A Great Awakening (2026)

Audience Reviews

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Critics Reviews

Plugged In Kennedy Unthank

Plugged In: Unthank’s review describes the film as one that masterfully brings Whitefield’s preaching to life, compelling audiences alongside the film’s characters toward faith in Christ. He particularly praises the way the film acknowledges Whitefield’s historical flaws—including his entanglement with slavery—rather than sanitizing its subject. His conclusion calls the film a work that compels audiences toward the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Movieguide

Movieguide: Movieguide offered enthusiastic praise, calling the film extremely interesting, highly enjoyable, and well-made, with excellent acting and strong directing. Their review underscores that “A GREAT AWAKENING is full of jeopardy, dramatic conflict and engaging dialogue.” They describe the film as delivering a powerful insight into American history, arguing that the Great Awakening created the conditions for the United States itself.

Harvest Ministries Greg Laurie

Harvest Ministries: Pastor Greg Laurie’s ministry site featured an interview with director Joshua Enck and actor Jonathan Blair, calling the film a powerful combination of watchable production and gospel content. Laurie’s team described the film as one where the fame of revival spreads the flame of revival.

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes: The film holds a 67% Tomatometer score from 12 critics and a 97% Popcornmeter as of April, 2026.

IMDb

IMDb: as of April 2026, IMDB 7.5/10 rating.

Cast & Crew

Joshua Enck

Executive Producer

Johnathan Blair

George Whitefield

John Paul Sneed

Benjamin Franklin

Josh Bates

Alexander Hamilton

Videos

A Great Awakening (2026)

A Great Awakening (2026): Video 1

00:54

A GREAT AWAKENING | Official Teaser | Sight & Sound Films

01:12

A Great Awakening | Official Teaser Trailer | In Theaters April 3

Content Rating Guide

A Great Awakening (2026)

This is an overtly Christ-centered film. The gospel is not backdrop—it is the engine of the entire narrative. A Great Awakening builds its case scene by scene that spiritual rebirth, not political philosophy, was the decisive force behind the founding of the American republic.

The gospel proclaimed openly. Whitefield’s open-air preaching—to coal miners, prisoners, colonial crowds, and anyone who would stand still long enough—saturates the film. The central sermon footage carries genuine weight. When he thunders,

“Let us proclaim freedom to the captives. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed! Arise, O sleeper, awaken!”

the film is drawing on Romans 10:17 in form and spirit: faith arrives through the hearing of the word, and the word must be spoken to be heard. Whitefield’s voice—capable of projecting to 30,000 people, as Franklin estimates—becomes the film’s symbol for the Holy Spirit-empowered proclamation of the gospel.

The gospel confronts a skeptic directly. The film’s most theologically sharp exchange arrives when Franklin articulates his deism—a benevolent God who has furnished humanity with reason and resources and “waits to see if we will” use them rightly. Whitefield’s reply cuts to the nerve of saving faith versus intellectual acknowledgment:

“Everything comes down to what you make of Jesus Christ. Even the demons believe that God exists.”

That last phrase is an unmistakable echo of James 2:19. The film uses it deftly: Franklin is not a fool or a villain, but a man who has gone only as far as assent and stopped short of surrender.

The preacher acknowledges his own flaws. When Franklin confronts Whitefield on his morally compromised stance on slavery, the preacher does not deflect. He responds:

“My character is flawed; so, look at Jesus, not me.”

This moment is one of the film’s most honest. Whitefield’s willingness to point people past himself—to the cross rather than to the man holding the Bible—resonates as a corrective to celebrity Christianity in any era.

Theological unity across disagreement. The film quietly shows Whitefield, John Wesley, and Charles Wesley operating in gospel partnership despite sharp Calvinist-Arminian differences. Their shared mission—preaching the grace and lordship of Christ—overrides their doctrinal disputes, offering a picture of unity that does not require uniformity.
True liberty is spiritual before it is political. The film’s thesis runs through every scene: the same freedom the Son gives that Whitefield proclaimed across the colonies prepared those same colonists to conceive of political self-governance. The spiritual awakening and the American Revolution are not parallel stories; the film argues one produced the other.

The film’s non-Christian worldview belongs almost entirely to Benjamin Franklin, and it is handled with unusual fairness for faith-based cinema. Franklin’s framework is classical Deism—a God who creates, equips, and then observes, rather than one who initiates, enters history, and redeems.

Deism given genuine weight. Franklin is not a straw man. John Paul Sneed’s portrayal gives him intellectual gravitas, moral warmth, and a real argument. The film allows his objections to Christianity—rooted partly in the cold religiosity of his Puritan father—to stand long enough to feel honest. Adult viewers will recognize this as the same Enlightenment anthropology that undergirds much of Western secularism: humanity as fundamentally capable, religion as culturally useful but perhaps unnecessary for the moral life.
The worldview is challenged, not celebrated. The film is clear that Franklin’s deism is incomplete, not simply an alternative path. His refusal to fully surrender to the gospel remains, to the film’s final scene, the unresolved thread of his story—presented as something he must ultimately account for, not merely a philosophical position he has to wrestle with.

Nothing graphic. No nudity or sexual content. The bawdy moment referenced by reviewers is suggestive rather than explicit, and brief. Nothing here should concern adult viewers.

Strong profanity is wholly absent. The most combative language in the film is theological and political debate.

The film is rated PG-13, primarily due to brief sequences of violence. While at least one scene depicts Whitefield being bloodied, these moments are never prolonged or gratuitous. Instead, they serve to illustrate the genuine personal risks and physical costs associated with itinerant preaching within a volatile political landscape.

Historical context only. Alcohol appears in background settings appropriate to eighteenth-century colonial life. Substances are not glorified or portrayed as a lifestyle.

Audience Reviews

Critics Reviews

Cast & Crew

Videos

A Great Awakening (2026): Video 1

A GREAT AWAKENING | Official Teaser | Sight & Sound Films

A Great Awakening | Official Teaser Trailer | In Theaters April 3

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