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In 1852, a novel by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe depicting the hard lives of Southern American slaves sparked a firestorm of anti-slavery sentiment across the country. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a landmark work of protest. It enabled readers to see the human cost of slavery—the misery of its victims; to stand at the cabin door, as it were, and look at the dark reality inside. William Wilberforce, the British politician who devoted his life to ending his country’s participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade also engaged the emotions of the public. He publicly posted illustrations of the ships with their narrow rows of coffin-like stalls in which Africans were packed like bales of hay and died by the hundreds of thousands. One look at the diagrams was enough to bring their anguish home to the viewer’s heart.
It’s 2023, long after the end of legal slavery, but the evil practice continues. In fact, there are millions more men, women and children enslaved today than in the 19th century. The public is apathetic and unengaged in a problem that seems to most distant and irrelevant.
The movie “Sound of Freedom,” starring Jim Caviezel and produced by Eduardo Verástegui opened fittingly on July 4th and is a film designed, in the Wilberforce and Stowe tradition, to bring the distracted public face to face with one prevalent and particularly vile aspect of modern-day slavery: child sex trafficking.
I can almost hear the reader gulp. That was my reaction as well when I was asked to screen the movie. If there is immeasurable malevolence and unbearable suffering in the world, they exist in the figures of the sex-abuser and his child-victim. Ignorance of this pervasive crime (the U.S. is the number one consumer worldwide) may not be bliss, but it is certainly more comfortable than knowledge.
“Sound of Freedom,” for all its pathos and unflinching realism, is a movie shining with hope and confidence. Hope that by bringing what is done in darkness to light the public will be filled with the same abolitionist spirit that ended legal slavery in the 1800s. And why not? Do we not consider ourselves more humane and enlightened than our slave-holding or slavery-tolerating ancestors?
Caviezel gives a sensitive and winning performance as Tim Ballard, the real-life United States Department of Homeland Security agent who, having saved a little Central American boy from U.S. sex traffickers, embarks on a sting mission in the jungles of Colombia to rescue the boy’s sister. Caviezel has called this role his most important and significant since his portrayal of Jesus in The Passion. He conveys beautifully Ballard’s initial repugnance for the work and his subsequent surrender to the surety that God was calling him to it, expressed with the line: “When God tells you what to do, you don’t hesitate.” Caviezel said, about his performance in an interview (and it’s true): “My heart was on fire, and you can see it come out of my eyes.”
Without giving too much away, the movie portrays the web of nefarious kidnappers, traffickers and clients chased down and ultimately brought to justice and provides the satisfaction of seeing the agony of separation and slavery end. Watch “Sound of Freedom” for the excitement and the fine acting. But in truth, the movie is a story of personal possibilities—that we might stop averting our gaze from the horror; that we come to understand its pervasiveness; and that we ultimately reject our own indifference to it. Because, though we may be innocent of any direct involvement, we are guilty of allowing ourselves to pretend it isn’t happening.
Or, if we know it’s happening, of shrugging off the anguish of other people’s children.
Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., is a Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association and host of the nationally syndicated radio show Conversations with Consequences.
We saw it in McKinney on Monday … 3 Jul 23.
Full theater.
Excellent film about a horrific problem.
We hope and pray it has the intended effect.
Sadly … I firmly believe our pedo-elite contribute to the problem, and allowing child-sex-traffic through the open border is the icing on the cake for our would-be overlords.
G-d help us all.
We will not be exonerated in the US for tolerating this abomination.
There is a reason that many nations are listed in the Book of Revelation.
But the US is strangely absent.
“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bonhoeffer was the pastor of the Confessing Church in Germany.
He was executed by Hitler in 1945 for his participation in the Valkyrie Plot to assassinate Hitler
Pastor Bonhoeffer was not involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. He was involved in the Abwehr cabal, which was headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. The Abwehr was the name of German military intelligence. Both Canaris and Bonhoeffer were hanged about 2 weeks before Hitler’s suicide.
There is no such thing as collective guilt, so, no, we are not guilty of “shrugging off” the anguish of anyone’s child. Life is full of suffering for many children and adults. Sex slavery is one of the worst, but other children are being mutilated and murdered.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was emotional and exaggerated by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She appealed to emotion rather than rationality – never a good basis for any decision. It caused the bloodiest war in our history where nearly 600,000 Americans died. There was another solution, a diplomatic one, instead of a war between the states.
Emotional guilt trips being used to favor one social cause over others is never good. Yes, people should be aware of the problem, but don’t criticize them for “indifference” just because they are not as actively involved as you may want them to be in the solution.
Lots of people do shrug it off, they watch porn without guilt believing they’re not harming anyone
They don’t care that someone is behind the camera and Goolag et al claim that there’s nothing they can do about it but can censor anything that tells the truth about the convid injections.
When he returned to Russia after the fall of the USSR he was often met by people pleading with him for understanding.
When the subject of the Gulag would come up………..many people made the excuse “But we didn’t know what was going on there!”.
