In a move we can only assume came at the tail end of a long, thoughtful process of looking at its own content, personalities, and rampant biases, and concluding, “Nah, not nearly oppressively Christian enough,” Fox News is apparently following in the footsteps of our old pals at the CW and pivoting to Jesus. More. Pivoting to Jesus-er.
This is according to Variety, which reports that the cable news network’s subscription VOD service, Fox Nation, is launching a new faith-based vertical for itself—titled, simply enough, “Fox Faith”—that will add even more explicitly Christian material to its offerings, to go with all the implicitly Christian viewpoints it already had on tap. And if you were wondering how the network would launch this new move, and then guessed “a big push into celebrity podcasting with Neal McDonough as Jesus,” well, that’s the kind of spooky accuracy that gets people burned as witches ’round these here cable news networks.
Specifically, Fox Faith is launching The Life Of Jesus podcast, a 52-installment series featuring some ridiculously big-name voice talent attached. That includes McDonough—who’s talked in the past about how his unwillingness to kiss non-wife women on-screen, a choice rooted in his devout Catholicism, lost him work in Hollywood—plus Kristen Bell as Mary Magdalene, Sean Astin as the apostle Matthew, Malcolm McDowell as Biblical villain Caiaphas, Julia Ormond as Mary, John Rhys-Davies as the narrator, and Brian Cox, Logan Roy himself, as the voice of Da Big Man, God. (Oh, and Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt will be doing intros for each episode, just to keep things firmly in the Fox News ecosystem.) Interestingly, the 52 episodes will be released in batches of 13 linked to individual Christian holidays, because Fox’s data—which, at the end of the day, is what’s dictating this stuff—says people get hungrier for Biblical material around the holy days.
