.

THOMAS: I must say it’s hard to understand. Can you make it out, Judas?

JUDAS: I have seen a great danger come and go. But whether he is preaching God’s kingdom, or merely preaching himself—

JESUS: At any rate, Judas, it does not look like being a popular doctrine. The crowd is drifting away. Comfort yourself with the reflection that they are not likely to crown me king today.

The above dialogue is not a sneak peek of Season 5 of The Chosen. It’s a BBC radio drama called The Man Born to be King, and it aired in England during World War II. A twelve-part drama of the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King was broadcast on Sunday evenings over four-week intervals, beginning in December of 1941 and ending in October of 1942. The whole nation enjoyed the play; over the following years, the BBC re-broadcast several of its episodes, even as recently as 2007, on BBC 4. C.S. Lewis called it “a complete success” and read its published version every year for Holy Week. 

In many ways, The Man Born to be King is a forerunner to Dallas Jenkins’ seven-season portrayal of the life of Christ. The Chosen has become remarkably popular at home and is developing a global audience. As of spring 2024, it had been dubbed or subtitled into a record-setting fifty languages. Further, Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus, has met with the pope twice to discuss what it’s like to portray Christ. 

I have long been a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers, the author of The Man Born to be King. I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed The Chosen. But it was not until a student of mine proposed a senior thesis on Bible stories in drama that I thought to connect the two productions. Once I made the connection, their similarities were obvious—and all the more striking, since Jenkins does not seem to know about The Man Born to be King. A study of what they have in common might therefore give us some principles for what makes an effective portrayal of the life of Jesus. I’ve listed out these principles below, not necessarily in order of priority.¹  

Principle #1: Make good art.

The Chosen has received praise from both Christians and non-Christians as a high-quality production. I am not a film critic, but I can appreciate the virtues of wide-angle shots, close-ups, and a detailed set. To watch the show is to be entertained. This is because Jenkins feels called to be a good storyteller. “I was mowing my lawn one day and praying and just thinking through my career, and I just felt so strongly and powerfully God putting it on my heart, ‘I want you to make films and tell stories about me.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t really want to do that. They’re so bad.’ And He said, ‘Well, make good ones.’”

The author of The Man Born to be King was vociferously committed to quality craftsmanship. In her introduction to the published series, Sayers says, “It was assumed by many pious persons who approved the project that my object in writing The Man Born to be King was ‘to do good’…[but] my object was to tell that story to the best of my ability, within the medium at my disposal—in short, to make as good a work of art as I could.” She goes further to actively condemn bad craftsmanship: “A work of art that is not good and true in art is not good or true in any other respect, and is useless for any purpose whatsoever—even for edification—because it is a lie, and the devil is the father of all such.”

God is not honored with bad craftsmanship, however noble the aim. 

Principle #2: Write the characters as humans, not as stained-glass windows.

Both Sayers and Jenkins intentionally avoid stained-glass Christianity: characters in clean clothes, enduring hardship and even torture with placid, handsome faces. Jesus and the disciples must be real people who joke, grimace, and even use slang. As Sayers wrote to the BBC Director of Religious Broadcasting, “Nobody, not even Jesus, must be allowed to ‘talk Bible’…It seems to be frightfully important that the thing should be made to appear as real as possible, and above all, that Jesus should be presented as a human being and not like a sort of symbolic figure.”² In the same vein, Jenkins believes that, “As long as we know what Scripture is and what it isn’t, I think that we’re free to imagine and to think about these people because they were people, human beings, just like we are. And that’s often easily forgotten. We think of them as stained-glass windows.” 

Other than an adherence to Scripture, this may be the most important principle of all. If Christ does not act like a human, the producers slip into a historic heresy called Docetism, in which Christ only seems like a human. If people around Christ don’t act human, then it’s bad art. Both Sayers and Jenkins choose Matthew, in particular, to step outside the stained-glass window. Jenkins chose to portray him as someone with autism, thus reminding us that Jesus calls and uses all types of humanity, even those diagnosed with a disorder. Sayers made Matthew a shrewd businessman with, of all things, a Cockney accent. At a pre-release press conference, Sayers read a section of Matthew’s dialogue: “You ought to keep your eyes skinned, you did really. If I was to tell you the dodges these fellows have up their sleeves, you’d be surprised.” As we’ll see below, this little excerpt got her into trouble.

Principle #3: Be faithful to the Scriptures.

