Back in October, I told you about an upcoming faith-based film from the creators of God’s Not Dead. It’s sort of a fundamentalist Christian Crash called Do You Believe?, about an interconnected cast of characters played by a batsh*t mad libs of actors including Ted McGinley, Cybill Shepard, Mira Sorvino, Sean Astin, Lee Majors, Delroy Lindo, and Brian Bosworth. Now that film has a trailer.
A dozen different souls—all moving in different directions, all longing for something more. As their lives unexpectedly intersect, they each are about to discover there is power in the Cross of Christ … even if they don’t believe it. Yet.
When a local pastor is shaken to the core by the visible faith of an old street-corner preacher, he is reminded that true belief always requires action. His response ignites a faith-fueled journey that powerfully impacts everyone it touches in ways that only God could orchestrate. [YouTube]
ARRRRREEE YOUUUUU READYYYYY… FOR A FAITH-FILLED THRILL RIDE STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN!? OOOOOOH WAH-AH AH-MEN!
As producer David A.R. White told Variety a while back:
“‘God’s Not Dead’ resonated with audiences because it explored and validated the existence of God. ‘Do You Believe?’ takes Christianity to another level…the Cross.”
BOOM. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds pretty cool. And to be fair, I’ve never seen a faith-based film that crashed a van into a house before and that was pretty boss.
On a more serious note, it sounds like the same wildly-exaggerated persecution complex that characterized God’s Not Dead is going to be in full effect here. As the ChristianExaminer wrote this week:
In an unexpected “life imitates art” twist, one of the movie’s storylines about a first-responder who is sued by the victim’s wife for praying at the scene of an accident loosely parallels the real-life drama of Atlanta fire chief Kelvin Cochran, a public servant who was suspended then subsequently fired due to statements he wrote about marriage based on his Christian faith. Production of “Do You Believe?” with this first-responder storyline was completed several weeks before Chief Cochran’s situation became headline news.
Big emphasis on “loosely” there. The guy in the movie gets in trouble for praying over a dying man. Kelvin Cochran, back in reality, got in trouble for…
Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran has been suspended without pay for one month and must undergo sensitivity training for authoring a Christian book in 2013 that described homosexuality as a “sexual perversion.”
“Uncleanness — whatever is opposite of purity; including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, all other forms of sexual perversion,” the book states.
“Naked men refuse to give in, so they pursue sexual fulfillment through multiple partners, with the opposite sex, the same sex and sex outside of marriage and many other vile, vulgar and inappropriate ways which defile their body-temple and dishonor God,” another passage states. [WashingtonTimes]
Cochran was later fired, and immediately tried to play the persecution card:
The Faith and Freedom Coalition posted a call to action on its website, asking members to contact the mayor demanding Cochran be reappointed.
“In our country we don’t punish people for the potential to discriminate we punish them for actually discriminating. To our knowledge unless the mayor knows about it and hasn’t said so there’s no allegation to speak of,” explained spokesperson Robert Potts. [USAToday]
Uh huh. Try publishing a book saying equivalent things about black people or Latinos and see how that works out at your job. So yes, this film that inspires viewers to equate praying over a dying man with describing a minority group as unclean and impure is sure to be a valuable edition to our cultural dialogue. It opens March 20th.