Solzhenitsyn’s reply?
“You should have made it your business to know.”.
Open the gates to 3rd world trash; get 3rd world results.
When Jug-eared Barry dumped a shitload of muslims in Idaho, a jaw-dropping spike in rapes erupted.
Needless to say this caused a howl from bewildered protests.
B. Hussein’s AG, Loretta Lynch replied by threatening them with “hate crimes”.
“Opening the gates” is a form of cultural suicide.
The Immigration Act of 1965 was the beginning of the end of the the US.
Entire cultures can commit suicide as history shows.
Moses makes the case against cultural suicide in Deuteronomy.
There’s a PragerU video that Tim Ballard made, inspiring stuff.
Add to this movie the two books by Yeonmi Park, describing her horrific abuse and exploitation in North Korea and China, and her eventual coming to America.
Great Movie, Well Done. It shows many of us have a conscience. We should all be ashamed of the way children have been abused. and used for profit for evil purposes. God’s rainbow has been stollen and we are raging to the Days of Noah.
Matthew 18:1-22 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he was drowned to death in the depth of the sea.” (This is how Jesus feels about those who abuse children. ) The theme of retail America became “Queer all year” and lost billions in sales. We would eventually learn these retail outfits would be subsidized by globalist schemers, betraying their customers as they catered to cultural collapse.
Well said!
This movie was not to entertain us, it is to inform us of what is happening to so many children today especially since our borders have been opened, and when this movie was made they were not open at the time.. It’s so much easier to exploit children now more than ever.!
We are not to forget the history of slavery but the slavery going on with children today, right now cannot be ignored. Our country is promoting child abuse every day right before our eyes. No explanation needed, just turn on the tv. To think the USA is allowing the rape of our children’s minds, souls and bodies is outrageous.
This type of slavery is beyond evil. My country which I love is allowing it , The quote from the movie if you have not seen it “ Gods children are not for sale” should pierce every heart that is still beating!
There are many heroes in this true story and those involved in the movie. We need to do our part and protect our children in every way possible. It doesn’t take a village, it takes family and getting on our knees and praying to God for undeserved mercy. 🙏
I know I’ll get vicious incoming for saying this, but all this sexual deviance and madness was part of BO’s satanic plan to destroy America. Same sex marriage was the beginning of this insanity. God help us all now, because many simply didn’t care then.
Slavery ended in Britain largely due to the efforts of abolitionist William Wilberforce who was a Christian and whose case was based on Biblical principles.
Slavery in the US ended through warfare. John Brown, also a Christian, had a more active form of resistance and was the beginning of the end of toleration of slavery in the US.
I commend the producers of Sound of Freedom and Jim Caviezel for making this movie.
I commend them for showing the abomination of human/sex trafficking happening daily in the US.
They have channeled the spirit of William Wilberforce to an American moviegoing audience.
I personally am very enthusiastic to see the return of John Brown in modern form.
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.”
—John Brown’s last words, written on a note
handed to a guard just before his hanging Dec. 1859
Whatever his claims. John Brown was not a Christian, and did not act as one at Harper’s Ferry, VA or at Potawatomie Creek, Kansas. He was a failed businessman who was angry with the government. His family had to leave NY b/c of the shame he brought upon them. HE and his arrogant hate caused the needless bloodshed.
Wm. Wilburforce, MP, was only the most public abolitionist among many others. All were evangelical Christians. Anti-slavery began with a meeting of 12 Quakers in a London print shop in the 1770’s. Anti-slavery was a bottom up (class) movement of Christians, but one of the most important factors was that British people knew first-hand what slavery was because so many white men were taken from port city bars and brothels and forced into a year’s service by the Royal Navy’s impressment gangs.
So why pay money to the Mormons (Angel Studios) who have been big promoters of child slavery here in America. Of course they say they don’t appove anymore but they still deceive many by their blasphemies. Sounds somewhat indifferent to me to the message of Christ.
Yes! We condemn those that are child sex traffickers, and rightly so. But if there wasn’t a market, there wouldn’t be such horror of exploiting our children. There in is the root of the problem.
Megan’s Law.
My comment above was too short to post, so let me tell you I saw the movie on July 3rd with a senior discount and matinee 10:00 am, with leather reclining chair in the 35mm studio…$7.50 Walnut Creek, CA
Liberals a re acting like their losing their marbles because Sounf Freedom is doing way better then Southside With You and that Dr. Fauci movie
CONGRESS WHERE ARE YOU? Tim Ballard, Border Agent testified before the House Foreign Affairs committee on this child trafficking business, so where is their outrage of the abuse of children and narcotics flooding the country?
I’m telling you right now. with all certainty. This human and child sex trafficking is an abomination to God. These people will be judged harshly who are committing crimes against the little children and humanity for profit, and abuse, are in God’s scope.
Matthew 18:1. At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like the child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
6. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7. Woe to the world because of such things that cause people to sin!