Dressed in an Angel's Nightshirt”

Jesus and the BBC

Bibliographic Data

ID10063207
AuthorsMeredith Veldman (corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume56
Issue1
Pages117-137
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of British Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/jbr.2016.117
OpenAlexW2571668345
LanguageEN
References cited21

This article examines images of Jesus broadcast on the BBC from the 1930s through the 1950s. During these years, the BBC sought to use its cultural influence to replace popular religiosity with what the clerics who staffed its Religious Broadcasting Department (RBD) regarded as a more masculine, modern, and vigorous national religious faith. To achieve this aim, the RBD marshaled the might of British New Testament scholarship and its image of a warrior-like, apocalyptic historical Jesus. Yet the RBD's hopes of bridging the gap between popular religiosity and its own vision of Christianity went unrealized. Programs on Jesus that reached a genuinely national audience— The Man Born to be King , Dorothy L. Sayers's wartime radio drama, and Jesus of Nazareth , a popular television series from the 1950s—instead featured Anglicized and ahistorical images deeply embedded within British popular culture. The story of Jesus on the BBC highlights both this popular culture's strength and Christian Britain's fragmentation

Art · Christianity · Drama · Faith · Historical Jesus · Literature · Media studies · New Testament · Newspaper · Political science · Popular culture · Religiosity · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · History · Law · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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