Category: Faith
Christian children’s movie ‘David’ beats out ‘Spongebob’ and Sydney Sweeney in box-office shock
A faith-based children’s movie is making waves just before Christmas.
“David,” an animated Christian musical about the story of David versus Goliath performed valiantly up against some monstrous titles over the weekend.
‘David’ is now the second-biggest blockbuster for Angel Studios, the studio that brought ‘Sound of Freedom’ to theaters.
In a field dominated by animated pictures, “David” managed to outperform both “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” and “Zootopia 2.”
Spice rack
While “Zootopia 2” took in just $14 million, that figure comes with a huge asterisk, as it has already been in theaters for a month with more than $1 billion taken in worldwide. However, “David” can relish the fact that it outperformed the beloved SpongeBob character as well as Sydney Sweeney’s new movie “The Housemaid” on their opening weekends.
SpongeBob made $16 million, according BoxOffice Pro, while “The Housemaid” garnered a respectable $18.95 million. At the same time, “David” shocked the media with just over $22 million in its opening, according to Box Office Mojo.
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While SpongeBob has an established (but aging) fan base, controversy around the film came just ahead of the release when one of its voice actors, rapper Ice Spice — real name Isis Naija Gaston — attended the premiere in a revealing outfit.
The mostly transparent lingerie the rapper wore on the red carpet may have been a factor in parents’ choice of which film was most suitable for their children.
Blue Christmas
“David” is now the second-biggest blockbuster for Angel Studios, the studio that brought “Sound of Freedom” to theaters. The movie about child trafficking went viral online in terms of publicity and took in more than $250 million worldwide. No other film on the studio’s roster has made more than $21 million before “David.”
None of these movies could touch the No.1 film of the weekend, though: James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third in the franchise. It took home a whopping $88 million, more than second through fourth place in the box office combined.
Two more “Avatar” films are set for release, in 2029 and 2031.
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Photo by Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Wrung out
Also to be considered is the SpongeBob franchise’s flailing numbers.
The first movie in 2004 had a promising opening weekend of $32 million, later drawing $142 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million, per the Numbers.
In 2015, the next film in the franchise took a $74 million budget and, despite making just $55 million in its opening weekend, ended up making over $300 million.
In 2020, though, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run,” with a $60 million budget, drew just $865,824, likely due to COVID-19 restrictions, and made just over $4.8 million at the end of the day.
Now, with an alleged $64 million budget, according to Variety, Paramount may have cause for worry, with double the budget producing half what original film did in 2004. Then again, the studio may have streaming numbers in mind, instead.
The Spectacle Ep. 310: Merry Christmas From Scott McKay and Melissa Mackenzie!
On this special episode of The Spectacle Podcast, hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay discuss the growing trend of younger generations returning…
Growing up in the Hebrew Roots movement — and why I eventually had to leave
Several years before my husband and I met, one of his friends told him, “Modern youth are hungry for truth, and they are looking to the oldest forms of traditional orthodoxy to find it. This leaves them with two main choices: Catholicism or Hebrew Roots.”
My husband hadn’t heard of Messianics before this, or he had heard just enough to scoff at the idea of marrying someone who “pretended to be a Jew.” Nevertheless, his friend’s statement stuck with him. Who were these Protestants LARPing as Jews that they could draw intelligent youth in search of truth away from Catholicism?
We were all encouraged to study our Bibles for ourselves and to test one another. When the family home-churched together, it was always lively.
Relishing the chaos
Some would call us Judaizers.
We are certainly not ordinary Protestants. In fact, my family and most Messianics I grew up with believed that the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon and the Protestant churches are her daughters. Most Christians were “too Catholic” in our opinion because they went to church on Sunday and celebrated Christmas, two practices instituted by Catholicism.
Despite how odd Messianics might be, they are too disorganized to be classified as a cult. There are somewhere around 200,000-300,000 Hebrew Roots people with no central figure, and there are countless groups within the movement. Some of them are self-identifying Torah followers who may lead isolated lives or fellowship at home with a few like-minded people. Others are members of organized Messianic denominations.
