God dies, Protestants divide

Last week, God’s Not Dead 2 hit the nation’s movie screens. The sequel to the 2014 sleeper hit tells the story of Grace Wesley, a high school teacher dragged into court for talking about Jesus in her classroom. The movie imagines a hostile government bent on rooting out any trace of religion in public life. As the prosecuting attorney threatens, “We’re going to prove once and for all that God is dead.”

The timing of this film’s release may have been intentional. Fifty years ago this month, Time magazine shocked the nation with a provocative question splashed across its all-black cover in bold red type: “Is God Dead?”

Inside, the magazine followed up on a story it had first reported a few months before about a small group of “Christian atheists” who were teaching “God is dead” theology at Protestant seminaries. These “death of God” theologians argued that the church’s success in the modern age depended on acknowledging that God no longer existed and, as Time described it, “[getting] along without him.”