“Have you seen God’s Not Dead yet?”
An elderly gentleman at my gym asks me this just about every month. It’s usually his second, right after “Watched any good movies lately?” (Super-nice guy, but not one to deviate from previous conversations, at least not while standing in his underwear.)
“Nope,” I say every month. “Haven’t got around to that one.”
“Oh!” he’ll respond. “It’s wonderful! You’ve got to!” And then he’ll wander off to the showers, presumably muttering about Kevin Sorbo’s multilayered performance.
I was thinking about this friend of mine a bit when two bits of news crossed my deck.
One, there’s a God’s Not Dead sequel heading to theaters. The rather unimaginatively titled God’s Not Dead 2: He’s Surely Alive, starring Melissa Joan Hart and Jesse Metcalfe, will arrive sometime around Easter, 2016.
The other came courtesy The Hollywood Reporter. Mark Joseph, a producer and marketer extraordinaire who’s had a hand in everything from The Passion of the Christ to Ray to The Chronicles of Narnia movies, believes that it’s time the term “faith-based film” be retired. The word Christian, he believes, should not be a genre. “The term does nothing but scare away the marginally religious and more secular Americans and signals that a film is going to be preachy, overbearing and not for them,” he writes.
God’s Not Dead is practically the definition of the sort of Christian movie Joseph’s talking about—one that alienates more secular moviegoers and even makes some Christians uneasy. I’ve never seen God’s Not Dead because I (rightly or wrongly) assume it’s a preachy, overbearing and not for me—and I’m a Christian movie reviewer.
And yet God’s Not Dead collected $60.8 million at the box office, making it the sixth biggest Christian movie ever. It’d climb to third if you excused all The Chronicles of Narnia flicks from the field. And even if I’m not looking forward to God’s Not Dead 2, my friend at the gym will be thrilled.
And I think to myself, if there wasn’t a Christian movie genre, what would my friend go to see?
Joseph’s point is absolutely valid, and one with which I mostly agree. I think that sometimes, the very fact that there is such a thing as a “Christian movie” actually hurts lots of Christian movies—and maybe moviedom in general.
Consider the sad case of Mom’s Night Out, a light-hearted flick with a strong cast, decent writing and a minimum of explicit Christian content. It spends less time talking about God than Selma. And while it wasn’t ever destined to be an all-time classic, it was way better than anything Adam Sandler has come out with in the last 15 years. In an alternate universe, the flick might’ve become a modest, family friendly hit. But alas, it was slapped with the “Christian movie” label, and suddenly the average filmgoer thought Patricia Heaton would surely spend the entire flick in somber prayer or telling knock-knock jokes involving Habakkuk. Mom’s Night Out made an underwhelming $10.4 million.
The last couple of years have been filled with similar sob spiritual stories—decent movies that avoided heavy-duty, pulpit-pounding preaching (perhaps to draw that elusive wider audience, perhaps because pulpit-pounding generally makes for a bad movie), and yet they still withered under the weight of the Christian label.
You could even argue that they weren’t Christian enough.
The press release for God’s Not Dead 2 says that the film will “have audiences standing unashamedly and firmly in their faith during a time when it seems increasingly unfavorable and divisive to do so in the public square.” Because, of course, we all go to movies to make socio-political statements. But some Christians do go to movies just for that reason. Movies like God’s Not Dead become causes—cinematic skewers with which Christian moviegoers stab at the heart of “Godless” Hollywood. Moms’ Night Out? That doesn’t feel like a cause—just a nice movie that my friend at the gym might watch on DVD between small group meetings.
It makes for a sad little dynamic: Christian moviemakers know that films are better when they don’t preach. But audiences that ten to go to “Christian movies” like ‘em preachy. Meanwhile, mainstream moviemakers, who can’t figure out for the life of them what Christians want, ignore faith altogether.
That’s not always the case, of course. I’ve pointed out lots of exceptions. But of the 30 or so wide-release flicks I’ve seen this year, just a tiny fraction have contained any sort of religion at all. Aloha used Hawaiian gods as sort of a thematic element. A male stripper named Ken was pretty involved with new-age meditation in Magic Mike XXL. And … I think that’s it. Now, consider that 83 percent of Americans identify as Christians and half of us go to church every weekend. You’d think that even a character about to be killed in a schlocky horror movie would at least whimper a little prayer beforehand. But in the horror movies I’ve seen this year, the only time someone’s mentioned God’s name has been as a curse word.
If last year was the year of the Christian movie, this seems to be the year of the stridently secular.
Maybe if the “faith-based film” simply went away, we “faith-based” filmgoers might insist that more movies honestly and intelligently incorporate who we are and what we believe.
But I think there’s still a place for movies like God’s Not Dead or Courageous—movies made for Christians to strengthen faith and share with each other. Sure, they might not appeal that much to me. Sure, no one outside the Church may be likely to see them. But some Christians would. Those sorts of movies speak to them. And as much as I’d love for my gym buddy to see the understated spiritual resonance in Interstellar and appreciate the artistry of Life of Pi, is it necessarily wrong that he happens to like God’s Not Dead more?
Christian movies are getting better. And I hope that trend continues. Because like it or not, they aren’t going anywhere, and the Christians who dig Christian movies deserve good entertainment, too.
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