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Christian History Institute

The Torchlighters: Heroes of the Faith

Half-hour animated biographies of real Christians — Tyndale, Perpetua, John Bunyan, Corrie ten Boom, Richard Wurmbrand, Jim Elliot, Harriet Tubman, Adoniram and Ann Judson. Each episode takes one life, one crisis, and one decision, and is aimed squarely at eight- to twelve-year-olds.

VerifiedFamily & childrenBroadly evangelical
Where to watch

Why this is listed

It is church history for children that does not end happily, and that is exactly why we list it over the cheerful alternatives. A child who watches Tyndale finishes the episode understanding that a man was killed for putting the Bible into English. Nothing else at this age does that honestly.

Before you press play

Dialogue and small connecting scenes are invented to fill gaps the sources leave; the outcomes are not softened. Tyndale is strangled and burned, Perpetua goes into the arena, Jim Elliot is speared, Wurmbrand is tortured in a Romanian prison. The deaths happen off screen, in silhouette or by implication, but they are unmistakably deaths and the series does not pretend the heroes survive. Best from about eight, and worth watching alongside a child the first time. The theological framing is broadly evangelical and mission-minded throughout.

Suited to Older children. Age judgements are ours, not a rating board’s — you know your own family.

How to start

  1. Open torchlighters.org (opens an external site) and read what Christian History Institute says about itself before you read anything else.
  2. Read the note above first. It is there so an evening does not go wrong twenty minutes in.
  3. Watch it yourself before you watch it with children, if there are children.
  4. Read the passage it dramatises alongside it. The point is to send you back to the text, not to replace it.
  5. Afterwards, ask what the story added and what it left out. That conversation is worth more than the film.

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