Free Republic

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Kony 2012 video and that while it espouses the noble goal of removing Joseph Kony from the Uganda region, there is also a uniquely surreal aspect to it. The man known as the Machine Gun Preacher, Sam Childers knows more about the region than anyone. He has been on the ground there for fourteen years. He builds orphanages for children and protects them with actual weaponry. In short, he's not your typical missionary. Childers has issued a response to Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video and while he congratulates the charitable organization for drawing...

“You can’t keep going the way you been going,” Lynn Childers (Michelle Monaghan) says to her husband Sam (Gerard Butler) early on in the new film, “Machine Gun Preacher.” The movie tells the true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealer, who turned his life around and began following Christ. Directed by Marc Forster, who previously helmed “The Kite Runner” and “Monster’s Ball,” “Preacher” presents Childers as a complex man whose intentions are noble but whose actions are often controversial. The story begins in South Sudan in 2003 as a child is faced with a nightmarish dilemma. A group of...

Is America ready for a Christian Rambo? And does it make a difference if the story of this Rambo--as opposed to the Sylvester Stallone character from the 80s--is, in fact, true? Those are the questions posed by a remarkable new movie, “Machine Gun Preacher.” The film offers a peek into a once-dark, subsequently redeemed, human heart, even as it opens a window into an ongoing horror half a world away. Ever since the days when Jesus walked the earth as a man, Christians have struggled with the question of how they themselves should live. At different times, they have come...

“The last thing Christ wants is our heart…what God wants from us is our feet, our legs, our hands, our arms. He wants our entire body,” Sam Childers recently stated during a roundtable interview for his new film, “Machine Gun Preacher.” The film chronicles the story of how Childers went from selling drugs in Pennsylvania to building an orphanage in the Sudan. Both Childers and Jason Keller, who wrote the film’s screenplay, sat down with Townhall.com and several other media outlets to talk about the film. The film shows Childers only a few decades ago as a drug dealer who...

Moviegoers who see the new Gerard Butler headlining film “Machine Gun Preacher,” based on the life of heroin-addict-turned-Christian-child-crusader Sam Childers, would understandably believe Hollywood exaggerated the story for entertainment purposes. But they’ll be surprised to know that the real life of Childers was too much for even Hollywood. Director Marc Forster – whose credits include “Finding Neverland,” “Quantum of Solace,” and “Monster’s Ball” – includes all the typical elements of an R-rated film: sex, drugs and violence. But screenwriter Jason Keller noted Thursday at the film’s Washington, D.C. screening that he couldn’t include some experiences in Childers’ earlier "bad-boy" life...