Trying to Fill Broadway Seats With Those Who Fill the Pews Tom Allen, center, with Rev. Richard D. Baker at a reception at Sardi's, where he mingled with religious theatergoers after seeing "Leap of Faith," one of many shows with religious overtones. Jesus is cracking jokes, sharing parables and dying for our sins in three Broadway musicals this spring, while another six shows feature religious themes that are woven through dialogue and lyrics. But what many of these productions lack are ticket-buying multitudes who identify themselves as people of faith, a group rarely courted by Broadway producers offering the sort of focused advertising campaigns that turned movies like "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Blind Side" into unexpected hits. Tom Allen is working to change that. A partner in Allied Faith & Family, a Hollywood marketing firm that aims to attract churchgoers to movies and now theater, Mr. Allen has spent the past 18 months breaking into the cloistered world of Broadway. He has worked with "Memphis," "Sister Act" and "Leap of Faith" to draw coverage from Christian news media and to create study guides for the shows - annotated with Bible passages - to leave at parish halls. He has suggested script changes to appeal to the devout. His request that "goddamned" be cut from "Leap of Faith" was denied. And he has displayed a preacher's touch at postshow receptions with religious theatergoers, like a recent one at Sardi's where he mingled among a dozen priests and ministers he brought to see "Leap of Faith," about a con-man evangelist whose latest scheme leads to a change of heart. "Broadway is having its first faith moment," Mr. Allen said repeatedly to his guests, and many of them concurred. Never before, they said, had Judeo-Christian messages dominated the theater capital: overtly in "Leap of Faith," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Sister Act" and "Godspell," and more subtly in shows with redemption themes like "Memphis," "The Lion King," "The Gershwins" Porgy and Bess," "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark" and even the profanity-laden "Book of Mormon." Yet selling Broadway to the flock remains a tall order. A crucial part of Mr. Allen's mission - to persuade religious "influencers" to spread the word about shows - inevitably bumps up against concerns about PG-13 content. The new revival of "Superstar" includes an intense, quasi-romantic triangle among Jesus, Judas and Mary Magdalene, while "Sister Act" features sarcastic nuns and "Mormon," about two young missionaries floundering in Uganda, has a song cursing God that is wildly hilarious or deeply offensive, depending on your point of view. At Sardi's Mr. Allen could not even win an unqualified endorsement for "Leap of Faith" from Marian West, a missionary with the Roman Catholic nonprofit group Heart's Home USA, despite her affection for the show. "The main character's conversion as a man of faith seemed more about pleasing his new girlfriend," Ms. West said, "and I wanted that conversion to go deeper." Mr. Allen replied, "That's for the sequel." A boyish-looking 49-year-old, he spent years on Catholic endeavors, like an Internet site for pastoral writings, before plunging into marketing through a chance meeting with Mel Gibson as Mr. Gibson was making "The Passion of the Christ." Hits like "The Book of Mormon" and "The Lion King" have no trouble drawing audiences, but many Broadway shows - religiously oriented and otherwise - have seats to spare, and some of their producers see marketing to the faithful as an intriguing if unproven strategy. Broadway has no industrywide system for counting ticket buyers from specific religious groups; Mr. Allen has proposed to several shows that they offer a "faith-based discount" for tickets, to create a discount code that would allow producers to track whether religious people were reserving seats in the wake of marketing campaigns aimed at them. No one has tested the idea yet. "Faith-based marketing is so new on Broadway that it's hard to quantify the impact, but what I do know is that we now have pretty steady numbers of faithful coming to "Memphis," " said Sue Frost, one of the lead producers of the musical, which includes a main character singing in her church gospel choir and a mother who overcomes her racial prejudice. Allied Faith & Family has helped increase coverage of "Memphis" through Christian radio and other news media, and has also sought and won an endorsement of the show from the Catholic League's newsletter, Catalyst, which reaches 300,000 readers. "These sorts of endorsements are like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for a potential audience that Broadway hasn't really reached before," Ms. Frost said.