Made for believers and skeptics. Funded by both.

Marketing The Messiah began with a simple irritation: the story of how Christianity actually started, the one historians broadly agree on, isn’t well understood — by Christians or non-believers. Neither group tends to read the scholarship (and fair enough — it’s pretty dry and boring).

So we decided to make an entertaining film that might appeal to both groups to broaden awareness of the real story of early Christianity — which is, funnily enough, neither dry nor boring.

Written and directed by Cameron Reilly, the film brings together twelve PhD biblical scholars and ancient historians — including practising Christians — and lets them tell the first hundred years of the world’s biggest religion the way the evidence tells it. It was funded on Kickstarter by hundreds of backers, believers and non-believers alike.

The result has been watched well over half a million times, screened at universities including MIT, argued about on TikTok, and praised by viewers on both sides of the aisle — which was always the point.