There may be hope yet for the Kennedy Center, as new leadership under the Trump administration signals a pivot away from truly bizarre and woke content and opens up to more family- and faith-focused programming.
Hundreds of attendees gathered at the Kennedy Center Wednesday for the world premiere of Christian Broadcasting Network’s documentary The Revival Generation. The film tells the story of UniteUS, an organization started by mother Tonya Prewett to reach Gen Z with the Christian Gospel.
Director Laura Hand told The Federalist that before the project, she didn’t know much about revivals brewing on college campuses. But after talking to the producers, she came to Unite’s Ohio State University event, which was attended by thousands of students. Around 2,000 attendees responded to an altar call, with many were baptized afterwards. The event made her “see that this is something very big that’s happening, and it’s a story that needs to be told, especially when the media is only giving us headlines about chaos and division that’s happening on college campuses,” Hand said. “And what I saw was the complete opposite of that.”
The premier featured notables at the intersection of faith and government, including Dr. Ben Carson, Dr. Alveda King, and Faith and Freedom Coalition Founder Ralph Reed. Cast members like Pastor Jonathan Pokluda, Tonya Prewett, and Madison Prewett Troutt, along with Christian music artist Luke Smallbone of For King and Country, were among the guests walking the red carpet.
The documentary examined the revival events of the past two years, where collectively, students have been baptized by the thousands. At Unite’s first event at Auburn University in September of 2023, one student expressed her desire to be baptized, and by the end of the night, hundreds of others had followed. UniteUS has baptized students in all kinds of conditions. At Auburn it was a murky campus pond. At Florida State University it was in the fountain that drunk 21-year-olds are thrown into on their birthday. At Ohio State University it was inside box trucks while the other attendees watched outside in the sub-freezing temperatures.
The film addressed the themes of anxiety and depression so often associated with Gen Z. These terms are sometimes thrown around imprecisely, particularly since it can be seen as fashionable to self-diagnose with some form of mental struggle. But Gen Z has been widely described as the “loneliest generation,” and the number of young adults who describe their situation as hopeless is sobering.
Eighteen percent of Gen Zers would say their current situation is so difficult that they think life may not be worth living. One in four are close to someone caught in a drug addiction, while one in five know someone who acted on those feelings of hopelessness and committed suicide.
Jonathan Pokluda, a main speaker at Unite events, told The Federalist that “Jesus is the solution to everything broken on earth,” but that when people “fall deeper in love with the world,” the doors for hopelessness open wider.
However, “the greatest thing about Heaven,” Pokluda said, “is not that we’re not depressed, not that we’re not anxious. It’s not that there’s no heartbreak. It’s that God’s there … what God desires to give us all is more of Himself.”
Members of Gen Z are not only known for being lonely, but they are increasingly showing an interest in Christianity — especially young men. Will Garringer, who helps local campus leaders facilitate their Unite events, was interviewed in the film. Garringer told The Federalist that he’s observed a trend of “young, zealous men who are sick and tired of being apathetic, spiritually passive, and are deciding to finally use who God has made them to be — and that’s to lead a generation.”
“This message won’t leave, and the flames will be fanned, and this is the time for it, right now,” Alveda King told The Federalist.
In February, Trump fired several members of the Center’s Board of Trustees he believed did not “share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.” The board elected Trump as board chair in place of David Rubenstein and announced that Richard Grenell would come on as interim president following the termination of former Center president Deborah Rutter. Some with scheduled performances across a variety of genres have refused to perform at the Center under Trump’s leadership. The “Tapestry of Pride” events scheduled for early June were canceled or relocated.
Grenell reiterated the shift in content in a not-so-subtle video introduction before the film’s screening, describing the Center as “now, once again, a place of excellence and purpose.” He emphasized that faith-based and family content were crucial to the arts, adding that “President Trump and I are honored to bring tonight’s movie premiere, in partnership with the Christian Broadcasting Network, to the Kennedy Center.”
In June, the Kennedy Center hosted a sold-out screening of Angel Studio’s King of Kings, an animated film that depicts Charles Dickens as a father sharing the story of Christ’s birth with his son.
“America is a Judeo-Christian nation, and at our very roots is where we find our faith,” Vice President of Public Relations for the Kennedy Center Roma Daravi told CBN. “There is absolutely no reason why faith-based programming shouldn’t be a large part of what we’re doing here at the Kennedy Center.”