The movement has very few real Jews in it, and for the most part Messianic believers reject modern-day Jewish practices. Instead we endeavor to interpret the Old Testament as literally as possible. This, of course, is nearly an impossible feat and the main cause for disunity in the Hebrew Roots movement.
Perhaps what makes this expression of group interesting is the fact that it is a movement that can’t really be defined as a whole, and yet all the members of it believe that the truth they have is absolute, even though all their like-minded compatriots disagree with them on how to execute this truth. To those raised in the movement, the disorder and chaos are natural and even relished. To those watching from the outside, I can only imagine how bizarre we appear.
Family tradition
My mom chose my name because it was old-fashioned. Most of the rest of the family didn’t like it and tried to give me various nicknames. But my parents named me perfectly.
Keturah — meaning a sacrificial aroma/incense — may be strange-sounding, but it also uniquely fits in all the worlds I’m most interested in. It is both a Jewish and an Amish name and, oddly, has a deep Catholic meaning. It has served me well in the secular world, too, with its unique sound. My name has made it possible for me to blend in among both Christian hippies and woke misfits.
I never considered how odd it was that my great-grandfather basically invented the religion I grew up with (with heavy modifications made by my grandfather). What should have been a red flag — why did nobody figure this out before my great-grandfather? — was instead championed as proof of our righteousness.
My great-grandfather had been a Pentecostal pastor. But he started reading his Bible one day. This led him to preaching on things that his congregation was not ready for, because “the ways of the world were too comfortable.” He left his church, took another wife (his first wife left him with their three children because his beliefs were getting strange), and began a road ministry that my grandfather eventually took over.
I was often told the story of the Rechabites, a family who were saved from being utterly wiped out because they obeyed the words of their great-grandfather. My great-grandfather, too, had left us an inheritance, and if we cherished it, we would be saved from the horrors of the world. I believed this.
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Photo by Heritage Images/Getty Images
Lively debate
I was neither brainwashed nor raised in a cult. There is nothing more American than leaving the beaten path to make your own way, especially when it comes to religion.
The women in my family are too mouthy and bratty, myself included, for the family to ever have fallen into true patriarchal suppression. We were all encouraged to study our Bibles for ourselves and to test one another. When the family home-churched together, it was always lively.
Even I, at the ages of 10 through 14, would get pulled into the heated dialogue with religious opinions of my own, carefully researched and passionately presented. I was obsessed with writing theological essays during those years.
We were not cosplaying as Jews any more than Amish are LARPing as peasants. We were more interested in what the Bible had to say than the traditions of modern-day Jews. In fact, anything that was “traditional” must be too much like Catholicism. We didn’t want to follow customs, but the law of Yahweh.
Although my great-grandfather and grandfather invented our faith, there was room for fluidity. It has changed much over the years. My great-grandfather kept the Saturday Sabbath and refused welfare for his family although they were poor and had 13 children. They did not eat pork, but ate according to Leviticus 11. We call this eating kosher, but it’s more accurately referred to as eating “clean.”
My grandfather started using the “Sacred Names” to refer to God when my father was young and warned against “calling upon the name of Jesus” because Jesus, he argued, was another form of Zeus. We argued over whether to spell the Messiah’s name Yahshua or Yeshua. We never referred to God as “God” or “the Lord” because those, too, were pagan names. It was always “Father” or “Yahweh.”
Which Sabbath?
When I was 9 years old, my grandfather realized that Saturday was not the true Sabbath. He had discovered an idea called the Lunar Sabbath.
The Sabbath is determined by the phases of the moon. At the end of the month when the moon goes dark, the Sabbath is two or three days long until the new moon appears and resets the Sabbath. And so Sabbath might be on a Tuesday one month and then Wednesday or Thursday the next month. If it were cloudy, it might be difficult to see the moon, and sometimes we would be keeping Sabbath wrong for a week or so until we were able to clearly see what the sky said. It was also difficult for making plans and having social relationships.
