USA- Liberty University students continue to voice their objections to the university’s participation in the upcoming theatrical presentation “The Trump Prophecy.”
As previously reported, dozens of students from the school’s film arts department have worked with Charlotte-based ReelWorks Studio to produce a film based on the prophecy of retired firefighter Mark Taylor, who claims God told him in 2011 that Donald Trump would one day become president of the United States.
Liberty University students had the opportunity to do hands-on production and credited post-production work for their spring semester film project.
As a petition there has been an attempt for months to convince Liberty University to stop participating in the project. Students and graduates of the Virginia-based Christian university are talking about the film and its early October release date in more than 1,000 theaters across the country.
Liberty students take issue not only with the political nature of the film, but with the fact that it focuses on Taylor’s prophecies.who has drawn the ire of many critics for some of his claims .
“For the university, by stepping our name on this film, we are telling the world that this is what we believe: radical prophecies about a controversial man make him a godsend,” a film student recently told PJ Media. . “While the school is not creating or financing the film, the act of partnering with the film could tie the school to the film in ways these students and graduates fear.”
While the film focuses on Taylor, The producers say the purpose of the film is to show viewers how the prayer movement helped pave the way for the election of the 45th president of the United States.
The director of the Department of Cinematic Arts Liberty, Stephan Schultze, had told the Christian Post that Liberty’s involvement with the project stems from her relationship with producer Rick Eldridge, who produced the 2015 documentary based on the book Four Blood Moons by Pastor John Hagee.
He said Eldridge contacted him around Thanksgiving in 2017 about possibly working on the project. At the beginning of the spring semester, Schultze obtained approval from the school for students and department staff to begin work on the film project. Filming took place in the Lynchburg and Bedford, Virginia areas through March and April 2018.
According to the Change.org petition, some Film Arts students have expressed that they they are discouraged by being forced to be part of the promotion of a man they don’t agree with.”
“They were originally told they were going to be doing very different projects and were only told about this new film project at the beginning of the spring semester,” the petition states. “Many don’t want this movie on their resume and some are even considering using IMDB aliases or quitting.”
A source told Voice of America that Liberty students had “the unpleasant opinion that the producer had only come to Liberty to make his movie.” because I could get free student work that would significantly reduce the cost of making the movie.”
“Many of us feel used to it at times, which was another reason why we petitioned to oppose the film in the first place,” the source said.
The source added that although the students were given other options, the other options had less experiential value. After reading and rewriting the initial script, the source said the film’s political agenda was notable.
“The film had a political agenda, which we were against,” the source added. The film student who spoke to PJ Media argued that the film could “significantly bring our film program into disrepute.”
“It’s not just a video, it’s a movie that will have a theatrical release in October,” the student added.
Schultze responded to the critics in an emailed statement shared with the Christian Post. “Liberty University did not create or fund ‘The Trump Prophecy.’ It has also not funded the other four feature films made with the Department of Motion Picture Arts in the last six years since its inception,” she wrote. “They were all funded through investor-funded production companies who want to help educate the next generation of filmmakers. Filmmaking opportunities of this caliber equip our students with essential skills for career advancement after graduation.”
Schultz added that the students were not forced to work on the film. “All of the students who took these production courses for the major were offered alternative film production opportunities if they so desired and one student took that option,” Schultze explained.
“We expected his political commitment to fade after the election, but it seems to have grown, already at the expense of the university’s reputation and now apparently, its theological foundation,” Joseph McGowan, a Liberty pre-law and film arts graduate, he told PJ Media.
“The message of ‘The Trump Prophecy’ seems at odds with what the Department of Motion Picture Arts teaches about crafts, and about the passions of its professors, and opposed to what Divinity School upholds as a spiritual standard,” McGowan added. . . “But increasingly, Jerry Jr. seems to see the university as a tool for his political causes rather than an institution worth carefully protecting.”
Well-known left-wing Christian leaders and academics have spoken out about Liberty University’s involvement in the film.
“It is about putting politics above the Gospel. It’s about putting political ideology before faith,” Jim Wallis, founder of the progressive evangelical social justice organization Sojourners, told The Washington Post.
John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania and a critic of those who make prophetic claims related to Trump, told The Christian Post in May that prophets like Taylor and others “have no real religious or spiritual authority beyond themselves.” themselves” and the empires they have created.
Michael Brown, a prominent Messianic Jewish conservative radio host, told CP in May that he didn’t have much of a problem getting Liberty involved in a movie about a prophecy like Taylor’s.
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