It makes no sense that people are criticizing “Sound of Freedom,” which aims to bring awareness to the crime of child trafficking, says Christian artist Lauren Daigle. Daigle recently saw the movie starring Jim Caviezel and shared her thoughts on it in an Instagram video.
“I went to see the movie ‘Sound of Freedom,’ and I have a lot of thoughts,” said Daigle in a video she posted at the end of last week. The artist said she wants to discuss “some things I found very interesting,” one of which is that “people are having to defend this movie.”
“This is insane to me,” said Daigle, adding, “Children being harmed should never be something we question that we need to defend or not…I do not understand.”
Lauren Daigle Sees Connection to Judges 19
Lauren Daigle clarified that she knows no one involved in “Sound of Freedom” and her video is not a paid partnership. She simply went to see the movie with her friends and afterward thought, “Holy cow, something needs to happen.” The artist shared that she got involved in advocacy for human trafficking victims while she was in college at Louisiana State University (LSU). During that time, she and her friends would host 5K races to raise money for The A21 Campaign.
“I already had a tug on my heart for this years years ago and really felt deep connection to that,” Daigle said. In fact, she was a Child and Family Studies major at LSU and had planned to go to law school to do pro bono law for trafficking victims. Her mother suggested that Daigle see “Sound of Freedom” because of her past advocacy.
Daigle, who recently released the first part of her new, self-titled album, commented on the controversy surrounding “Sound of Freedom,” saying, “I saw a lot of pretty inflammatory news articles and headlines and people trying to shut this film down.”
Some critics have accused the movie of supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, in part because of lead actor Jim Caviezel’s support for the movement. The movie, however, does not promote QAnon, and its distributor, Angel Studios, denies any association with the conspiracy theory.
“I never in a million years thought that this would be something that people could actually split hairs about, that people could actually argue about,” Daigle said. “Children being put in harm’s way by the people, a.k.a. adults, that are supposed to be protecting them in life—this should never be up for question. This should never be up for debate.”
Daigle said she had been in the process of reading through Judges when she saw the movie and was surprised to see some parallels between God’s Word and the film. Sometimes people think that the chaos they see in the world is new and not relevant to the Bible, Daigle said, but, “I just want to challenge people who think that there’s nothing relatable in here.”
The artist then read most of Judges 19, warning viewers ahead of time that she was about to read a biblical account that would be difficult to hear. The chapter describes events leading up to an incident where the inhabitants of the Israelite town of Gibeah in Benjamin gang rape a Levite’s concubine, after which the Levite cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends her throughout Israel. One of the results of the crime is that Israel goes to war and essentially wipes out the tribe of Benjamin.
God takes what happened to this woman so seriously that the nation goes to war and destroys an entire tribe, said Daigle, who wondered if Christians are willing to follow this example of Israelite unity and take a stand against child trafficking. “My question is, who is going to speak up for these kids if it isn’t us, if we’re not supposed to be the ones?” she asked. “If we live in disunity with one another, nothing will ever get done.”
Daigle also read Deuteronomy 24:7, which says, “If someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and treating or selling them as a slave, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you.”
