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Young Washington: America’s Prequel We Didn’t Know We Needed
America’s 250th anniversary celebration is officially underway, and with it comes Young Washington, the latest historical epic from director Jon Erwin and the team at Wonder Project and Angel Studios. We know Jon and the team can tackle the Old Testament, but can they tackle American History?
Perhaps it’s because I had just seen Hamilton the week before, but as the film began, one lyric kept echoing in my head: “Here comes the General!” In Hamilton they call it “The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For…” However, the challenge and the opportunity of Young Washington is that the man we’re introduced to is not that general.
He’s not the commanding figure crossing the Delaware. He’s not the first President of the United States. He’s not the marble monument or the portrait hanging in a classroom. Instead, we meet a fairly mild yet prescient young George Washington who is still finding his footing, still making mistakes, still trying to understand his place in the world. In many ways, he’s even a loyal subject of the British Crown. That may take a moment for modern American audiences to adjust to.
This is very much an origin story.
In fact, one thing I wish I had known going into the film is just how committed it is to telling the “before” chapter of Washington’s life. We catch only a fleeting glimpse of the Washington most of us learned about in school near the film’s conclusion. If that’s a spoiler, it’s a minor one, but I think it’s an important expectation to set.
The movie isn’t primarily interested in showing us Washington’s greatest victories. It’s interested in showing us the trials that shaped the man who would eventually achieve them.
I understand that instinct because I’ve been guilty of it myself. Years ago, I directed a film about the early life of Walt Disney (As Dreamers Do still streaming everywhere). My thinking was simple: everyone already knows the happy ending. Let’s show what got him there. Ironically, one of the most common criticisms of that film was that audiences wanted more time with the Walt Disney they knew and loved.
I found myself feeling a bit of that here.
The final moments of Young Washington gave me the version of George Washington I’ve always pictured in my mind, and I wanted even more time with him. That’s not necessarily a criticism so much as a testament to how effectively the film builds toward that transformation. As a former Virginian, I admit I approach stories about the Founding Fathers with a certain amount of reverence. Thankfully, Erwin’s film never feels interested in tearing down its subject. Instead, it seeks to humanize him. George Washington getting a good dance in checked the box that someone did their homework. George Washington loved to dance (see the children’s song I helped produce: George Washington Loved to Dance : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHUJZxBml48 )
Back to the movie and my own self promotion. Visually, the film is stunning.
The landscapes, costumes, and production design create a world that feels authentic without becoming inaccessible. This isn’t Christian movie or even mainstream TV level design work. This is top notch. Speaking of top notch, let’s get to the cast.
While their screen time is limited, the veteran trio of Kelsey Grammer, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Andy Serkis leave an outsized impression. Every time one of them appears, the movie seems to level up.
Grammer, in particular, is delightful. His first major scene almost seems to wink at the audience about the absurdities of the era were for men. You’ve got the towering wigs, elaborate uniforms, and endless pageantry that accompanied being a gentleman of status. He brings warmth, humor, and gravitas to every moment he’s on screen.
Honestly, in a world increasingly divided over almost everything, this film may at least unite audiences on one simple truth: Kelsey Grammer remains one of the finest actors working today.
For CCM readers wondering why they should care about a historical drama centered on George Washington, there are a few familiar connections.
First, there’s Director Jon Erwin. Christian audiences know his work from I Can Only Imagine, American Underdog, Jesus Revolution, and most recently House of David. While Young Washington isn’t overtly faith based in the way some of those projects are, Erwin’s storytelling fingerprints are still present.
Second, eagle eyed viewers will smile when Joel Smallbone of for KING + COUNTRY fame fills the screen in a supporting role as William Fairfax. His appearance may be brief, but it’s a fun addition for Christian music fans. He’s also really showcasing his acting chops. He was great playing a spot-on version of his own father in Unsung Hero, but this is yet another sizable swing.
Which raises the inevitable question:
Is this a Christian movie?
Not exactly.
There are references to God and faith throughout, as would be historically appropriate, but the film isn’t designed as a sermon or an evangelistic presentation. And that’s okay. Not every film needs to be.
Parents may also wonder about the violence. There are battle sequences and moments of wartime brutality. Nothing struck me as excessively graphic or gratuitous, but there were a few scenes that caused my own kids to look away. This is, after all, a story set amid military conflict in the 1700s.
One unexpected benefit of the film was how often it made me want to learn more. I found myself mentally making notes to research certain events and historical figures after the credits rolled. Every detail can’t be perfectly accurate, none of us were there and you still have to tell a two hour story. However, any movie that inspires viewers to open a history book has accomplished something worthwhile.
