LIFE Today will feature Kirk Cameron and his upcoming theater event Revive Us 2 today. Kirk will discuss Revive Us 2, a national family meeting, broadcast live in theaters nationwide the evening of Tuesday October 24 and rebroadcast on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.

The nationwide gathering, broadcast live from the Museum of the Bible, will offer an inspiring night of hope, courage & unity featuring discussion on critical national issues from known leaders of faith and also include prayer and worship. Kirk will bring together guests that include Dr. Ben Carson, Joni Eareckson Tada, Francis Chan, Ravi Zacharias, Trillia Newbell and musical guests Zach Williams and Christian Cuevas.

The Stream’s Nancy Flory sat down with Kirk in September to talk about what people can expect from the event. 

How did Revive Us come about — what inspired you?

About a year ago, just before the presidential debates, there was such a high level of anxiety all across the nation — all of us felt it, especially those of us who have children. We’re wondering what in the world has our nation come to.

I was fortunate enough to have a lot of great, inspiring conversations that gave me a lot of hope, with people like Dr. Ben Carson and Francis Chan and Eric Metaxas and other friends. I called for what I referred to as a national family meeting.

I wanted to bring the family of faith, believers, across the nation, together for an event where they could hear what I had been hearing, instead of just what they hear on the news. I wanted them to be inspired and filled with hope and courage and shown how they could make a difference and so we put Revive Us into the movie theaters.

And it was a time for us to pray and to worship God and to learn how you revive a nation from the bottom up, and 150,000 people came for that event in about 800 theaters and it was great. It was a big success. So many people afterward were asking if we were going to do this again. You know, “when’s the next family meeting?” and “When are believers going to get in a movie theater for this?” So that’s what we’re doing for Revive Us 2.

How is this going to be different from Revive Us 1?

Well, Revive Us 1 was really about diagnosing the health of America. And so, Dr. Ben Carson helped us do that and so did Eric Metaxas. We talked about the need for a return to the principles of the Bible and gospel.

And since the election, the tension and the anxiety in the nation hasn’t gotten better, in fact, it’s gotten worse. It appears that we’re more divided now than ever, over race, religion, gender, politics, even in our families. And we need a path to unity in America now more than ever. And so that’s what we’ll be talking about at Revive Us 2, is “How do we bring hope and healing to our divided nation?”

The people that’ll be there this time is Dr. Ben Carson, he’s coming back. Ravi Zacharias will be there. Joni Eareckson Tada will be there and several other guests including Zach Williams — he’s got that song on the radio right now called Chain Breaker — and one of the finalists from The Voice, Christian Cuevas. It’s going to again be an inspiring night of hope, courage and unity.

Your audience is really the Christian family. Would you say that’s correct?

Growing Pains fans across the board. So I would say much broader than the Christian family. However, a lot of those people are familiar with Fireproof and the Left Behind movies and the faith-centered projects that I’ve done.

Why is the message of hope, faith and unity important today?

It’s hard to turn on the news today because we are flooded with so much negativity. So much fighting. So much hostility with politics and with racism and it can be depressing.

But I believe that the truth is, millions and millions of people are not angry, are not bigots, love God and love people of all race and find common ground with people from all backgrounds. There’s a faith-filled solution to the problems we have today, but nobody gets to see it when you scroll through your news feed. I want to give people a higher perspective and show them God’s perspective on the divisions in our nation and what we can do to heal those divides.

Some people are calling this the post-Christian era. Can we hope for meaningful revival in this post-Christian era?

Well, I would disagree with the whole concept. There is no such thing as a post-Christian era because Christ rose from the grave and is seated on the Throne. There is no post-Christ anything.

Unless you want to believe what those who don’t understand the Scriptures would say. There’s always hope for revival. That’s what King David prayed for all the time. He said, “Revive us again oh Lord, that your people will rejoice in you.”

If there’s no hope for revival, then why does LIFE Today even exist? Why not just pack it all up and go home? Of course there’s hope for revival, because God is gracious and He is kind and He’s long suffering.

Step back. Don’t just look at what’s happening in Europe or the U.S., but look at worldwide and all across history for the last 2,000 years. What you see is the kingdom of God on earth starting out with 12 people and Jesus and then growing massively to where today, one out of three people on the planet name the name of Christ. You have 3 billion people on the planet who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.

We’re by no means in a post-Christian era.  I think we’re in a downturn in America and the West, but the global south is exploding with believers and the kingdom of God is growing exponentially in Asia, Africa, South America. It’s hard for us in the U.S. to understand that, because the only place we get our news is on the Huffington Post and CNN news feed. And they’re not going to tell you those things.

The interview has been slightly edited for clarity and brevity.