The music is the obvious highlight of The Greatest Showman, and it is very good music. The songs are energetic, memorable, emotional, and often better at communicating the heart of the story than the dialogue itself. My favorite is “The Other Side,” because beneath all the bargaining and showmanship is an invitation to take a risk, leave behind the safety of the familiar, and step into something larger than yourself, which is itself a theme that can take on a deeply Christian meaning.
But for this installment of Almost Christian, I want to look beyond the soundtrack and focus on the entire story. And really, how could a series called Almost Christian resist an article titled The Greatest Showman: Almost Christian? And as a dad who appreciates a good dad joke, the title was simply too perfect to pass up. Almost Christian examines the spiritual themes found in popular media through the lens of Orthodox Christianity, looking for fragments of truth while recognizing where they fall short of the fullness of the faith. The Greatest Showman is a particularly good example because it begins by telling us to dream big, then spends much of its story showing us why getting everything we dream about may not save us.
P. T. Barnum gets much of what he wants. He becomes successful, famous, wealthy, influential, and surrounded by applause, yet the more he gains, the further he drifts from the people he loves. By the end, he has to lose much of the world he built before he can understand that love, communion, repentance, sacrifice, and returning home are worth far more than being admired by the world.
The Hunger to Belong
One of the deepest themes running through The Greatest Showman is the human desire to belong. Nearly every major character is searching for a place where he or she can be known without being rejected. Some are rejected because of their bodies, some because of race or social class, and Barnum himself carries a lifelong wound from growing up poor and being treated as though he did not belong among respectable people.
Barnum gathers people whom polite society mocks, hides, or treats as less than fully human. Whatever we may say about his motives, something important happens when these people find one another. Those who had been isolated discover a community in which they are seen, known, and welcomed.
This immediately echoes something Christians should recognize. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus Christ repeatedly moves toward those who have been pushed to the margins. Lepers, the poor, sinners, foreigners, the sick, and others whom society preferred not to see are treated as human persons worthy of love, mercy, and restoration.
The Orthodox Church teaches that human beings were created for communion. We are not isolated individuals who happen to live near one another. We were created for communion with God and, through Him, communion with one another. This is why loneliness, rejection, and alienation cut so deeply into the human heart.
From Hiding to Coming Alive
“Come Alive” and the language of resurrection
That longing for communion is especially visible when the performers begin emerging from hiding. “Come Alive” uses language that almost sounds like resurrection: waking up, stepping into the light, opening one’s eyes, and beginning to live. People who had learned to hide themselves suddenly experience the possibility of another kind of life.
Christianity uses similar language much more literally. St. Paul tells Christians, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Ephesians 5:14). Sin is not merely the breaking of rules. It is a kind of spiritual death from which humanity needs to be awakened.
The performers are not literally experiencing resurrection, of course. Their awakening remains social and emotional rather than sacramental. Still, the imagery touches something true: human beings can become so trapped by shame, fear, and isolation that coming into the light feels like learning to live again.
“This Is Me” and the rejection of shame
“This Is Me” is often treated as an anthem for modern ideas about identity, pride, and even LGBT self-definition. But that reading can easily be imposed on the song rather than drawn from what is actually happening in the film. Within the story itself, the performers are not celebrating sinful desires or declaring that every aspect of themselves must be affirmed. They are people who have been mocked, hidden, and treated as less than human because of physical differences they did not choose.
The song is therefore better understood as a rejection of shame and a recognition that weakness does not erase human dignity. The performers know exactly what makes them different. They know how the world sees them, and they have spent much of their lives hiding because of it. Their breakthrough comes not from pretending those weaknesses do not exist, but from refusing to allow them to determine whether they are worthy of love, friendship, and human community.
This is not a scene from the movie. I chose Peter Hollens’ cover because he sings it with 500 people, stripping away the spectacle and showing the song’s message at its most human: people standing together, carrying their wounds and weaknesses, and refusing to be defined by shame.
There is something here that Orthodox Christians can recognize. Every human person is created according to the image and likeness of God. Our value does not come from beauty, ability, social approval, wealth, popularity, or usefulness. Christianity does not require us to pretend that our weaknesses, wounds, temptations, or limitations are not real. It teaches us that none of them has the authority to tell us that we are worthless.
At the same time, Christianity goes beyond the message of “This Is Me.” The Christian proclamation is not, “This is who I am, therefore I must never change.” We can acknowledge who we are, including our weaknesses and brokenness, without making those things our permanent identity. God receives us as we are in order to heal us and lead us toward what we were created to become.
