Is America ready for another R-rated Jesus flick?

Bishop T.D. Jakes – an evangelist who is frequently mentioned as a leading contender to replace Billy Graham as “America’s preacher” – is betting on it in a new film that includes intense scenes of child rape, drug use, domestic violence and murder.

Seeking to take a page from the phenomenal success of Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ,” Jakes is conducting private screenings of “Woman, Thou Art Loosed: The Movie” for pastors in advance of its planned nationwide release in October.

The movie, starring Kimberly Elise (“The Manchurian Candidate”), tells the story of a young woman searching for hope in prison after a lifetime of sexual abuse, poverty and addiction.

While “The Passion” told how Jesus was crucified, Jakes says, “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” tells why he was crucified: to offer hope to people suffering today.

“Mel Gibson proves to us perhaps the next frontier of evangelism may be the movie theater. We have to start thinking outside the box,” Jakes told church leaders who attended a showing at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Jakes, whose Dallas-based Potter’s House church has a congregation of more than 25,000, has national shows on Trinity Broadcasting Network and Black Entertainment Television and has written 27 books, including the best-selling “Woman, Thou Art Loosed.”

Beginning and ending on death row, the film version follows the life story of a woman who was abused by her mother’s boyfriend as a child and her attempt as an adult to reclaim her life after falling into an abyss of prison, prostitution and drug addiction.

In an attempt to depict the suffering of abuse victims and the moral compromises made by people inside and outside the church, the movie includes graphic and powerful adult content, language and violence.