Alissa Wilkinson has good words criticizing Christian movies, like the one that came out last weekend.

God’s Not Dead encourages its audience to participate in the film’s “challenge,” an equivalent to those chain letters that claimed if you didn’t forward the email to 10 people something terrible would happen to you. Many complied. “Are YOU up for the challenge?” asks the Facebook page. “Text ‘God’s Not Dead’ to 10 friends RIGHT NOW! Then leave a comment below!” The image that accompanies the challenge includes this quotation from the movie’s cheeriest Christian character, Pastor Dave: “So your acceptance of this challenge, if you decide the [sic] accept it, may be the only meaningful exposure to God & Jesus they’ll ever have.” . . .

Ultimately, what the increasingly profitable “faith film” industry machine wants to do is sell me an idea of what “taking a stand” for Jesus looks like. That involves buying a ticket, sharing a Facebook meme, going to a concert, and texting a bastardization of a late 19th-century philosophical proclamation about the bleak condition into which we humans have painted ourselves to 10 people RIGHT NOW.