(She was a churchless believer herself, while his dad was a very firm atheist. His mom told us that some missionaries had dropped them by the house. They spoke against the fundamentalist practice of speaking in tongues. While there, we found some SBC tracts on the table. He and I had dropped by there for some reason and were raiding his mom’s deep-freeze. I still remember when it really hit me that there was a hard division between fundamentalists and evangelicals. So I encountered evangelical animosity nonstop, especially once I got into college and was brushing up against Christians of all kinds of beliefs and affiliations. The second time around, I lasted a lot longer in the UPCI. So I didn’t tangle much with the animosity I’ll describe shortly. However, I wasn’t there all that long for the first round.
Very shortly afterward, I joined the United Pentecostal Church, International (UPCI). This phase, which began in Houston in the mid/late 1980s, lasted just a few months. "No one did this for the money," he said.After growing up Catholic, I converted in my teens to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), an evangelical denomination. "I've long felt that Christian product tends to ignore our perspective."Īll performers received union scale pay with a few of the biggest names promised "nominal" percentages of profits, Bowser said. "I was particularly interested in developing a product that might resonate with the African-American community," Bowser said. They also wanted to shatter the Hollywood mold of white Bible productions. Producers decided early to cast only black actors and other personalities, hoping to attract a black audience, as well as fans of some of the world's biggest box-office draws. Underwood said in a written statement that he was proud to have worked on the project, which he called a "unique and timely" version of the Bible. "The production value was lacking, and I thought, gee whiz, if we could do this and really capture people's attention, how much more impactful and engaging it might be," he said.īowser formed a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based production company called Inspired By Media Group with three fellow Christians: new media executive Ron Belk, music producer Louis "Buster" Brown and casting director Robi Reed-Humes, who was principally responsible for getting commitments from the talent. A few years later, he bought a 65-CD audio Bible he quit listening to "after the first two or three discs" because he was not inspired by the storytelling.
Dutton is one of the performers on the new audio Bible.īowser, who is black, said he recommitted himself to Christianity in 1997 around the time his wife, TV sitcom producer Yvette Lee Bowser, was pregnant with their first child.
in the early 1990s, he helped develop such TV shows as the sketch comedy series In Living Color, a show with a mostly black cast that also propelled white comedian Jim Carrey to stardom, and the Charles S. The project is the brainchild of Kyle Bowser, a former television executive with a law degree. It will feature many of the same well-known actors, although someone will take over for Jackson as God, a role that will balloon from about two hours to more than 70 hours. By comparison, Zondervan, which publishes the five best-selling audio Bibles in the United States, sells about 60,000 units each year of its longtime top-seller, the New International Version Audio Bible.īible Experience is available on CD and in MP3 formats, with an Old Testament version due in fall 2007 that is expected to run much longer. Zondervan started shipping Bible Experience in late September and has sold more than 70,000 units, Caminiti said. We're thrilled with the way that the product has turned out," said Paul Caminiti, vice president and publisher of Zondervan Bibles, a Grand Rapids-based division of News Corp.-owned HarperCollins. "It's really good, and it's transcending every barrier. Jackson, who played a Scripture-spouting hit man in Pulp Fiction, is the voice of God. Blair Underwood portrays Jesus, and Samuel L. The 21-hour production features the voice talents of more than 250 singers, clergy and actors, including Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding Jr., Angela Bassett and Alfre Woodard.