Heavy/Getty Former Hallmark star Danica McKellar
Danica McKellar says it’s been one year since she attended fellow actress Candace Cameron Bure’s church and had a “profound” experience that changed her life. The former Hallmark stars have a great deal in common, from their pasts as child actors — Bure on “Full House” and McKellar on “The Wonder Years” — to their departures from Hallmark.
Both left Hallmark in 2021 to appear on Great American Family, a cable channel launched by former Hallmark Media CEO Bill Abbott and Hicks Equity Partners, which is led by recent Republican National Committee co-chair Thomas Hicks, per Variety. Now McKellar and Bure have bonded over faith, too.
McKellar has talked openly about how she spent most of her life skeptical of organized religion. But when she attended Bure’s 3,500-seat Los Angeles church last April, she had an “epiphany” that shifted her perspective. Commemorating the anniversary of that event with an Instagram video on April 2, 2023, McKellar said it was the start of a “beautiful faith journey” that changed her life.
Danica McKellar Says Her Religious Experience One Year Ago Was ‘Bewildering’
In her April 2 post, McKellar included a video in which she said, “So this is an anniversary for me, April 2. Well, not the date, but the fact that it’s Palm Sunday, the week before Easter. Last year, in 2022, that is when I went to see ‘The Passion Play’ at the Good Shepherd Church with my friend Candace.”
“And I had this epiphany,” McKellar continued, “and I suddenly felt the Holy Spirit. It was so profound and so bewildering, I could never explain it. But I’ve had this beautiful faith journey that I’m so grateful to be on ever since.”
In the post’s caption, McKellar said the experience “changed my life in a way I can’t even begin to describe.”
Three weeks after McKellar attended Bure’s church, she uploaded an Instagram video to share her recent transformation, saying that when she had reached out to Bure for clarification on a Bible passage she’d shared via Instagram about forgiveness, Bure responded by gifting McKellar with a copy of her $99 “One Step Closer Bible,” according to MovieGuide, and inviting her to attend church with her.
Bure’s offerings shifted McKellar’s perspective on religion. To caption her April 2022 video, McKellar wrote that when she was growing up, “I had been made aware of all the hypocrisy in the various religions of Christianity, it being used for evil, power & control throughout history, and that had definitely biased me. But that’s just people, that doesn’t represent God’s actual love for us. And I can tell you I’m experiencing a relationship with God and Jesus that I’ve never had before, and it feels miraculous.”
In December 2022, McKellar appeared on Bure’s podcast and shared how much her colleague and friend had influenced her life and faith that year.
“Candace, I don’t want to brush over the huge, huge impact that you’ve had on my life this year,” McKellar said on the podcast. “I don’t even know how to call that friendship. It’s more than that. Because of you helping me to find my relationship with God and Jesus, it’s been like a revolution in my life. It’s been a revelation in my life.”
A filmed performance of Shephard Church’s “The Passion Play” that McKellar saw in 2022 will be televised commercial-free on Great American Family at 4 p.m. Eastern time on April 7.
Danica McKellar Defended Candace Cameron Bure Over Comments About New Network
GettyCandace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar in 2019
As a creative executive for Great American Family, Bure faced a firestorm of criticism in November after telling the Wall Street Journal that the network, which she described as being led by “Christians that love the Lord and wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment,” would probably not feature same-sex couples as Hallmark has begun to do in recent years.
“I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core,” she said.
When Bure received a great deal of pushback from LGBTQ+ advocates, McKellar first responded with a statement on Instagram in November, in which she wrote, “I’m a new Christian, and I’m so grateful for that. 🙏 As I always have, I celebrate all forms of healthy love between adults, and I support representation.”
“The idea that Christianity would judge any form of love simply baffles me,” she wrote. “I’m still new to my faith journey, but as far as I can tell, Jesus loves and includes everyone. That’s kind of His thing…”
But in an interview with Fox News Digital in December, McKellar stood up for Bure, saying she thought her friend’s recent comments were “misinterpreted” by many, including by actor Neal Bledsoe, who departed Great American Family over the controversy.
“(Bure) started the sentence with ‘I think,’ which is not definitive, and she ended it with ‘at its core,’ which doesn’t mean exclusively,” McKellar said at the time. “I don’t agree with his interpretation, but I love him to death and I wish him well.”
As of March 30, 2023, Great American Family was tied for 79th place with NewsNation in US TVDB’s ratings tracker of all 128 TV networks in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hallmark Channel, is the 14th most-watched network in the country. Hallmark Movies & Mysteries ranks 38th.