Orthodox Christians believe salvation involves transformation. We do not overcome shame by turning every weakness or desire into an identity to be celebrated, nor do we overcome it by hating ourselves. We bring the whole person before God through repentance, prayer, ascetic struggle, and the sacramental life of the Church. The goal is not simply to become comfortable with ourselves, but to become, by grace, truly alive in God.
Barnum’s real enemy is vainglory
Barnum begins with motives that are at least understandable. He loves Charity and their daughters, wants to provide for them, and wants to create something extraordinary. Yet his desire to provide slowly becomes mixed with another desire: he wants the people who once looked down on him to finally admit that he matters.
This is where the Orthodox understanding of the passions becomes especially useful. The Fathers often describe passions as good human desires that have become distorted or disordered. Wanting to care for your family is good. Wanting to create something beautiful can be good. But when these desires become ruled by pride, greed, or vainglory, they begin controlling us.
Vainglory is the hunger to be praised, noticed, admired, and honored by others. St. John Climacus warns repeatedly about its ability to attach itself even to good works. We may begin by doing something good and eventually find ourselves caring more about being recognized for it than about the good itself.
Barnum becomes a vivid picture of this problem. He is surrounded by people who love him, yet he remains obsessed with winning the approval of people who do not. The applause of thousands cannot satisfy him because he is still trying to heal an interior wound with exterior praise.
Being seen is not the same as being loved
This may be one of the film’s most important observations. Barnum becomes famous enough that thousands of strangers know his name, but he becomes increasingly distant from the people who actually know him. Fame gives him visibility without giving him communion.
There is a lesson here for a culture increasingly built around being noticed. We can count followers, views, likes, achievements, promotions, awards, and compliments while still being profoundly lonely. Being watched is not the same thing as being known, and being admired is not the same thing as being loved.
The Fathers understood that feeding a passion does not satisfy it. Usually, it strengthens it. The more Barnum receives applause, the more applause he needs. What once seemed like success slowly becomes a form of slavery.
The banquet reveals what Barnum has become
Apologies for the poor quality. I couldn’t find a better version of this scene.
One of the saddest moments comes after Barnum begins receiving the social recognition he has always wanted. The performers who helped build his success arrive expecting to join the celebration, but Barnum shuts them out. He fears that their presence will threaten his newfound respectability.
The irony is painful. The man who created a place for outsiders to belong now treats those same people as outsiders. He has become so concerned with the judgment of the elite that he begins imitating the very cruelty that once wounded him.
Pride often works this way. We use people while they help us become the person we want others to see, and then distance ourselves when their presence becomes inconvenient. The Christian life calls us in the opposite direction: toward faithfulness, gratitude, humility, and love that refuses to measure another person’s worth according to social usefulness.
Jenny Lind and the temptation of respectability
Jenny Lind matters to the story because she represents more than another performer. She represents the respectable world Barnum has spent his life trying to enter. Touring with her allows him to imagine that he has finally escaped the shame of his origins.
But the closer he gets to the life he thought he wanted, the further he moves from his actual life. He neglects his family and distances himself from the performers. His pursuit of prestige does not enlarge his heart. It makes his world smaller.
This is why success cannot heal the heart. Money can solve financial problems, and recognition can open doors, but neither can cure pride, shame, fear, or the hunger to be loved. Spiritual illnesses require spiritual healing.
“A Million Dreams” and the longing for another world
“A Million Dreams” expresses another beautiful desire: the longing for a world better than the one we have inherited. Barnum imagines a world filled with beauty, possibility, wonder, and joy. There is something profoundly human about looking at a broken world and knowing that it is not enough.
Christianity shares that longing while directing it somewhere Barnum cannot. Orthodox Christians believe the deepest fulfillment of our longing is not a world constructed according to our imagination but the Kingdom of God. We do not merely need a better arrangement of the present world. We need creation healed, renewed, and united to its Creator.
Dreaming is not necessarily the problem. The question is what we are dreaming about and what we are willing to sacrifice to obtain it. A dream that requires us to neglect love, truth, faithfulness, or another human person has ceased to be something beautiful.
The circus becomes an imperfect image of communion
Barnum believes he is building a show, but the performers discover that something more important has happened. They have become a family. Their deepest gratitude is not ultimately that Barnum made them famous but that, through what he created, they found one another.
In this limited sense, the circus can become an imperfect image of the Church. People who were separated and ashamed are gathered into a community where they are known and loved. Yet the comparison can only go so far, because the Church is not simply a society where everyone feels accepted.
The Church is the Body of Christ. Its purpose is not merely to affirm us but to unite us to God and heal us. Christian communion means learning to love one another while together being transformed into the likeness of the One who has gathered us.
