Rhetoric Race and Religion
The Christian Crusade has hit the multiplex in force this Spring. No sooner did Darren Aronofsky’s brooding, complex, environmental cautionary Noah see dry land, than three new, more conventional religion based movies stormed the box offices: God Is Not Dead, Son of God, and Heaven is Real.
Unfortunately, Godsploitation movies generally require a leap of faith that hardly leads to redemption. For a fleeting moment, God Is Not Dead seems like an earnest attempt to place religious faith in modern life. But the credits have barely faded from view before we are bombarded by cardboard characters mouthing leaden lines in a very un-Christian implausible tale..
College freshman Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), against the warnings of his classmates, signs up for Professor Radisson’s (Kevin Sorbo) Introduction to Philosophical Thought. Radisson is a preening bully who requires students to sign a pledge that they don’t believe in God, threatening to shame and penalize them if they believe. Was the script written by someone who never attended college or had no knowledge of college professors, codes of ethics or legal classroom behavior? Grounds for professorial termination would come as quickly as the revocation of Sorbo’s Screen Actors Guild membership for this acting performance!
Wheaton forsakes his girlfriend to engage in a series of in class debates with his professor. And miraculously, by citing only a few passages of scripture, is able to win the entire class to his side. Meanwhile the other true believers in the movie triumph over the weak minded non-believers. Even Professor Radisson’s live-in girlfriend, a student whom the professor constantly mocks, finds the faith to leave him.
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