Bible

Phil Wickham has released 14 Christian worship albums, has been Platinum certified and nominated for American Music Awards, Dove Awards, Billboard Music Awards and Grammys — but all of his vocal training and performances couldn’t prepare him to step into the shoes of one of his Biblical heroes with the upcoming animated musical film “David.”

Directed by Phil Cunningham and Brent Dawes, “David” marks the second animated film this year for Angel Studios. April’s “The King of Kings” made $60 million and is the second-highest-grossing film from the studio following “Sound of Freedom,” which made $184 million. The film hits theaters on Friday. If the release date sounds familiar, it could be because the third installment in the multibillion-dollar “Avatar” franchise, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” is released on the same day. Presale numbers for “David” are at $15 million on 3,100 screens, but with “Avatar” tracking to open between $135 million and $165 million, and “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” also tracking between $13 million and $20 million, it would seem to be a true David vs. Goliaths for ticket sales.

That in itself could be daunting, but for Wickham, the biggest obstacles came long before release dates were decided. Despite playing in arenas with thousands of fans, he had a “secret dream” of voicing a character in an animated film. A character “that carried courage and faith and had some grand adventure.” But because he’d never chased that dream, he realistically put a limit on that particular goal. Even when the opportunity arose, he was hesitant when going into a casting meeting.

“I’m unoffendable. [I said to producers], if I suck, then just tell me because I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. And also, I don’t want to be bad in a movie as much as you don’t want to make a bad movie,” says Wickham.

The contemporary Christian artist, who recently finished sold-out concerts at Downey Calvary Chapel and the Wiltern, had never tried his hand at voice acting. Not only did he get the role, but he also had to help bring to (animated) life one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. The tale of David — the boy who was anointed to become the king and along the way felled the giant Philistine warrior Goliath with a rock and a slingshot — has become synonymous as the most famous of underdog representations and tests of faith in the Bible. The character and story is also one of Wickham’s favorites.

Phil Wickham always wanted to voice an animated character, especially after seeing “The Lion King.”

(Colton Dall)

“When this came across my desk, so to speak, I was just like, man, I could tell you that story, but I didn’t know if I had it in me. I didn’t know if I was a good actor. I didn’t know if I could voice a character, but I knew I wanted a shot,” said Wickham.

A curious revelation for Wickham was discovering that the singing that he’d been doing most of his life would not work on-screen, at least not for this project. He was asked to tone down things, to sometimes “talk through” lyrics and to generally make the music more dramatic for the screen.

“I thought, OK, I got this. This is why they hired me, because I’m a singer. But that ended up being the hardest part because they didn’t want me to sound like me,” Wickham said.

“Singing became a background to just being the character, which honestly, in some ways, was the hardest thing. Maybe even for my ego as as an artist.”

It was definitely a process that required lots of fine-tuning and looking at David as not just the king and hero that Wickham had grown up reading about at home and in Southern California churches. Sitting in the pews in Downey, the singer reflected on why he got into music and why Christian entertainment is on the rise.

“I found out really quick that I loved being a part of moments where people were encountering the same hope and faith that I encountered in my room alone,” Wickham said of songwriting and performing. He grew up with Christianity all around him, but has seen a spike in popularity for music and movies dealing with faith-based fandom.

“For this movie ‘David’ to come out at this time … I think that the world is looking for stuff to hope in. I think people are just searching and finding out more and more the truth that if we look around us at the world of man, we’re not going to find real solutions. So that maybe if we look up, we will.”

Let the annals of this country show it was the murder of a Jewish couple on the first night of Hanukkah that showed how profoundly un-Christian Donald J. Trump is once and for all.

The prosecution rests, and there can no rebuttal: We are a nation led by President Meathead.

Except unlike the character of the same name famously played by Rob Reiner in “All In the Family,” our Meathead in chief lacks any sense of moral decency.

The weekend saw the tragic deaths of Hollywood legend Reiner and his wife, Michele. Their son, Nick Reiner, is currently in jail without bond and is facing murder charges. Normal people mourned the loss of a couple who delighted and improved the world with their creative and political work while trying to free Nick from the ravages of drug abuse and mental illness for most of his adult life.

Our president, of course, is not normal. He’s a weirdo who gets off on being mean. If there was a CruelHub, he’d be on it daily.