Phillip and Anne choose the person over the crowd
The relationship between Phillip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler presents the same conflict from another direction. Phillip must decide whether the expectations of his social class matter more than the actual person standing before him. Anne knows very well what respectable society thinks of their relationship.
Society sees categories before it sees the person. Race, wealth, class, appearance, and reputation determine who is supposed to stand beside whom. Christianity rejects the idea that these social distinctions determine the fundamental worth of a human being.
St. Paul writes that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free” (Galatians 3:28). This does not erase every difference between people. It means those differences cannot determine who possesses human dignity or who may be welcomed into the life of God’s people.
Love becomes real through sacrifice
Phillip’s willingness to enter the burning building for Anne is important because love finally becomes more than an emotion. He risks himself for another person. The film understands something Christianity has always taught: love is revealed through what we are willing to give.
Jesus Christ says, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Christian love is therefore not primarily a feeling. It is self-offering, faithfulness, service, patience, forgiveness, and sacrifice.
This is also why Charity’s love stands in such sharp contrast to Barnum’s ambition. She never asks for the life of prestige he is desperately trying to give her. Barnum spends years pursuing something he believes will make his family happy while failing to notice that his pursuit is taking him away from them.
“Tightrope” understands the vulnerability of love
“Tightrope” captures something deeper about marriage than simply the risk of loving another person. Marriage is the choice to stop thinking primarily in terms of “me” and “you” and to begin living as “us.” Husband and wife are not walking two separate spiritual paths that occasionally overlap. They are learning to lean on one another, carry one another, repent together, forgive one another, and move together toward salvation.
The Fathers speak about marriage as a school of love and self-denial because another person is now bound up with your own salvation. In a sense, when we marry, we are telling God that we know we cannot carry the cross alone. We are asking for someone who will help us carry ours while promising that we will help carry theirs. That does not mean one spouse saves the other, but it does mean that marriage becomes one of the places where we learn what sacrificial love actually costs.
This is why Orthodox marriage is never simply about personal fulfillment. It is not ultimately about what I want from my wife or what she wants from me. It is about what God is making of us through fidelity, patience, repentance, forgiveness, suffering, joy, and the daily decision to remain beside one another. If you would like to go deeper into how Orthodox Christianity understands marriage, desire, and the healing of the human person, you can learn more here.
That becomes one of the larger themes running through The Greatest Showman. Again and again, the film shows what happens when people stop living for themselves and begin carrying one another. Barnum’s failure is not that he dreamed too much. It is that his dream slowly became something he was pursuing apart from Charity, rather than something they were carrying together. He begins acting as though his life, his ambition, and his success belong to him alone, and in doing so he forgets that marriage had already taught him a better way: not “mine” and “yours,” but “ours.”
The fire strips away Barnum’s false kingdom
The destruction of the circus functions almost like a moment of judgment. Barnum’s great creation literally burns while the rest of the life he has constructed around ambition is also collapsing. Reputation, prestige, security, and success suddenly reveal how fragile they have always been.
Scripture frequently uses fire as an image of judgment and testing. St. Paul speaks of each person’s work being revealed by fire, showing “what sort of work each one has done” (1 Corinthians 3:13). What cannot endure is exposed.
Barnum has to lose his false kingdom before he can recognize his real treasure. The loss itself does not save him, but it gives him an opportunity to see clearly. Sometimes we do not recognize what possesses us until it is taken away.
“From Now On” has the shape of repentance
This is why “From Now On” may be the most explicitly spiritual moment in the film. Barnum finally understands that he has spent his life pursuing the wrong kind of glory. He recognizes what his ambition has cost him and begins turning back toward the people he abandoned.
The song has the shape of repentance because repentance always involves a turning. The Greek word metanoia means a change of mind, but in Christian life it means far more than realizing that we made a mistake. It is a change of heart and direction that turns us away from sin and back toward God.
Barnum experiences something resembling repentance without its explicitly Christian center. He sees that he has been wrong, rejects the path he has been walking, and begins returning home. The film understands the movement even if it does not identify the ultimate destination.
The performers give Barnum mercy he did not earn
Barnum’s return is possible partly because the performers refuse to define him entirely by his worst actions. He has used them, embarrassed them, pushed them aside, and eventually excluded them when their presence threatened the respectable image he was trying to build. They have every reason to be angry with him, and the film does not pretend that what he did was insignificant. Yet when everything collapses and Barnum has almost nothing left, they come back to him and remind him that something real and beautiful happened among them despite his failures.
What is striking is that they are able to see Barnum as more than the worst thing he has done. They do not deny his betrayal, but neither do they reduce the whole person to that betrayal. They remember the man who once opened a door for them when everyone else had kept those doors closed. Even though Barnum eventually failed to live according to the very belonging he helped create, the good that came from it was still real.