Fans of British historical dramas such as Downton Abbey may find some familiar appeal here. While the settings and subject matter differ considerably, there is a shared appreciation for period detail, class structures, and the complicated relationships between duty, ambition, and family. Viewers who enjoyed Angel Studios’ Seeking Persephone will likely find similar connective tissue. It is also worth noting that both Wonder Project and Angel Studios deserve credit for being ambitious in their commitment to period pieces, a space that is not always easy to execute well.
Leading man William Franklyn Miller may not match the image of George Washington that has existed in my head for decades, but by the end of the film, that didn’t matter much. His performance is earnest, compelling, and charismatic enough that I immediately found myself looking up what other projects he had appeared in.
Young Washington may not spend much time with the towering figure who would become America’s first President, but it offers an engaging, beautifully crafted look at the experiences that forged him.
Young Washington opens in theaters nationwide July 3.
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Bethel Music Worship School Sells Out for Second Year, Adds Online Watch Pass
Bethel Music’s annual Worship School has officially sold out for the second consecutive year, with nearly 900 worship leaders, songwriters, musicians, and creatives expected to gather July 13-17 at Bethel Church in Redding, California. For those unable to attend in person, the ministry is offering its Online Watch Pass allowing participants around the world to experience the event live and on demand.
Ben Fuller: Cover Story (July 2026)
Over the last year, Christian music fans have embraced Ben Fuller as one of its freshest and most compelling voices. If you’ve seen his show, you’ve heard his testimony, The man who spent years chasing an insatiable high through drugs, alcohol, and women before finding Jesus and finding a new purpose. That version of the story is true.
It’s also the version most people already know. What interests me is what happened next.
Because redemption is one thing. Living redeemed is another.
The first time I saw Ben Fuller perform was with Big Daddy Weave in Bowling Green, Kentucky. At the time, he was still relatively new to most audiences. One radio hit. A growing platform. A powerful testimony. But there was something different about him. I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but his self-described John the Baptist energy felt suspiciously authentic.
“I want everyone to experience this fullness in the presence of God. I want everyone to be John the Baptist with locusts and wild honey in their beard running through the woods.”After the show, I found my friend Jeremy Redmon from Big Daddy Weave and asked the question directly. “Is this guy real?”
The answer came immediately.
“He’s realer than anybody I’ve ever worked with.”
Standing at 6-foot-4, Fuller can be an intimidating presence. His neck tattoos tell stories we’re not ready to know. During our conversation he’s talking about cedar-shaking roofs, planting corn, and building things with his callused hands between tour dates.
Yet every few minutes he seems to physically hunch himself downward, almost subconsciously trying to meet people where they are. And over the last two years, as his songs have connected with thousands of people, Fuller has found himself carrying a different weight: the true stories of the real black sheep he meets nights after night.
“The one thing I found with being real and authentic and raw and just telling it like it is… with that comes, ‘Hey man, I had a gun in my mouth.’ ‘Hey man, my cousin’s dealing with addiction right now.’ ‘Hey man, my mom died of alcoholism.’”
For someone whose life was saved so dramatically, there is a temptation to believe everybody else’s can be too. “I realized, the truth is I can’t save everybody… I’m not God.”
That realization didn’t come from a book, a sermon, or even another artist.
It came from a letter. Just days before we sat down, Fuller unfolded a note he had received from a woman who had attended one of his concerts.
Normally, those notes contain song ideas, prayer requests, or stories of encouragement. This one was different.
“She said, ‘Hey, do you remember meeting this man at one of your shows? He didn’t make it. He was my best friend. He looked up to you and he didn’t make it. He went back, he fell, and he’s dead. But thanks for telling him about Jesus.'”
The words still seem fresh on Fuller.
“I told him about my Jesus. I told him about what God has done for me.”
The reality is one Fuller is still learning to process.
“I think I’m still taking the eraser to the S on my chest.”
He wants people to experience what he experienced. Who wouldn’t? After fourteen and a half years of addiction, chaos, and self-destruction, Fuller found a life he never imagined possible. The instinct is to grab people by the shoulders and pull them toward that same freedom.
“I want everyone to experience this fullness in the presence of God. I want everyone to be John the Baptist with locusts and wild honey in their beard running through the woods.”
But life rarely ties itself up that neatly. This is the reality of Ben Fuller’s ministry.
One night he’s standing in front of twenty thousand people. The next he’s reading a letter from a grieving family. One moment someone is telling him they threw away their pills after hearing his songs. The next he’s wrestling with questions that don’t have easy answers.
For a man who came to faith in recent years, he has a lot of questions for God. Some heavy ones: “Why did my best friend die and not me? Why her? Why not me?” Some with childlike wonder in his eyes.
“Why did you make stink bugs?”
But underneath the joke is a man still working through the mystery of grace.
A man who knows he should have been another statistic.
A man who still isn’t entirely sure why he wasn’t.
“It’s one of the greatest joys and sorrows that I’ve ever experienced following Jesus.”
