HE IS RISEN—AGAIN: “HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL.” AND THE GOSPEL OF THE COMEBACK

When I hear the words "megachurch", I don’t think of salvation. I think of opulent, excessive, spectacularly tacky, and a prime example of the excesses of the "prosperity gospel"—the belief that extravagant wealth is a sign of God's favor. Having been raised modestly Baptist, I'd been taught early on to sneer at this notion and all the televangelists and other religious hucksters who upheld it.

And in recent years, Hollywood has developed its own fascination with the prosperity gospel—sometimes skewering it, sometimes trying to understand it, and occasionally doing both at once. Jessica Chastain took home an Oscar for her barbed yet deeply empathetic Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Chris Evans leans all the way into debauchery as the sexually insatiable Reverend Drew in Honey Don't!. And then there’s Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul., the somewhat uneven but immensely entertaining keen-eyed satire where Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall give wonderfully complex performances as a disgraced Christian power couple trying to salvage what remains of their spiritual empire.

There’s something a little perverse about how long it took Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. to settle into its rightful place in the culture. Released in that strange, half-reopened 2022 when audiences were still deciding whether to laugh again in public, it arrived with a light touch and a heavy message: that the American megachurch is as much performance as it is faith, and sometimes far more the former than the latter.

Shake it! Shake it for the Lord!

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. is certainly not the first film to mine the megachurch for comedy or critique, but it’s one of the few that lingers on something more uncomfortable: the particular strain of self-delusion required to lead one in the first place.

Here, Sterling K. Brown plays Lee-Curtis Childs, the disgraced pastor of a Black megachurch in Atlanta that once drew 25,000 congregants at its peak. Regina Hall is Trinitie, his impeccably composed, deeply invested wife, who remains at his side in the wake of a scandal so humiliating it emptied their pews and shuttered their sanctuary.

Trinitie stands by her man for a careful cocktail of reasons—devotion, denial, survival, and yes, the undeniable allure of the role itself. First Lady isn’t just a title; it’s a station. It's a throne, quite literally, in their church, Wander to Greater Paths, where matching gilded seats remind you exactly who sits closest to God.

After a strategic retreat from public disgrace, the Childses are ready for their resurrection. They enlist a documentary crew to capture Lee-Curtis’ comeback as they prepare to reopen on Easter Sunday—because if you’re going to stage a rebirth, you might as well go for biblical symmetry.

The mockumentary framing—complete with direct-to-camera confessionals—initially reads as comedic scaffolding. But over time, the camera becomes less of a joke and more of a witness, catching the seams as they split. Trinitie’s smile tightens. Lee-Curtis’ charisma flickers into something hollow, then something frightening. The performance doesn’t stop—it just stops working.

And that’s the film’s central thesis: in the megachurch, the show must go on. Even when the audience has left.

There is Something Special About a Pastor in Prada.

Sterling K. Brown, currently riding high off Paradise Season 2, dives headfirst into Lee-Curtis, a damaged soul whose conflation of God’s blessings and man’s Benjamins have long since become indistinguishable. That conflation isn’t new; the prosperity gospel has been doing that math for decades. But Brown makes it fascinating to watch, toggling between charm, fragility, and something far less savory.

But it’s Regina Hall who anchors the film’s emotional and moral complexity. Trinitie isn’t above enjoying the spoils of their former empire. (A trip to the mall for a comeback hat comes with a not-so-subtle glance at a $6,000 price tag.) Later, when Trinitie sits with her mother one morning to discuss her marital doubts, the roots of her internal tug-of-war come into focus. And it's less a clean moral dilemma and more a tangle of loyalty, identity, and long-held compromise.

Hall plays Trinitie as the quintessential pastor’s wife: faithful, supportive and more than a little bit petty. Keeping up appearances seems to be her modus operandi, so it’s no surprise that fate will make her life a living Hell of embarrassments.

