What if watching movies could be a spiritual discipline? For one film critic, great films became guiding lights—an escape from fear-based religion into richer experiences of imagination, beauty, community, and faith.
In this Radix Live conversation, we are delighted to welcome Jeffrey Overstreet to discuss his beautifully reflective new book, published in May 2026. Part memoir, part film criticism, and part spiritual testimony, the book traces Overstreet's journey from a fear-based religious upbringing into a richer and more expansive vision of faith—one shaped, surprisingly enough, by movies. As always, there will also be time for questions from our live audience.
Setting the Scene
Growing up in a bubble of churches and Christian schools, Jeffrey Overstreet was taught by example to condemn "worldly" art and culture as predatory and poisonous. Yet the flicker of light from cinema screens proved a temptation too powerful to resist. And what he found there was quite the opposite of what he'd been told: he found God at play in ten thousand theatres.…
