Actress Melissa Joan Hart thinks that religious tolerance is an important conversation to be having at the moment and Christians' rights need to be equally represented along with other religions.
"There shouldn't be any one religion represented in anything. But at the same time, we need to be tolerant of all religions. If a Christian's right is subordinate to all other rights, then it's not a right at all. And so, you know, I think it's really about tolerance across the board for everyone," Hart said in a Good Morning America interview.
The actress, who plays the lead role of Grace Hart, a high school teacher who finds herself embroiled in a legal battle after answering a question about Jesus Christ in class in the movie God's Not Dead 2, said that the role was challenging because the character was fighting for her right to stand by her faith.
"In this case, she's an introvert... a woman who stands by her faith. She wasn't raised with a faith, and so she comes to her own beliefs, and grows her own faith, and then she has to stand by that conviction and [be] kind of unwavering," Hart said.
She felt that she connected to the character because she too sometimes finds it difficult to balance people's expectations. In her teen years, she was criticised for potraying Sabrina the Teen Witch on television which Christians were against for supposedly promoting witchcraft.
Now that she is playing a good Christian woman who is being persecuted for her faith, there are still critics.
"Well, before, I was getting grief before for being a witch by the Christian community. I was being persecuted for believing in witchcraft. But it was really about magic and it was silly and family friendly. But, yeah, now it's from the other way," she said.
Based on data from Box Office Mojo, the movie has earned P14,118,002 in nine days since it was released April 1.