When I was 14, I sat down and did a long study on the Sabbath using encyclopedias, various Bibles, and concordances. After three months I presented my research to my family. I explained the pros and cons for the Lunar Sabbath, Saturday Sabbath, and Sunday Sabbath. I had become convinced that Sunday was still not the true Sabbath and that we should stop doing the Lunar Sabbath and revert to Saturday. My parents and siblings could not argue with my evidence. We voted. After five years of living by the moon, we unanimously agreed to revert back to Saturday Sabbath.
This situation taught me several things: We were not a cult, but most of my family was intellectually incapable of interpreting scripture for themselves. It was cool that my family changed after my research. But also why hadn’t they studied this properly at the start? I was 14 years old, and yet I had convinced my parents to make a major theological change. This both inflated my ego and left me feeling insecure and unstable because I was truly alone and could not go to my parents for answers about God.
This is part one of a two-part essay. Part 2 will appear next week. It was adapted and edited for length from an essay that first appeared on the Substack Polite Company.
44-year-old Catholic father of 10 throws touchdown in NFL return: ‘Whatever God’s will, I’m happy with’
Philip Rivers knew the playbook going in.
When the 44-year-old quarterback got the call from the injury-plagued Indianapolis Colts, he already had a relationship with coach Shane Steichen. Almost a peer of his at 40 years old, Steichen was the offensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Chargers when Rivers last played in 2020.
‘These kind of things don’t come up.’
With Steichen using the same playbook with the Colts as he did when he was arm-in-arm with Rivers, the 44-year-old quarterback came out of retirement to plug the hole for the Colts as their promising season was falling apart.
On Sunday, the father of 10 stepped in the game and threw a touchdown in a hard-fought battle against the Seattle Seahawks, one of the best teams in the NFL this season. That single TD pass was one more than his opponent, and despite the Colts taking the lead with a late field goal, the Seahawks followed suit and kicked a field goal of their own with 22 seconds left to win 18-16.
At the postgame press conference, Rivers was asked why he wanted to come back after nearly five years away from the game, especially with a strong possibility of failure looming.
“I think about my own boys, you know, my own two sons, but certainly [the] high school team I’m coaching, but this isn’t why I’m doing it,” Rivers replied.
“These kind of things don’t come up. But obviously, this doesn’t come up every day. But I think, maybe it will inspire or teach [them] to not to run or be scared of what may or may not happen.”
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According to Catholic Vote, since retiring Rivers has been coaching the football team at St. Michael Catholic High School in Fairhope, Alabama, where his son also played quarterback.
It was when talking about his high school team that Rivers began getting emotional in front of the NFL press.
“Certainly I think of my sons and those ball players that I’m in charge of at the school. They’ll say, like, ‘Crap! Coach wasn’t scared!’ You know what I mean. Shoot, sometimes there is doubt, and it’s real, and … the guaranteed safe bet is to go home or to not go for it. And the other one is, ‘Shoot, let’s see what happens,'” he said.
It was in that moment that Rivers’ faith shined through.
“I hope that in that sense that it can be a positive to some young boys or young people. … Whatever God’s will, I’m happy with,” he added.
Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images
Rivers also answered questions about self doubt in his abilities after being away from the professional game so long. He admitted that he initially felt some doubt last week, but he was “thankful to God” those doubts quickly dissipated.
“I’ve been very much at peace and just at peace with everything about it,” he revealed.
The Colts play the San Francisco 49ers next Monday in a game that will likely be a must-win if the Colts want to make the playoffs.
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‘The Case for Miracles’: A stirring road trip into the heart of faith
Lee Strobel doesn’t mind those who question his midlife Christian conversion.
Strobel’s shift from an atheist to rock-ribbed Christian came to life in 2017’s “The Case for Christ.” The film, based on his life story, showed how Strobel’s efforts to debunk the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune had the opposite effect.
