Harold Cronk’s latest propaganda film, God’s Not Dead 2, was released on April 1. In it, a high school teacher named Grace Wesley (played by Melissa Joan Hart of Sabrina the Teenage Witch fame) faces losing her job when she answers a student’s questions about Jesus. The film has been panned by film critics, garnering a whopping 12% “rotten” rating at Rotten Tomatoes. But the star of the film had a comment that I hear often, and one I find grating:
Faris asked: “This is all about separation of church and state. In this particular movie the teacher is being persecuted because of her faith because of a question she was asked in class. Why do you think it’s an important conversation to have right now in 2016?”
“There shouldn’t be any one religion represented in anything. But at the same time, we need to be tolerant of all religions,” Hart answered.
“If a Christian’s right is subordinate to all other rights, then it’s not a right at all,” she added. “And so, you know, I think it’s really about tolerance across the board for everyone.”
The film is about a public school teacher who brings her personal religious beliefs into the classroom. It’s about someone who doesn’t abide by the rules set in place by the institution that employs her. It’s not, as the director would like to make it seem, about a woman being persecuted for being Christian. Hart thinks that it’s a Christian’s right to push her beliefs from a position of authority, i.e. a teacher, onto her subordinates, i.e. students. To deny a Christian’s right to do this is persecution. It’s intolerant. Kind of ironic, then, that the Christian teacher who does this is the hero of Cronk’s film this time around when it was the atheist professor of the first film who forced students to write ‘God is dead’ who was the mustache-twirling villain.
The quote is from an article on Breitbart. Here’s the headline:
And as of about 9:00 PM EST, here’s the top comment:
Remember that Muslim flight attendant who was suspended from her job after she refused to serve a customer alcohol, claiming that doing so violated her beliefs? Kind of the same thing: a person takes a job where they have certain duties and fail to do them a cite religious reasons. Here’s Breitbart’s headline about that:
And the top comment:
Know what the difference is between them, other than that the right despises Muslims in general? One religion is large and culturally powerful in America. The other isn’t. One religion has had and continues to have considerable influence in the public sphere. The other hasn’t. One religion has lost a little bit of the power that it used to exert over the entire country and perceives it as persecution. The other has had almost no power and has people running for president calling for its persecution.
But remember: only Christians need religious freedom. Everyone else can eff off.