God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness is a competently shot movie stocked with journeyman performances that suffers from one main flaw. That flaw is the surreal cultural milieu portrayed through which Christians in present-day America are actively persecuted in quite a lot of methods.

God’s Not Dead opens with the arrest and imprisonment of Reverend Dave Hill (David White) for his refusal to adjust to a court docket order to show over transcripts of his sermons. The Reverend’s church is on a public college campus and he’s embroiled in a battle with those that try to get the church thrown off campus. A younger vandal throws a brick threw one of many church’s basement home windows and knocks a fuel line free in order that Dave’s co-pastor, Jude (Benjamin Onyango), is killed in an explosion. The church is closely broken within the hearth and, within the media frenzy that follows, the college decides to say eminent area privilege and fairly actually raze the church to the bottom. Reverend Dave’s lawyer brother, Pearce (John Corbett), swoops in with a last-minute injunction and stays the bulldozers for a couple of weeks.

The downside with all of that is that the entire premise that this church is being attacked comes off as absurd. 75% of Americans are Christian and virtually 40% attend church on a weekly foundation. The concept that our society would foster and even enable the merciless, abject persecution we see in God’s Not Dead is so weird that it colours the entire movie with a kind of propaganda tone. This film is clearly designed to feed no matter emotional want it’s that makes this delusion of persecution so in style amongst believers.

There aren’t any nice performances in God’s Not Dead however there aren’t any terrible ones both. John Corbett as Pearce is enjoyable to observe work. He brings a studied breeziness to his character that serves the script effectively. Corbett, at this level, could also be most recognizable for his roles in Sex and the City and Parenthood, however audiences of a sure age will know him greatest from CBS’s Northern Exposure.

With just one or two bits of reasonably good appearing, a sappy, melodramatic soundtrack, and a very implausible story at its core, God’s Not Dead isn’t good for a lot past preaching to the choir.