‘There is evidence that points — compelling [evidence] — to the truth of biblical miracles and contemporary supernatural encounters. I’m not afraid of that.’
He says his shoe-leather reporting confirmed the resurrection. Looking back, Strobel tells Align his change of heart ruffled some professional feathers.
“After I became a Christian at the Chicago Tribune, somebody told me later that they overheard somebody in the newsroom say, ‘What happened to Strobel? He became a Jesus freak, like, overnight,’” Strobel says, laughing.
Miracle miles
Now, Strobel is back on the big screen with “The Case for Miracles,” in select theaters Dec. 15-18 via Fathom Entertainment. The film finds Strobel and director Mani Sandoval hitting Route 66 in an old Ford Bronco to swap stories and reflect on modern-day miracles.
Among the most poignant? A young woman with severe multiple sclerosis who is able to leave her hospice bed following a crush of community prayers.
It’s part travelogue, part documentary, and Strobel only wishes he had time to share even more remarkable stories on-screen.
“We had to leave out so many good ones. … We had another case documented by medical researchers … a guy who was healed from a paralyzed stomach,” he says. “He was prayed for, felt an electric shock go through him, and for the first time was able to eat normally.”
“He’s fine to this day,” he adds. “It’s the only case in history of its kind of [someone] spontaneously healed from this stomach paralysis.”
Meeting in the middle
Strobel says the film offers two very different perspectives on modern-day miracles given the key players involved.
“Mani grew up in a Pentecostal home. There was an anticipation that the miraculous would take place,” he says. “I was an atheist [growing up].”
The film is based on Strobel’s 2018 book of the same name, but he hopes the Fathom Entertainment release reaches a broader audience beyond his loyal readers.
“I think that cinema is the language of young people,” he says. “If we want to share this account, this evidence of the miraculous with a young generation, what better way than on the big screen? Among younger people, there’s something about a film that register deeply with them. … We should seize opportunities to communicate to those outside the faith.”
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Creative control
And the timing couldn’t be better. Faith-friendly films and TV shows are all the rage in today’s pop-culture landscape. Think the groundbreaking series “The Chosen,” along with the upcoming “Passion of the Christ” sequel from Mel Gibson.
Both Netflix and Prime Video are producing faith-friendly content, and recent hits like “Jesus Revolution” flexed the power of spiritual stories.
“It satisfies me on a creative level when I see films that deal with very important topics, like the existence in God, in a way that’s creative and that aren’t going to make people cringe but sit forward in their seat and anticipate what’s coming next,” he says.
And that creative explosion has only begun, Strobel predicts.
“In three, four, or maybe five years, we’re gonna see stuff where we say, ‘Oh, I never thought of doing that,’” he says of the genre.
The incredible made credible
Strobel isn’t a filmmaker by trade. He’s a busy writer, having penned more than 40 books that have been translated into 40 languages.
Strobel, like the late Charlie Kirk, doesn’t mind interacting with skeptics on- or off-screen. He welcomes it. The book on which “The Case for Miracles” is based starts with an extended dialogue with noted atheist Michael Shermer.
Strobel eventually befriended Shermer, who has a cameo in the film version of “Miracles.”
“I let him have his say,” he says of their early exchanges. Strobel is confident in his faith and the miracles he sees flowing through it.
“There is evidence that points — compelling [evidence] — to the truth of biblical miracles and contemporary supernatural encounters,” he says. “I’m not afraid of that.”
For Strobel, a miracle requires four key elements:
- Solid medical documentation;
- Multiple, credible eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive;
- A lack of natural explanation; and
- An association with prayer.
Meet all four requirements, he says, “and maybe something miraculous is going on.”
Strobel doesn’t mind that some of his former colleagues may question his religious conversion. He’s comforted by the fact that he has company in that regard.
“I’ve seen so many journalists coming to faith. … I think God is stirring something in the culture right now,” he says.