This is not cheap forgiveness. They know what he did, and their wounds do not suddenly become imaginary because Barnum is sorry. Forgiveness does not mean calling betrayal acceptable, pretending that trust was never broken, or acting as though sin has no consequences. Their mercy is powerful precisely because Barnum has not earned it. If he had earned their acceptance, it would no longer be mercy.
There is something deeply Christian in that distinction. Christian forgiveness does not require us to pretend that evil was good or that betrayal did not hurt. The Orthodox Church takes repentance seriously precisely because sin really does wound people and damage communion. Forgiveness tells the truth about what happened while refusing to allow the sin itself to have the final word.
This is also one of the great struggles of Christian life. It is very easy to freeze another person at the moment of his failure and decide that his worst action tells us everything there is to know about him. But Christians believe that repentance is possible, which means we can never treat another human being as though his story is already finished. As long as there is life, there remains the possibility of turning around, healing, reconciliation, and becoming something different from what we have been.
The performers offer Barnum something he cannot give himself. They give him a way back. Their forgiveness does not erase what he has done, but it creates the possibility that his failures do not have to determine what he does next. In that sense, mercy becomes part of his repentance because someone has left the door open for him to return.
That is one of the beautiful things about forgiveness within the Christian community. We carry one another not only when we are strong, faithful, and easy to love, but also when we fall and need help standing again. Mercy does not say that sin does not matter. Mercy says that sin does not get the final word.
Homecoming matters more than achievement
Barnum’s movement back toward Charity and his children has an almost prodigal shape. He leaves what is truly his while chasing a vision of greater glory, discovers that the thing he pursued cannot satisfy him, and finally recognizes the value of home. His restoration begins with return.
The pattern resembles Christ’s parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The prodigal must first “come to himself” before he can return to his father. Repentance begins when illusion breaks and we finally see where our choices have taken us.
Barnum’s homecoming is incomplete from an Orthodox perspective because his destination remains primarily family and community rather than God. Nevertheless, the pattern is recognizable. He has to stop running after the distant country before he can appreciate the home he abandoned.
The final act corrects the beginning
The film begins with Barnum standing at the center of the spectacle. He wants the lights, the applause, the attention, and the recognition. By the ending, however, he willingly gives up the center of the ring so he can be present with his family. (Note, if you download the soundtrack for this movie, they combine this beginning and ending scene into one song).
That is a small but meaningful ascetical movement. Asceticism teaches us that freedom does not come from satisfying every desire but from refusing to be ruled by our desires. Barnum becomes freer when applause, money, reputation, and ambition no longer determine his worth.
The great irony of The Greatest Showman is that Barnum becomes greater when he stops trying so desperately to be great. His life begins to recover when he steps away from the spotlight and gives himself to others. That comes remarkably close to the teaching of Matthew 20:26: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”
Why The Greatest Showman is The Almost Christian
This is ultimately why The Greatest Showman belongs in this series. It recognizes the emptiness of worldly glory, the dignity of rejected people, the need for communion, the destructiveness of pride, the beauty of sacrifice, the possibility of forgiveness, and the necessity of repentance. It understands that a person can gain nearly everything he thought he wanted and still discover that something essential is missing.
In many ways, the film diagnoses the human problem surprisingly well. Barnum believes that if he can become successful enough, wealthy enough, respected enough, and famous enough, the old wounds inside him will finally disappear. But the more he feeds his hunger for recognition, the hungrier he becomes. The Fathers understood this well: the passions are not satisfied by feeding them. They grow stronger and eventually begin ruling us.
This is where the film becomes almost Christian. The Orthodox Church does not teach that success, creativity, family, friendship, or human recognition are evil. These can all be genuine gifts from God. The problem begins when we ask created things to give us what only God can give. No amount of applause can tell us who we truly are, and no amount of worldly success can heal a heart that was created for communion with its Creator.
The film tells us that the rejected need somewhere to belong. Christianity agrees, but then goes much further. The Church is not merely a supportive community where lonely people finally find acceptance. It is the Body of Christ, where we are brought into communion with God and one another, our sins are forgiven, our passions are confronted, our wounds are healed, and our humanity is restored.
That distinction matters because Christianity is not simply a message of self-acceptance. We do not gather in the Church merely to tell one another, “You are fine exactly as you are.” We come as wounded people who need healing. Orthodox Christians believe salvation is transformation, ultimately theosis: becoming by grace what God created human beings to be.
