When March for Life organizer Jeanne Mancini introduced the star of the viral television sensation The Chosen, a streaming series based on the life of Jesus, to the stage at this year’s rally, the thousands of attendees standing on the National Mall went wild for actor Jonathan Roumie.
“Jonathan! Jonathan!” women screamed from the crowd.
The actor joined the stage taking a quick selfie of himself with the screaming crowd in the background and encouraged them to tag themselves when he posts it to social media.
“God is real,” the actor declared at the beginning of his speech. “How do I know this?”
Roumie paused and laughed as he clarified to the crowd, “I’m not him. I’m not the real Jesus. Let’s just get that out of the way.”
Roumie then pointed at the sky, “Real Jesus.”
Then pointed at himself, “TV Jesus.”
Roumie added, “Jim Caviezel is movie Jesus.” Then he pointed to himself again: “TV Jesus.”
The popular TV series The Chosen, created and directed by Dallas Jenkins and distributed by Angel Studios, is the No. 1 crowdfunded media project in history. It was originally funded by 19,000 investors who invested $10 million to produce season one. The series now has over 471,500,000 views in the Angel Studios app in almost every country in the world in 58 languages.
THE CHOSEN SHOCKS BOX OFFICE WITH NO. 3 OPEN
When the series debuted season three episodes one and two in theaters in November, they shocked box office sales when they shot to No. 3, beating out top Hollywood movies.
The Chosen actor went on to give a sermonlike speech at the March for Life. He called the audience’s anti-abortion advocacy “the noblest and worthiest cause possible.”
“You have chosen to journey to our nation’s capital today to not only mourn the 64 million children lost through abortion for the last 50 years but to champion those yet to be born,” Roumie said.
The “TV Jesus” actor quoted scripture from Psalm 139:13, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
Roumie added that evil in the world “wants us to believe that abortion does not harm us as a society.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
He took on Hollywood “as an artist in the entertainment industry” and said there has been a disturbing increase in the “darkness of the imagery being used in film, television, and music.”
“The landscape has increasingly become sinister and, in some cases, even demonic in tone, more so than in previous years, sometimes subliminal and oftentimes overt,” he told the March for Life crowd.
Roumie slammed the media and the impact of its coverage.
“I’m referring to the media, which is even more ominous, and I don’t need to name names. You know it when you see it,” Roumie said. “Media has become a portal to behavior and attitudes kids want to emulate to reject God. Reject the light. Reject ultimately all those aspects of community which give life,” he said.
Roumie ripped popular culture for “suddenly and radically” removing God over the past couple of decades.
“They say we live in a post-Christian society. I reject that. You can reject that,” Roumie told the crowd. “Change the culture by impacting the culture.”
