WAR ROOM Actress Shines Light on Foster Care Crisis
By Movieguide® Contributor
Movieguide®’s Grace Prize® winner for her role in WAR ROOM, Karen Abercrombie, recently created a new project which addresses the foster care crisis in America.
Pure Flix reported, “Eleanor Thomas’ success as a Washington D.C. juvenile court judge is challenged when her inner-city past comes to court and demands more than judgment, prompting her to return to her impoverished neighborhood of youth. Will her renewed sense of purpose reinvigorate her faith?”
Abercrombie told The Christian Post that ELEANOR’S BENCH takes viewers through the many issues people face today, including the crisis of faith during trials and tribulations.
“There are people who have walked away from their faith; things are getting hard, they have been hard and they’re getting harder, and people are just feeling like God is distant or that He doesn’t care anymore when indeed He does,” Abercrombie stated.
“But we live on the Earth, it’s a fallen place, and we are going to have our struggles,” she added. “As they watch Eleanor start to soften and open back up to that love and that direction, that relationship with God, I think it’s going to take many people with them and pull them right in.”
Abercrombie’s ideas for the series came from her own personal endeavors with her faith. She talked through the times in her life when she doubted God and when she questioned God’s goodness and faithfulness.
“I say this from experience: God is an unchanging God,” she expressed. “He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. There is no shadow of turning with Him, and He always looks upon us with a love that never changes. He could not love any of us one ounce more, one drop more. So that is why He could freely give His one and only Son, the pure, imperfect Lamb, for us.”
“We’re up and down, we’re back and forth. We’re fallible, we’re all of that. But He is always constant,” she stated.
A mother herself, Abercrombie even opened up her home to foster children, which gave her a new understanding of God.
“There will be ups and downs, and you have to have patience that only God can give you,” she recalled. “Especially when it’s someone outside of your unit, you want God to help pierce your heart so that you love … and go the extra mile. We learned these things that we would not have had we not opened up our door to being a foster family.”
She added, “There was a time when many of these issues used to be on one side of the track, but it’s rampant. It’s something that’s touching everybody. I personally know some grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, they were ready to go off and travel the world. But now they can’t because they’ve got a new set of kids … this [show is] very current and will be interesting to a wide demographic.”
“[The show is] really real,” she said. “It’s gritty. It’s funny, it’s warm and touching. It’s an important piece for such a time as right now.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Abercrombie sat down with Christian Headlines to talk about her job as an actress, “It is a ministry to me,” she said of acting. “My gifts as well as my life [are] God-given, and so, to the best of my ability, I want to use the gifts that He’s given me in a way that would honor the Giver.” She continued, “I may be saying someone else’s words, but while I’m doing it and trying to do it in excellence, it’s a form of praise.”
… “It’s an opportunity to be what we profess to be. Even if you’re not running, grabbing people, taking them to the back and trying to save them or share the message of Christ, we can do that in how we respond,” Abercrombie told Christian Headlines.
Check back soon for our review of ELEANOR’S BENCH.
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