With appealing authenticity Chiwetel Ejiofer enacts a courageous man in the 2018 film, Come Sunday (on Netflix). He is Carlton Pearson, the Tulsa pastor willing to declare to his congregation that he now believes in the ultimate salvation of all people, that God Himself led him to this fond conviction. Most of his fellow Christians are scandalized, ergo leaving his church. The church can’t afford to stay open. Pearson finds himself on a unique and troubling path.
I am glad Pearson is a universalist—like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa before him—although his theology seems very incomplete here. (Where is the ideation?) The film is respectable but also more interesting than dramatic, and then it runs out of steam. The sop it throws to homosexuals isn’t interesting at all. . . Even so, such actors as Martin Sheen (as Oral Roberts), Condola Rashad (as Pearson’s wife), and Jason Segel deserve plaudits.
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