And so on the day after Romy Reiner found her parents’ bodies at their Brentwood home, Trump posted on social media that they died not due to stab wounds but “reportedly due to the anger [Rob] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

The president doubled down on his crocodile tears to reporters at the Oval Office the day after, claiming Reiner “was very bad for our country” without offering any proof and describing the director of big-hearted film classics like “When Harry Met Sally…” and “The Princess Bride” as “deranged.”

We’re in the middle of the holiday season, a time when people traditionally slow down their lives to take stock of their blessings during the coldest and darkest time of the year and try to spread cheer to friends and strangers alike.

But goodwill is simply impossible for Trump. Where a moment calls for grace, he offers ethical filth. When tragedies inspire charity in the hearts of good people, the president makes it about himself.

While Trump demanded all Americans speak no ill of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination, he invited all to ridicule Reiner, whose apparent sin was criticizing our eminently criticizable president.

While everyone is rightfully focusing on the ugly attacks Trump launched against Reiner and his wife, also telling about the president’s soul was the address he gave at a White House reception marking Christmas and the start of Hanukkah hours before news broke of the Reiners’ murder.

Earlier that day, two gunmen killed 15 people who were celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach near Sydney, Australia, in what authorities are describing as an antisemitic attack. The night before, someone killed two people at Brown University in a case that’s yet to be solved.

Trump offered lip service to those massacres before turning to the reason for the season:

Trump.

Actor, writer, director, producer and activist Rob Reiner photographed at his home in Brentwood in 2017.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

He insulted his predecessor, Joe Biden, and claimed his disastrous tariffs were paying off. He brought up Bryson DeChambeau so the U.S. Open golf champion could gush about how the president was a “great golfer [and] better human being.” The president plugged his planned arch for the nation’s capital that he claimed will “blow … away” the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He bragged about winning over Latinos during the 2024 election — without mentioning that’s he’s already losing them, fast — and blasted the “fake news” for not appreciating the Christmas decorations of First Lady Melania Trump.

You would think Trump was running for president again instead of marking two important religious holidays. But Trump was being spiritual in a sense: he was practicing his true faith, which is smite.

The word and its conjugates appear hundreds of times in the Old Testament, spoken by an admittedly “jealous” God as he instructs the Israelites on how to treat their enemies, or used as a threat against the Israelites if they stray from his commands.

If Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen ever read the Bible, you might well bet they read only the parts that involved smiting.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — he of the medieval cross chest tattoo — continues to play Solomon as he authorizes the bombing of boats off the coasts of South America that he insists are carrying drugs while offering no justification other than his will that it be done. Immigration agents indiscriminately pick up citizens and noncitizens alike in pursuit of remigration, the far-right movement to make minority groups return to their ancestral countries in the name of white makes right.

Twice, the Department of Homeland Security has invoked the Book of Isaiah in social media campaigns to justify its scorched-earth approach to booting people from the country. Specifically, they have cited a verse where the prophet tells God “Here I am, send me” as Yahweh calls for a messenger to warn heretics of the hell he will rain down on them unless they repent. The most recent clip starred Border Patrol commander at large Gregory Bovino, he who has spread Trump’s fire-and-brimstone gospel of deportation.

Smiting and annihilation are the Gospel of Trump and they do play a big role in the Bible. But their ultimate redemption for Christians is what we’re gearing up to celebrate next week: the birth of Christ, the Son of God who came to the world to preach one should love thy enemy, bless the meek, renounce wealth and a whole bunch of other woke stuff.

Trump may not be the literal anti-Christ, but Trump sure is anti-Christian. He stands for and embodies everything that Jesus decried.

More and more Christian thought leaders are starting to understand this about Trump the more he rages. In the wake of Trump’s selfish sliming of the Reiners, Christianity Today editor at large Russell Moore slammed his “vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior” while conservative commentator and longtime Trump apologist Rod Dreher wrote “something is very, very wrong with this man.”

That’s a start. But more evangelical Christians, 80% of whom voted for him in the 2024 election, need to finally repent of blindly supporting him. They, more than any other group, have excused Trump’s sins.

They often compare him to major figures from the Bible and Christian heroes from the past — King David, Cyrus the Great, Constantine — who were imperfect but still did God’s will.

That’s laughable. This man isn’t just imperfect. We’re all that.

No, Trump is more than imperfect. He is a throbbing mass of malevolence, turned up — to reference Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap” — to 11.