Meet the Non-Christian Fans of The Chosen

About a year ago, Vicki Neulinger was experiencing what she now calls “the abyss”: suffering from anxiety, navigating a difficult divorce, and feeling completely apathetic about life.

“I was in utter confusion,” said Neulinger, a 43-year-old woman from Virginia. “In that dark moment, I wasn’t living. I was surviving.”

One day in March 2024, after moving in with her parents, she was browsing Amazon Prime Video for a new show to watch and came across The Chosen. The beloved historical drama about Jesus and his disciples will release the first two episodes of its fifth season in theaters on March 28.

The start of season 1 didn’t grab Neulinger right away. She switched it off. But then, she said, she heard a voice.

“I swear, I heard [God] say, ‘You go back to that show, and you turn it on, and you’re gonna watch it.’ And I did,” she said.

As Neulinger watched, she was reminded of her childhood encounters with God. Her grandmother, a devout Christian, had often brought her to Sunday school. Later in life, Neulinger drifted away from her faith, exploring materialism, New Age spirituality, and magic. She learned spells and practiced voodoo and joined Facebook groups where self-described witches ranted about Christianity.

This history meant she deeply related to the character of Mary Magdalene, who in The Chosen’s first episode is suffering from demonic possession. At first, Neulinger didn’t realize the character played by Jonathan Roumie was Jesus. It was when he addressed Mary that Neulinger remembered words her grandmother spoke over her when she was a child: “The Lord calls us by name.”

“That’s when I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s Jesus!’ and it made me cry,” she said.

Since its 2019 debut, The Chosen has become wildly popular. According to the show’s team, an estimated 280 million people have tuned in on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and a dedicated app, drawn in by prestige production values and the down-to-earth, culturally informed portrayal of Jesus and his disciples. The Chosen broke the record for the most-translated TV show, with availability in more than 50 languages. Its creators, led by showrunner Dallas Jenkins, have reportedly crowdfunded nearly $100 million and plan to produce seven seasons.

Season 5 will focus on Holy Week. After its theatrical release, it will stream on Prime Video for 90 days, then be available for free on The Chosen app.

Much of the discourse about The Chosen has focused on its enthusiastic—and sometimes controversial—reception among evangelicals, who make up the majority of the show’s fan base. But the show has also resonated with another demographic: fans who don’t identify (or at least, didn’t used to identify) as Christians. The show says a third of its fans are not religious.

Some, like Neulinger, grew up going to church but left the faith as adults; now, they’re reexploring Christianity through the show. Others are agnostics or atheists yet appreciate The Chosen’s grounded, personable portrayal of Jesus. Some started watching with hostility to Christianity and finished the four seasons with a change of heart.

Matthew Page, a UK-based independent scholar who has studied adaptations of the Bible in film and authored the book 100 Bible Films, said that the Jesus of The Chosen feels distinct from many other depictions of Christ: He laughs easily, dances on occasion, and looks and feels like a regular human being.

“There’s something very everyday and ordinary about him,” said Page, who has also blogged extensively about the show. “You see moments of him acting with divine power, but he’s very human, very easy to relate to, very Jewish.”

Taylor Chee-Schmidt, who lives in Seattle and works as a program manager for a tech company, identifies as an atheist. She started the show a month ago and has been binge-watching to try to finish past seasons before the new one arrives.

“I watched the first episode, and from the get-go there’s an exorcism,” Chee-Schmidt said. “It seemed real. It was a humanized exorcism. It reminded me of whenever I’m in a metro area in downtown Seattle, and there’s a lot of unhoused people and mentally unwell people, and sometimes they’ll have an episode.”

Chee-Schmidt also appreciated how the show felt authentic to first-century Galilee and Judea.

“It’s not just all blond, white, blue-eyed people. They actually have people of color who are portraying these roles,” Chee-Schmidt said. “It doesn’t feel like they just looked in the closet for biblical features of the 1930s and brought out props from golden-age Hollywood.”

For others, watching the show has been a way to reengage with childhood faith. Michael Lamping, a 29-year-old who works in IT in Wisconsin, grew up attending Catholic Mass but stopped believing in Christianity after the weekly ritual felt increasingly like a chore rather than an expression of worship.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lamping discovered The Chosen and was captivated. He became inspired to learn more about Christianity and began to engage with historical documents related to the Bible, critical analyses of Scripture, and lectures about faith.

“The story helped me immensely with realizing that faith isn’t something to be afraid of as a lot of media portray it,” he said.

The Chosen has also left an impact on people of other religions. Sabi Ali, a 26-year-old office administrator in London, grew up Muslim and would often debate with her Christian cousins about faith. Last year, her cousins convinced her to start watching The Chosen.

After the first episode, Ali was skeptical. But by the end of the second, she was in tears, and she ended up binge-watching the show in a week and a half. One scene in particular resonated deeply with her.

“It was when Jesus came to the boats with Simon Peter and Andrew and none of them were getting any fish,” Ali said. “Jesus said, ‘Throw the net again.’ I had goose bumps all over my body, and I didn’t know why but I felt so emotional.”

Ali began to doubt the teachings of Islam and the Quran, which says that Jesus was a miraculous prophet but not the incarnate Son of God.

Then, one day during her binge of The Chosen, she and her cousins were returning home when a man appeared and offered Ali a leaflet about the gospel. “Jesus loves you,” he said, and then he disappeared. Ali took it as a sign from God.

“My cousin was facing him, and he didn’t give it to my cousin. He gave it to me,” she said. She began going to church regularly and now identifies as a Christian.

Ali also introduced her mother—a staunch Muslim who had frowned upon Christianity—to the show. They began watching together; soon her mother was streaming the show even when Ali was away working. Now, her mother has also become a Christian and spends her free time reading the Bible and watching videos about faith.

“It was what I was looking for,” Ali said of The Chosen. “I needed something without realizing it was what I was looking for. God was like, ‘You need to know the truth, and this is going to help you understand.’”

Like Ali’s mother, Vicki Neulinger has also started reading the Bible more because of The Chosen. After starting to watch the show, she purchased an NIV Study Bible and found online guides that paired Scripture passages with each episode. She developed a routine: Before watching an episode, she would read the designated Bible passage. In this way, over the course of six months, she read the Bible cover to cover for the first time.

She still faces many difficulties, but she feels she’s in a better place now than last March. By the grace of God, she is crawling out of the abyss, and by some strange miracle, it is a television show that has helped her do it.

“I just think that God has been knocking on my door my whole life. He’s been banging on it,” she said. “And this was finally his way of saying, ‘Open the door.’”

Christopher Kuo is a freelance journalist based in Ireland. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Duke Magazine, and elsewhere. 

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