And maybe that’s the tension that explains Ben Fuller better than any testimony ever could.
Not that God rescued him.
But that now he has to keep living with both the victories and the heartbreak that come from telling other people where that rescue can be found.
Those conversations eventually became impossible for Fuller to ignore.
Night after night he met people who believed they had gone too far. People who listened politely to his testimony but quietly convinced themselves it couldn’t possibly apply to them.
“They’re like, ‘Yeah, but you don’t know what I’ve done. Your testimony is powerful, but I’ve messed up way more times. I’m not good enough to turn around and come back. I’ve ticked God off. I’ve done awful things.'”
Fuller knew those people because he had been one of them.
“I’ve met those people and I know those people because I was one of those people.”
So when he walked into a writing session with Michael Farren and Tony Wood, he wasn’t looking for a radio single. He was searching for the black sheep.
An hour later, they had one.
Like many of the defining moments in Fuller’s career, he talks about the song as something that happened to him rather than something he manufactured. “God just really downloaded that song to us in an hour.” The result was a song that felt almost too honest for Christian radio. It didn’t hide behind vague language or church-friendly metaphors. And because of that, not everyone was convinced.
“I was told that song was going to live somewhere in the middle of a record,” Fuller said. “Maybe we could cut it. Maybe not.” The concern wasn’t whether the song was good.
The concern was whether Christian audiences would accept it.
“I say alcohol and pills,” Fuller laughed. “We can’t say that in Christian music.”
But Fuller couldn’t shake the feeling that those were exactly the people he was trying to reach.
“How does that speak to a 40-year-old mom in a van with the kids?” he remembers hearing.
His response came quickly.
“What about the husband that’s cheating? What about the wife that’s drinking too much wine? What about the kids secretly watching things they shouldn’t be watching on their iPads?”
Then he shrugged.
“We should be talking to those people.”
Ben Fuller is not particularly interested in protecting appearances.
“I’ve had to stand firm in things and look crazy” he said. “There have been lyric changes and things over the years. I’ve had to look really bad. I’ve had to forfeit relationships.”
He would rather risk being misunderstood than water down a message he believes someone desperately needs to hear.
And judging by what happened next, that instinct wasn’t wrong.
What was supposed to be an album track became an anthem because thousands of people heard themselves in it. The black sheep always know when someone is speaking their language.
The success led to the Black Sheep Tour. Over 10,000 miles, tens of thousands of people, and over 130 baptisms. Yet when I bring up those stats, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He wants to talk about the moments, not the data.
A young man laying down a vape at the altar. Someone leaving cigarettes behind. People showing up carrying addictions, secrets, shame, and stories that looked a lot like the ones he used to carry himself.
When the opportunity came to capture the tour for what would become The Black Sheep Live Experience, Fuller admits he wasn’t exactly prepared.
Neither was the band.
“This was recorded after the second night on tour,” he told me with a laugh. “My whole band came to me and went, ‘Ben, we’re not ready for this.'”
Most live albums are recorded after months on the road when every note has been refined and every transition polished.
“We stood up and called on the name of Jesus,” he said. “We were like, okay God, we do not know all the parts right. We do not have everything together.” It’s clear the reason the Black Sheep Tour, his show stealing solo performance at the K-Love Fan Awards, and the heart of this mission connected was pricey because it wasn’t perfect.
It was because it was honest.
Every city looked different. Every crowd responded differently. Every night seemed to take on a life of its own.
“Same Spirit. Different city.”
One night might be loud and celebratory. Another might feel almost reverent. Sometimes he would find himself stepping away from the microphone entirely, watching people respond in ways he couldn’t have scripted if he tried.
“The Holy Spirit just did a different work in every city.”
That’s also why Fuller wasn’t particularly concerned about which show ended up becoming the live album.
The first night. The final night. It almost didn’t matter. The story wasn’t happening on stage. The story was happening in the seats. The live album simply became a snapshot of what God was already doing.
For all the miles traveled, stages played, and stories carried, the most significant thing happening in Ben Fuller’s life right now has nothing to do with music.
It’s happening back home. Or maybe more accurately, it’s teaching him what home actually means.
“I’ve had to stand firm in things and look crazy. There have been lyric changes and things over the years. I’ve had to look really bad. I’ve had to forfeit relationships.”Over the last few years, fans have watched Fuller transform from a man known primarily for his testimony into one of Christian music’s fastest-rising artists. What they haven’t seen as much is the driving force behind his next transformation taking place off stage.
Her name is Peyton.
When Fuller talks about his fiancée the urgency softens. For someone who spent years running from commitment, stability wasn’t always a comfortable idea. In fact, there was a moment when he walked away from the relationship entirely.
After a season he describes as growing “weary in doing good,” Fuller found himself questioning everything.
“I was ready to quit. I was ready to give up.”
