How times change. While in her younger years, actress Melissa Joan Hart got flak from Christians for playing Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, supposedly for popularising magic and witchcraft, she is now playing a Christian woman who is being prosecuted for expressing her faith in class - and this time it's Christians fighting her corner.
"For the longest time, while I played a witch on television [on 'Sabrina, The Teenage Witch'], the Christian community attacked me for popularising the magic aspects on that secular TV show. Now it's the opposite. I'm getting grief for playing the good Christian woman who is being persecuted by the outside world!" she said in an interview with Chicago Sun Times.
The actress said she was drawn to do "God's Not Dead 2" because she believes that people need to be aware of the issues being experienced by Christians, mainly those who are being persecuted for their faith.
She lamented that while the law clearly states the need for the separation of the church and state, Christians in the US are taking more than their fair share of heat.
"In the past, mainstream Christians were members of what we could call the big powerhouse religion at the time — and may have been doing a fair amount of persecuting minority religions. But now those Christians feel their faith is something that is trampled on or ignored. Now the tables have turned," she said.
In an earlier interview with C-Pop podcast, shared her own faith journey and said that she was already 20 and starting her own family when she was able to truly focus and live out God's word.
"As I had children and reached my 20s and moved to Connecticut and had a little bit more time where I wasn't working, I was always searching for a Bible study group, and I found one in the last six years, and I've really just been able to dive into the Word and been able to study it and discuss it with other people and find a real fellowship community and sisters in Christ that I can pray with," she said.