A scene between her and Sister Denetta (Olivia D. Dawson) a former parishioner she runs into during a shopping frenzy is a hilarious and realistic exercise in good, old-fashioned Southern passive-aggressiveness. If you're a Church Lady, or if you know one, this scene will ring true while offering all the cringeworthy comedy the situation deserves.

And to where did all the worshippers of Wander to Greater Paths wander? To a new church run by a younger married couple, Keon and Shakura Sumpter (Conphidance and Nicole Beharie, respectively). Heaven’s House church not only makes a very loud and joyous noise unto the Lord on Sundays, it’s grown so big that the Sumpters have to open a second location. Unfortunately for the Childs, that grand opening corresponds with their own plans to use that same Easter Sunday for Lee-Curtis’ triumphant return to the pulpit. “What good are disciples when they are not disciplined?”

As the date nears and a settlement agreement with the Pastor's accusers teeters (Apparently, the big "incident" involves Pastor Childs and his affliction for young boys), his desperation escalates. So he turns to gimmicks. Naturally. Let there be street-side sign-twirling. Let there be something called “praise mime.” Roll out the Black Jesus statuette. In the end, the film doesn’t extend much compassion to the good reverend. (But don't worry. He has more than enough sympathy for himself.) Nor is much made of the ache that actual parishioners might experience when their mighty are fallen. Had director Adamma Ebo gone in that direction, Honk for Jesus. might have been truer but darker, landing on heart-rending over the astutely hilarious.

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required.

The comedy (originally a short) was written and directed by the first-timer Adamma Ebo, who produced it with her filmmaking partner and identical twin, Adanne. The Ebo sisters were raised in the Southern Baptist tradition in Atlanta, where the movie is set, and the director displays a tart and nuanced understanding of pastoral power and the wages of hypocrisy. Adamma Ebo said she was inspired by—or more aptly, she wrestled with—the real-life plummet of the megachurch pastor Eddie Long, who in 2010 was accused of sexual misconduct by young men from his congregation.

To understand why this story lands, especially now, you have to take this context and zoom out.

The megachurch isn’t just a place of worship—it’s an ecosystem. A brand. A business model that merges evangelical fervor with corporate scale. Think stadium seating, LED screens, curated music ministries, pastors styled like CEOs. It’s not accidental that Lee-Curtis feels less like a preacher and more like a fallen startup founder trying to salvage his valuation.

This isn’t new territory for media, but it’s rarely handled with this level of specificity.

Megachurches have long fascinated filmmakers and TV creators, but the tone varies wildly depending on who’s telling the story. Greenleaf treats the church as a site of generational power struggles—less about faith itself and more about the family dynasty built around it. The Righteous Gemstones goes full satire, depicting televangelism as grotesque. What Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. does differently is tonal tightrope-walking. It’s funny, but never farcical. Critical, but not dismissive of faith itself. It understands the emotional and cultural centrality of the Black church while interrogating what happens when that institution scales beyond intimacy and into industry.

It also refuses easy villains. Lee-Curtis is manipulative, yes. But he’s also a product of a system that rewards charisma over accountability. Trinitie is complicit, but also trapped. The congregation—those who remain—aren’t fools. They’re believers navigating disappointment.

In the years since its release, public conversations around institutions—religious, corporate, cultural—have sharpened. Accountability is demanded more loudly. Scandals travel faster. The illusion of untouchable leadership has eroded.

Rewatching Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. now, it feels less like satire and more like anatomy. A breakdown of how these systems sustain themselves, how they recover (or don’t), and who pays the price.

It’s also a reminder that the megachurch, for all its spectacle, is still built on something deeply human: the desire to believe in something bigger than yourself. To be guided. To be held.

The tragedy is what happens when that desire is exploited.

Still, what's here is choice material, especially if you grew up in the church or currently attend one of the many prosperity gospel megachurches. There’s real bite here. And I can’t think of another movie ballsy enough to include “Knuck If You Buck” and “Never Would Have Made It” on the same soundtrack.