God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness is a competently shot film stocked with journeyman performances that suffers from one major flaw. That flaw is the surreal cultural milieu portrayed in which Christians in present-day America are actively persecuted in a variety of ways.
God's Not Dead opens with the arrest and imprisonment of Reverend Dave Hill (David White) for his refusal to comply with a court order to turn over transcripts of his sermons. The Reverend's church is on a public university campus and he is embroiled in a fight with those who are trying to get the church thrown off campus. A young vandal throws a brick threw one of the church's basement windows and knocks a gas line loose so that Dave's co-pastor, Jude (Benjamin Onyango), is killed in an explosion. The church is heavily damaged in the fire and, in the media frenzy that follows, the university decides to assert eminent domain privilege and quite literally raze the church to the ground. Reverend Dave's attorney brother, Pearce (John Corbett), swoops in with a last-minute injunction and stays the bulldozers for a few weeks.
The problem with all of this is that the whole premise that this church is being attacked comes off as absurd. 75% of Americans are Christian and almost 40% attend church on a weekly basis. The idea that our society would foster or even allow the cruel, abject persecution we see in God's Not Dead is so bizarre that it colors the whole film with a sort of propaganda tone. This movie is clearly designed to feed whatever emotional need it is that makes this myth of persecution so popular among believers.
There aren't any great performances in God's Not Dead but there aren't any awful ones either. John Corbett as Pearce is pleasing to watch work. He brings a studied breeziness to his character that serves the script well. Corbett, at this point, may be most recognizable for his roles in Sex and the City and Parenthood, but audiences of a certain age will know him best from CBS's Northern Exposure.
With only one or two bits of moderately good acting, a sappy, melodramatic soundtrack, and a completely implausible story at its core, God's Not Dead isn't good for much beyond preaching to the choir.