The film also tells us that Barnum needs to come home. Again, Christianity agrees and goes further. Barnum recognizes that he has pursued the wrong things, turns away from them, and returns to his wife, children, and the people he abandoned. His journey has the shape of repentance, but Orthodox Christianity gives that repentance its ultimate destination.
Repentance, or metanoia, is more than realizing that our priorities have been wrong. It is a change of mind, heart, and direction that turns the whole person back toward God. Every human heart has its own distant country, whether it is wealth, reputation, pleasure, ambition, pride, or the approval of others. The deepest homecoming is not simply returning to the people we love, but returning to the Father.
This is also why the ascetical life of the Church matters. Prayer, fasting, confession, almsgiving, worship, and self-denial teach us that freedom does not mean obtaining everything we desire. True freedom means no longer being controlled by those desires. Barnum becomes freer only when applause, wealth, reputation, and ambition stop determining his worth.
That is why The Greatest Showman may be especially deserving of the title The Almost Christian. It gets remarkably close. It gives us belonging, repentance, forgiveness, sacrifice, human dignity, homecoming, and the discovery that worldly glory cannot satisfy the heart. But it stops just short of telling us where all of those longings ultimately lead.
The film gives us belonging, but Christianity gives us communion with God. It gives us self-acceptance, but Christianity calls us to healing and transformation. It gives us homecoming, but Christianity tells us where home ultimately is. It gives us sacrificial love, while the Church reveals that such love has its source and fulfillment in God.
That is what it means for something to be Almost Christian. We do not have to reject these fragments of truth simply because they are incomplete. We can recognize them, appreciate them, and allow them to awaken something deeper within us. But eventually the fragment should make us hunger for the whole. The Greatest Showman gets us surprisingly close to the door. The Orthodox Church invites us to walk through it.
From glory to love
Perhaps the deepest Christian echo in The Greatest Showman is its movement from glory to love. Barnum spends most of the story trying to become great in the eyes of the world. By the end, he begins discovering that greatness is found in giving himself away.
That does not make the film secretly Orthodox, nor does every lyric need to be turned into a theological allegory. Good stories can recognize truths about human nature because we live in a world created by God. Wherever we encounter genuine beauty, sacrifice, mercy, repentance, courage, or love, we can recognize an echo without confusing the echo with its Source.
This is the purpose of Almost Christian. We can enjoy stories like The Greatest Showman while also allowing them to raise deeper questions. Why do we hunger to belong? Why does applause fail to satisfy us? Why does sacrifice look more beautiful than selfishness? Why does coming home feel more meaningful than conquering the world?
The historic Orthodox Church does not answer those questions with a better motivational slogan. It invites us into a life of repentance, worship, prayer, fasting, sacramental communion, forgiveness, and love. The cultural story may bring us to the doorstep, but eventually we must move beyond the echo and encounter the fullness of the life to which it points.
If The Greatest Showman leaves us with anything worth carrying into the spiritual life, perhaps it is this: do not confuse being seen with being loved, success with salvation, or applause with communion. The world can know your name and still not know you at all. The Christian life invites us into something far greater than the spotlight: to know God, to be known by Him, and to learn how to give ourselves in love.
If you have a film, television series, song, book, or other piece of popular media you would like considered for a future installment of Almost Christian, you can send your suggestion to me, Fr. Stephen, at frsteve@savannahorthodox.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Greatest Showman a Christian movie?
No. The Greatest Showman is not explicitly Christian and should not be treated as though its creators intended an Orthodox Christian message. It does, however, contain themes of repentance, sacrifice, dignity, forgiveness, communion, and the danger of worldly glory that Christians can meaningfully examine.
What Christian themes are in The Greatest Showman?
The strongest Christian parallels include the dignity of rejected people, the danger of pride and vainglory, sacrificial love, repentance, forgiveness, community, and returning home. These themes resemble Christian truths while remaining incomplete without communion with God.
What does From Now On mean from a Christian perspective?
“From Now On” can be heard as having the shape of repentance because Barnum recognizes that he has pursued the wrong things and changes direction. Orthodox repentance goes further because metanoia ultimately means turning the whole person away from sin and toward God.
What does This Is Me mean from an Orthodox Christian perspective?
“This Is Me” rightly rejects the idea that physical differences or social rejection make someone less worthy of human dignity. Orthodox Christianity grounds that dignity in the image of God while also teaching that every person is called beyond simple self-acceptance toward healing and transformation.
Why is The Greatest Showman Almost Christian?
The film comes remarkably close to Christian ideas when it shows that fame cannot satisfy the heart and that love, sacrifice, repentance, forgiveness, and communion matter more than worldly glory. It remains “almost Christian” because those longings are ultimately resolved through human belonging and family rather than the fullness of communion with God.