Jenkins’ catchword for this is “plausible.” He is a confessed evangelical who believes the Bible is the word of God, but that it does not cover every condition of Palestine under Roman rule. If Jenkins and his team, which includes theological advisors, can “fill in the gaps” with something that is plausible, then they will exercise their creativity there. Sayers was an Anglo-Catholic who had no interest in revolutionary theology: her goal was to share the Christ of the Bible and the Creeds. To that end, her plays were submitted to a Central Religious Advisory Committee, composed of a range of Christian leaders that included evangelicals and Jesuits. She presented Christian theology so accurately that the Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to award her with a Doctorate of Divinity: an honor she regretfully declined, on the grounds that she could do more good without an ecclesiastical label.

Principle #4: Be tough.

Both Sayers and Jenkins appear to have skin like crocodiles. As Jenkins has said, “I used to be someone who struggled with narcissism. I cared about affirmation. It was important to me, and now I really don’t care anymore.” 

Sayers had a reputation for being stubborn. In one letter to a producer, she asserts that “the writing of the English language is the affair of the playwright; I will give you my reasons for what I do, but if you do not accept them, I can only say, ‘Take it or leave it.’”³  The rest of the letter is quite entertaining: it begins with, “Oh no you don’t, my poppet” and ends with “I am sorry to speak so bluntly…”

Thick skin is critical for this type of production. Millions of people care about the story of Jesus, and they can be vocal in their disapproval. The Chosen has received its share of criticism: it is adding to the Bible, interpreting Jesus in non-biblical ways, making idols, and even championing Mormonism. The Man Born to Be King alarmed many Christian groups, notably the Lord’s Day Observance Society and the Protestant Truth Society, who, after hearing the Matthew excerpt above, tried to get the play banned. Such protests went all the way to Parliament, who struck them down. Furthermore, Sayers had the additional obstacle of a law in England that forbade any representation on the stage of a Person of the Trinity. While this did not affect radio drama per se, it did, according to her, “foster the notion that all such representations were intrinsically wicked.”

Principle #5: It’s okay to have a mixed cast.

The casts for both The Chosen and The Man Born to be King were selected for their ability to act and their suitability for the role, not for their personal faith. Jenkins states that more than half of the cast are not believers or traditional believers. Since the last editorial cuts come through him, and he is committed to the Christian story, he is not troubled by a diversity of belief in the actors.

Sayers operated along similar lines. In her essay, “Why Work?” she recalls a letter from a pious lady who enjoyed another play of hers, The Zeal of Thy House. The lady wanted to know if the men who played the archangels were selected for their moral character. Sayers replied that they were selected for several reasons: first, they had to be of equal height; second, of good physique to stay standing throughout the play; third, able to speak verse well; and fourth, good actors. “When all these technical conditions had been fulfilled, we might come to the moral qualities, of which the first would be the ability to arrive on the stage punctually and in a sober condition.”

The goal of casting is to find suitable actors, and it helps to be able to draw from all of humanity. This is not at odds with evangelism: asking a non-believer to step into the shoes of an apostle would be a powerful way to bring them closer to Christ.

Principle #6: It’s okay to make money.

In order to have a professional production, one must pay professionals. Both Sayers and Jenkins understood this. Already a celebrated novelist, Sayers knew the value of her own work; though she volunteered her time in various organizations, she rarely volunteered her writing. Writing was her profession, for which she must be paid. Because she valued her own skill, she valued the skill of others and expected that they would be paid for it. The Chosen is a for-profit television series, and while it does have a non-profit branch, it receives profitable income from crowdfunding and merchandise. 

These six similarities are remarkable for two shows produced in different media, different time periods, and different countries. There are even more I haven’t addressed. The necessity of teamwork: I’ve referred to Jenkins and Sayers repeatedly, but they openly credit their teams. The value of letting characters develop over several episodes, rather than one feature-length production. Finally, the courage to do something unprecedented: The Man Born to Be King had no predecessor and The Chosen is the first multi-season TV show about the life of Christ. 

When I began researching this article, I thought that the two productions spoke to substantially different audiences. And it is true that Jenkins’ post-modern, pluralistic, media-soaked viewers are a world away from Sayers’ war-weary listeners. What the success of the two productions indicates, however, is that the audiences are ultimately the same: people intrigued by a human, divine, holy, and likable Christ. Or as Sayers once said, the dogma still has drama.

1.  Please note that while I’ve attributed Sayers’ quotes to their sources, all of Jenkins’ statements are from podcast interviews with Patheos, Stetzer ChurchLeaders, and Jesus Calling. Like Sayers’ comments, they represent ideas he has expressed in a variety of venues. ↩︎
2.  Letter to James Welch, August 1, 1941, in The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, vol. 2 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 282.  ↩︎
3.  Letter to Derek McCulloch, Nov. 28, 1940, in The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, vol. 2 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 201. ↩︎