Mr. Kadagian has produced a cultural creation that reflects a private passion: his fascination with the personality of Jesus. Mr. Kadagian recently completed The Jesus Movement, the first videotape in a series of three programs for television about the life and message of Jesus.

The video was produced by Four Seasons Productions with Mr. Kadagian as producer and director. Although he doesn't appear on screen, he conducted the interviews with the three narrators, all of whom he greatly admires. "I got to question my heroes!" he said.

Mr. Kadagian funds his production company through his financial corporation, Four Seasons Asset Management. When entrepreneurs spend their extra money on private projects, it's interesting to see what philanthropies, hobbies, and cultural interests they support. D J Kadagian could have financed just about anything. Why did he choose the Jesus Movement?

His project reflects a personal quest. Mr. Kadagian grew up in a family whose view of religion was "almost militant atheistic," he said. As a child, he spent much time in Europe, where his religious impressions were gathered from vast cathedrals, resounding organs, and sober visual art. Christianity seemed "heavy, kind of cold. The art was depressing," he said.

Mr. Kadagian began attending church (about ten) years ago. He found, however, that the institution inhibited rather than expanded his religious understanding. Mr. Kadagian wanted to connect with the spirit of Jesus himself. Instead he heard about a wrathful God, about sin and repentance, about strategies for achieving heaven and avoiding hell.

"When I heard these messages, I really shut down. I couldn't experience any of it," he said. But he was still intrigued…His positive initiation into religion came through television programs such as The Power of Myth, the PBS series in which journalist Bill Moyers conversed with Joseph Campbell, who before his death in 1987 was the world's foremost authority on mythology.

When D J Kadagian gets interested in something, whether it's the financial markets or religion, he takes the total plunge. There were six parts to the Mores/Campbell series. "I've probably watched them each 100 times," he said.

These videos, much more than sermons and statuary, helped Mr. Kadagian realize that Jesus' admonitions to "Love God with all your heart and mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" are the ideas at the heart of all religions - Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, as well as Christianity. "The message that these great wisdom faiths have is not only very similar at the core but very simple," he said.

A couple of years ago, D J Kadagian enrolled in Yale Divinity School. He planned to major in world religious studies. But again process got in the way… His divinity-school career lasted about a month.

That's when he decided to explore the personality of Jesus in a documentary series of his own…Many people, he feels, are like himself and need to escape from the intellectual and the institutional to experience the nature of Jesus. But most viewers, whether they object to the formalistic side of religion or not, will find that The Jesus Movement, with its compelling experts and its immersion in art and music, succeeds in revealing Jesus' compassionate yet powerful personality.