Oprah’s show Greenleaf, a drama featuring a Christian “megachurch” and the fallible humans behind it, has been all over the map when it comes to representing Christian values accurately. One minute, the show is depicting gay conversion therapy programs in a positive light. The next, it’s sending the message that Christians who don’t support gay marriage are “broken.”
On Wednesday’s episode, “Point of No Return,” the show appeared to be back on track as it admitted to the liberal, anti-Christian agenda children are often force-fed in public schools.
Preston and Simone are soon to be married at Calvary Fellowship World Ministries church, run by the Greenleaf family, and they begin arguing about the best school to send their future children to in front of the Bishop’s daughter, Grace “GiGi” Greenleaf (Merle Dandridge).
Preston: The most important thing is that I love you.
Simone: But it's not the most important thing for us.
Preston: So, why wouldn't that be…
Simone: The most important thing is whether you love God. 2 Corinthians says…
Grace: All right, hold on. Before we start waving around our loaded bibles…
Simone: I was simply just gonna say…
Grace: Can I just ask -- how did this come up?
Both: We were --
Simone: We were talking about schools last night and where we should send our kids.
Grace: Are you pregnant?
Simone: No!
Preston: That's what I said. Why are we even talking about this? It's so early.
Simone: Some of those waiting lists are four years out, sometimes five years out.
Grace: No, she's not wrong about that.
Preston: Five years?
Simone: And then he said he doesn't think that they should have a Christian education.
Preston: I just think that it would be easier for them to make an informed decision if they started in a secular school.
Simone: What do they need to be informed about besides the cross, huh? Evolution? Oh, gay rights?
Preston: Come on, Simone.
Simone: Oh, abortion!
Grace: Okay. Wait, wait, wait. If I could just interrupt for a second.
Simone: I don't want to be unequally yoked.
Grace: Yes, I'm familiar with that verse, but... Gosh. Something tells me this is a bigger conversation than we can fruitfully have in the... six minutes we have left before this wedding rehearsal. So, can we just put a pin in this right now? We'll come back to it after.
Preston: Yeah.
Grace: Simone?
Simone: Fine.
Grace: I can see you love each other. This is going to be all right.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Grace. While you’re looking down on and chastising Simone for knowing her Bible well, she is actually making a very valid point.
Sure, there are plenty of Christian families who send their children to public school and are able to overcome the liberal brainwashing that goes on there. But if you are about to marry someone who says he rejects Christian schooling and actually prefers to have his children make “informed decisions” based on anti-Christian teaching, then that’s a totally different story.
But, kudos to Greenleaf for even admitting there’s a liberal agenda in public schools in the first place! Unless, of course, they're painting Simone as an irrational Bible thumper who needs to listen to a voice of reason (such as Grace or Preston), as they hinted at in Wednesday’s episode.
Judging by the way the show hasn’t been able to make up its mind about which side of the fence they’re on when it comes to Christian values, that might be a strong possibility.
