GOD’S NOT DEAD: IN GOD WE TRUST

Here's the good news up front: this is a clean, confident, four-star crowd-pleaser, and you can bring the family. Pastor David Hill is back in the GOD'S NOT DEAD franchise, and this chapter sends him into an arena most Christians only watch from the couch — a run for Congress.

What makes it worth your time isn't just the message. It's the craft. The plot is suspenseful, the pacing keeps moving, and the two leads square off like heavyweights. There's nothing to shield young eyes from and plenty to send everyone home talking.

If you've enjoyed this series before — or you've been looking for a film that takes faith seriously without asking you to overlook slack filmmaking — this one earns the trip. Go, and bring your older kids.

Everywhere Pastor David Hill turns, it seems God and Christianity are being pushed out and replaced by a hostile, godless secularism. The local women's shelter has just lost its government funding — all because some of the women started a Bible study.

Then a congressional candidate dies unexpectedly, and his campaign team goes looking for a replacement. When they spot a video of Pastor Hill declaring that society still needs to trust God, they think they've found their man. Standing in his way: Peter Kane, a fundamentalist atheist determined to erase religion from America. The race is on.

Four stars, and it earns them the honest way. This is a well-crafted movie — consistently enjoyable, well-acted, and built on a plot with real suspense rather than the tidy predictability the genre sometimes settles for.

The heart of it is the matchup. David A.R. White and Ray Wise do wonderful jobs opposing one another, two forces that make the central conflict crackle. They're ably supported by a deep bench — Dean Cain, Isaiah Washington, Scott Baio, Charlene Tilton, and more — and the ensemble keeps the film feeling full and grounded. The result is a faith film that doesn't ask you to grade it on a curve. It's simply a good, entertaining movie.

This film wears its convictions plainly, and they're worth naming. It carries a very strong Christian, biblical, moral worldview — prayer, crosses, church, the reading of Scripture, and a steady insistence on biblical values throughout. It stresses the importance of God and Christianity not only in private devotion but in culture, politics, and daily life.

At its core is an argument: that removing God from a society doesn't leave a neutral space, but an emptier and harsher one. The movie warns that secularists and atheists are working to take hold of America's entertainment, politics, education, and everyday life, and to push Christian values out of all of them. It's a film with a call to action baked in — it points out that more than 40 million Christians don't vote, and it urges viewers to pray for America and to vote their convictions.

Whether or not you share every political implication, the underlying longing is one Scripture names directly: that God, not any human power, be trusted first. "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God" (Psalm 20:7). The film's title is finally its thesis — that a people is blessed when it puts the rule of God first in everything.

This one's easy to recommend: a well-made, well-acted, suspenseful film with a heart set squarely on trusting God first — and nothing you'll need to shield the family from. Watch it together, then let the older kids argue the questions over dinner. Our answer stands: worth the trip.