Dallas Jenkins Responds to Criticism of ‘The Chosen’ With ‘Great News’: Viewers Read the Bible ‘More Than Ever’

“Ninety-nine percent” of the viewers say, “I’m reading my Bible more than ever.”

Jenkins also shared a story about a meeting he had with the leadership team for the Bible app, YouVersion. With half a million devices using the app, naturally, there is a team of engineers watching for and quickly solving glitches and anomalies.

A “glitch” surfaced years ago when there was an inordinate amount of searches for “Nathaniel.” The upsurge was unexplainable statistically, so the engineers were attempting to isolate and solve the glitch. One team member recalled watching Season 2, Episode 2 of “The Chosen” the previous night. Sure enough, in that episode, Nathaniel was introduced, and enough viewers were curious about the biblical character to cause an upsurge of searches on the Bible app.

“I immediately started weeping,” shared Jenkins, “because that is a perfect picture of exactly what we are hoping for.”

YouVersion also saw a “112% increase in searches for ‘David’ or ‘King David'” since the show, “House of David,” came out.

Dallas Jenkins Is Upfront About Content Research for ‘The Chosen’

Creater and director Dallas Jenkins shared a memory from well before “The Chosen” was a dream of his. “As a young guy growing up—I grew up in the faith and as a Christian—I loved TV and movies, but there wasn’t anything that represented my faith that I liked as much as the normal TV and movies I would watch,” he said. “If there was a Christian movie that came out, it wasn’t any good.”

Jenkins described how he felt God led him to create films that not only upheld wholesome and faith-based content but were of the highest quality—that of the Hollywood films with higher budgets. Jenkins felt God ask him, “‘My people deserve good stuff too. So why don’t you just make it happen?'”

“I would say, probably 95% of the content of the show isn’t directly from Scripture. People call it a Bible show; they’ll call it a Jesus show,” Jenkins said. “And I’m okay with that, but I’ll say, ‘This is actually—I mean the Bible is for sure the primary source of truth and inspiration for the show, but there’s a ton of content that isn’t actually directly from Scripture.'”

The creative team operates by asking, “Is this plausible?” While they don’t change what is biblically factual, they do fill in some gaps of this storyline. Writers research what the Scriptures say and what could have happened culturally and historically.

“It’s a dangerous proposition,” Jenkins admitted. “You’re walking a fine line, especially as someone like myself who loves the Bible, and I know that people who watch it, the majority of people who watch it, are going to be wanting us to remain faithful to the Scriptures as much as possible.”

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