Subliminal Messages in ‘God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust’

In a recent video I talked briefly about the new movie, “God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust”, which is due out on September 12th. The movie is the 5th installment in the “God’s Not Dead” movie franchise, in case you were curious.

The movie promotes the idea of Christians getting power in THIS world, which of course, is not what we are to do. Even worse, the movie is about Christian Nationalism, which poisons our faith with politics and patriotism.

Fortunately, many Christians do recognize that these things are not what true Christianity is about, but oftentimes the allure of power and patriotic fervor can lead some of us into chasing after these things. Movies like this will, sadly, lead many of us down the wrong road.

In today’s video, however, I want to talk about a different aspect of the movie – and specifically how the movie trailer contained a number of subtle references to Donald Trump, some slightly obvious but others more subliminal.

Let me show you what I mean. Here again is the trailer to the movie, and when these references to Trump pop up, I’ll freeze the video to point them out.

I’ll stop it there because the beginning of the trailer had Reagan saying, “If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we’ll be a nation gone under.” While he is saying that, a few images flashed on the screen.

After a brief scene of Washington, DC, we see an image of someone burning a flag, which then transforms into an image of a church on fire. They are immediately and intentionally connecting America to Christianity.

After this we see two images from January 6th. The first one of these shows several Capitol Police officers, appearing to be the aggressors, with one having his baton ready to strike a protester if necessary.

The second image shows a group of protesters, one who is raising his fist – and then the screen flashes white for a brief instant, to emphasize that image. Why would they want to do that? Because it mirrors this famous image. That is not by mistake.

The movie producers deliberately used a similar image of a raised fist from January 6th in order to evoke the image of Trump and his “fight, fight, fight” moment. Flashing this January 6th image in white serves to connect it and the movie to Trump’s “fight, fight, fight” image.

We then see our protagonist, Reverend David Hill, a white man with blonde hair looking at his red laptop. This symbolism will become more frequent as we go on. We see that he is watching Ronald Reagan.

We now see a small church, and inside Reverend David Hill is preaching to his congregation … now wearing a red tie.

Less than a moment after evoking the Trump “fight, fight, fight” image, we now see a cross draped in a red ribbon, which in other circumstances might seem normal, but this actually echoes another famous image of Trump walking with his tie undone.

After hearing David Hill talking about how we need to step out into our faith, the trailer immediately fades into an image of the Capitol, thereby again connecting our Christian faith to politics and specifically America.

We now start to see the good people wearing red, which is a bit reminiscent of how many republicans wore red ties in solidarity with Trump.

Incidentally, I mentioned that our protagonist is named Reverend David Hill, and the only time the word “reverend” is used in the King James Bible is in Psalm 111 and it’s a reference to God.

We now we see an image of Peter Kane, dressed in blue, and he is the adversary of Reverend David Hill. There is then a rather uncomfortable and even a bit antisemitic reference to how once “they” bankrupt the country, “they” will have complete control.

We again see one of the good guys wearing a red tie, while other images flash by, such as this one with our protagonist in the background wearing a red tie, and one with him greeting supporters with the cross with the red tie – I mean red ribbon – in the background.

This is followed by the hero of our movie saying “I’m not a politician.” If that sounds a bit familiar, it was exactly what Trump ran on in 2016. He was an outsider, not a politician.

We now have Senator Smith telling Reverend David Hill that if we don’t take on this fight, we could lose everything. This is a perversion of the Bible’s teaching that the Kingdom of God is NOT of this world. We will not lose “everything” by not chasing after worldly power.

Now we start to see more images of our hero, who again, is a white man with blonde hair, and who wears a red tie. These similarities to Trump are not by mistake, as the movie wants its viewers to subconsciously connect David Hill to Trump.

Here we see a couple of bad men plotting evil against David Hill, both with “Kane” buttons, letting you know that they are not their brother’s keeper.

Next is perhaps the most blasphemous reference to Trump in the movie trailer. It’s David Hill saying, “God’s not the target, Lottie, our country is. God’s just standing in their way.”

This movie line is almost identical to what Trump often says. In Trump’s version, he says “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you. I’m just standing in the way.”

So the movie took Trump’s words almost verbatim, but instead of Trump standing in the way, it’s God. The other words are so similar to what Trump said that it’s hard to believe that they weren’t intentionally conflating Trump and God.

We then see a reversed image of the Peter Kane character, showing him with a backwards flag pin on what would be the viewers left. This is followed by the “Lottie” character talking on her red phone.

Here two of the good guys are talking on the phone, both wearing red ties, followed shortly by a song called “In God We Trust.” Once again, reinforcing the movie’s connection between our Christian faith and worldly politics.

Here the movie’s protagonist argues in his rebuttal that “whenever anyone of faith promotes a policy that you don’t like you label them as Christian Nationalist.”

The movie producers knew they would get push back on the underlying message of Christian Nationalism, so they had the protagonist bring it up and preemptively rebut the criticism. Notice however, at least in the trailer, he didn’t DENY being a Christian Nationalist.

We see the “Lottie” character open the drawer on her nightstand, and lo and behold, the Bible is also red. And then we hear the trailer conclude with Reverend David Hill saying this:

“We need to stand up. Send a message to Washington. Tell them that you’re not ready to give that power up. You have the power to change things. Not him. Not me. You.”

And there is the message of this movie. It’s that Christians need to seek power in this world, and to get that power, Christians need to be 100% behind Donald Trump.

This movie has nothing to do with TRUE Christianity. Instead, it’s all about Donald Trump. In fact, it should have been named: “God’s Not Dead: In Trump We Trust.” ♦