Face down on the floor of his farmhouse, exhausted and overwhelmed, he prayed.
And what came back was surprisingly simple. “Ben, I gave her to you because she’s steady for you.” That word has stayed with him ever since. Steady. A few days later, sitting with his parents in Vermont, the word surfaced again.
His father looked across the room and asked a simple question. “Where’s Peyton?”
Ben explained that he had ended the relationship. His father’s response stopped him cold.
“Your mother and I just thought she was steady for you.” The same word.
Again. And for a man who spends much of his life trying to discern God’s direction, that was enough.
The day after Christmas Fuller arrived in North Carolina, knocked on Peyton’s door, and told her he wasn’t leaving again. Eventually that journey led back to the same field where they first met. This time he wasn’t introducing a song.
He was asking a question. Today they’re preparing for a November wedding. And perhaps for the first time in his life, Ben Fuller seems genuinely excited about slowing down.
Not stopping. I don’t think there is an off switch for the human being sitting in front of me.
Just slowing down enough to remember that life isn’t only lived on stages.
As he tells me stories about Peyton, another detail begins to emerge. The always on fire artist who can now be found performing often at the Grand Ole Opry needs to stay grounded.
“She’ll pray for me. She’ll encourage me,” Fuller said. “But she’s also like, ‘Take out the trash please.'”
The same man who once thought following Jesus meant a non-stop train of evangelism running endlessly now seems to be discovering that faithfulness sometimes looks a lot more ordinary.
A roof to finish. A wedding to plan. A future to build.
That’s the real story of Ben Fuller in 2026. It’s that after years of running, he finally seems to understand the invitation he’s been singing about all along.
Standing in the back of a church in 2019, underneath an exit sign and ready to leave, Fuller heard something he still can’t shake:
“I love you. Will you come home?”
Years later, that question still echoes through his songs. Through the stories shared after concerts. Through every person convinced they’ve wandered too far to come back.
But somewhere along the way, the question became personal again.
Today, Ben Fuller isn’t just singing about coming home. He’s building one.
And maybe that’s why The Black Sheep Live Experience resonates the way it does. It’s more than a collection of songs. It’s a snapshot of a season. A season where a former addict became a voice for the outsiders. Where a black sheep started helping other black sheep find their way back to the Shepherd.
Not because he has all the answers.
Not because he’s figured everything out.
But because he knows what it feels like to hear your name called and realize the door home was never locked in the first place.
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CCM Magazine Reveals Ben Fuller as July Cover Story
CCM Magazine has unveiled Ben Fuller as the cover artist for its July 2026 issue, celebrating one of Christian music’s most compelling voices with an exclusive feature that explores the remarkable redemption story behind his music and ministry.
The double cover, revealed today, offers the first look at a powerful feature that will debut in full on July 1, including an in-depth interview, exclusive performance videos, and additional digital content available exclusively at CCMmagazine.com.
Fresh off the release of his new live album, Black Sheep Tour: Songs from the Road,Fuller continues to connect with audiences through songs rooted in honesty, healing, and the transformative power of faith. Recorded during this spring’s Black Sheep Tour, the album captures the energy and authenticity that have become hallmarks of his live performances, following a tour that reached nearly 28,000 attendees, celebrated more than 130 baptisms, and created countless moments of worship and life change across the country.
As thousands have connected with his testimony and songs like “Black Sheep,” Fuller admits he’s felt the weight of carrying other people’s pain.
“I’m think I’m still taking the eraser to the ’S’ on my chest”, says Fuller. “I told them about my Jesus. I told them about what God has done for me… but I also realize the truth is I can’t save everybody.”
For CCM Magazine, however, the story goes beyond the music.
The July cover feature dives into Fuller’s personal journey from addiction and brokenness to redemption, examining how his past continues to shape both his songwriting and his mission to point others toward hope in Christ.
“Every cover story has its own personality, but Ben’s was unlike anything we’ve produced,” said Logan Sekulow, Publisher and Co-Editor of CCM Magazine. “There was a raw honesty throughout the conversation, and our goal was simply to let readers experience the same hope that shines through Ben’s story.”
Visually, the issue embraces the contrast that defines Fuller’s testimony.
“Ben’s story lives in the tension between darkness and light,” said Amanda Sekulow, Co-Editor of CCM Magazine. “We wanted every design choice to reflect that reality—that even in the darkest places, Christ’s light has a way of breaking through.”
The July cover package continues CCM Magazine’s commitment to telling authentic stories from today’s leading Christian artists while pairing award-winning editorial with cinematic photography and exclusive video content.
Readers can access the complete Ben Fuller cover story, exclusive interview, and live performance videos beginning July 1 at CCMmagazine.com.
Cover Photographer / Layout Design: Alicia St Gelais
Director of Photography: Patrick Johnson
