"God & Country" highlights the growing threat of Christian Nationalism

The new documentary is a bracing account of how the Religious Right undermines American democracy

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The new documentary God & Country (directed by Dan Partland, co-produced by Rob Reiner, and based on The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart) has a simple goal: To convince viewers that the mixing of white evangelical Christianity and American politics poses a unique threat to our society.

If two of our nation’s biggest conflicts were WWI and WWII, then the next one may be WWJD. After all, in the battle between God and Country, some people believe you have to pick a side, and to paraphrase one person in the film, for Christian Nationalists, if democracy itself gets in the way of achieving their goals, then democracy has to go.

We’re already seeing that in action. Recently, the all-GOP Alabama Supreme Court effectively banned IVF treatments throughout the state by equating a fertilized egg with a human child. In a speech a few weeks ago, Donald Trump, eager to maintain his grip on his conservative base, lied to a gullible Christian audience by claiming Democrats want “to tear down crosses.” (He then added: “No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.”)

The talking heads in the movie—and there are many of them, likely familiar to readers of this site—are deeply worried about the impact of Christian Nationalism. They have the academic backgrounds and lived experiences to speak to what’s happening in that culture. But even if you think their concerns are overblown, their words are sandwiched by countless clips confirming everything they’re saying. For every fear they have—like the Republican Party suppressing abortion rights and LGBTQ rights—there’s a Christian preacher telling a massive audience why the Republican Party needs to suppress abortion rights and LGBTQ rights.

Along the way, viewers are told that abortion wasn’t the inspiration for the rise of the Religious Right, but rather that it formed from their desire to maintain private segregated schools. (It wasn’t Roe v Wade that first motivated them; it was Brown v. Board of Education.) The way they speak of Donald Trump, as a modern-day Cyrus, allows them to ignore his myriad flaws. Trump is described by one talking head as a televangelist (right down to the hair) who’s more interested in greed than the Gospel.

The way MAGA cultists defend Trump’s term in office as God’s will makes it easy to see why they denied the 2020 election results and why so many participated in (or at least continue to defend) the events on January 6, 2021. More than anything, we’re told that the Republican Party’s extremism isn’t a political shift so much as a religious one.

If you’ve been keeping track of what white evangelical Christian leaders have been saying and doing for decades, it all makes sense. You have to ignore a hell of a lot to pretend otherwise. It’s not just atheists saying this (though folks like Andrew Seidel and Rob Boston of Americans United are interviewed). It’s conservatives like Russell Moore and David French. We also hear from religious critics of Christian Nationalism like Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Anthea Butler, Phil Vischer, and Skye Jethani. These people don’t all agree on much, but they’re united in their concerns about Christian Nationalism.

What the movie doesn’t waste it’s time doing is giving voice to the other side. You’re not going to find nuance, much less rebuttal, here. (It’s hard to imagine critics would have wanted to participate in the project, anyway.) The film makes an argument and features people who have been making that same argument for years. It’s not really meant to be viewed by conservative Christians because they gave up on being challenged a long time ago.

Which is to say: You’re gonna love it.

Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation summarized both the concerns and what we ought to take from the movie:

Speaking of evangelical voting trends, the executive producer of God & Country is journalist Katherine Stewart, on whose book, The Power Worshippers, the film is based. Stewart points out in the film, “In a country where 40 to 50 percent of the people don’t vote, you don't need a majority to dominate an election cycle. All you need is a disproportionately activated and motivated and organized minority.” And that should be the cue to the “nones” (religiously unaffiliated Americans) to get out the vote. At nearly 30 percent of the adult population, there are more atheists, agnostics, or “nothing-in-particulars” than white evangelicals, and they largely fall on the opposite political spectrum. 

Gaylor also correctly points out one major flaw in the film: By focusing solely on politics and Christian Nationalism, there’s no criticism of the source of these beliefs: The Bible. Without cherry-picked verses to cite, in justification of so much bad behavior, it would be much harder to bring together so many white evangelicals. The only real mentions of the Bible come from Christian interviewees who insist Jesus wanted us to help the poor and marginalized, as if the Bible really is a good book but is getting used as a weapon by those who want to twist its meaning. It never crosses their mind that the Bible itself is a large part of the problem. One interviewee in the film encourages Christians to “go back to the Scriptures” as if that would resolve everything.

Historian John Fea, whom I recently criticized for suggesting evangelical Christianity was being unfairly maligned, also criticized the movie for equating evangelical Christianity with Christian Nationalism.

While there are certainly evangelicals who wish their churches weren’t so damn political, even Fea had a hard time trying to explain the difference:

Also unanswered is whether evangelicals who want to bring our faith to bear on public life are necessarily Christian nationalists. Again, I have no doubt that the film’s makers and participants would answer in the negative. But there are multiple places in God & Country—footage of Jerry Falwell Sr. preaching against abortion and George H. W. Bush proclaiming he is pro-life and opposed to partial-birth abortion, to name just two—where the storytelling conflates politically active evangelicalism with Christian nationalism.  

Yes, white evangelicals who want to bring their “faith to bear on public life” are Christian Nationalists. They want to codify their beliefs into law. When Falwell preached against abortion, he wasn’t merely urging his followers not to have them; he wanted to ban all Americans from having them. When Republican presidents and lawmakers speak out against abortion, they’re not trying to persuade people to change their minds; they’re asking for votes so that their beliefs can be forced upon everyone.

That’s Christian Nationalism! (Maybe it would be more obvious to people like Fea if Muslims or Satanists used the same rhetoric.) More importantly, in what world do evangelicals want to bring their “faith to bear on public life” in a way that actually helps everyone? They specifically want to take their most controversial, despicable, hateful beliefs and turn them into policy. They believe the law should only privilege them and their beliefs at the expense of everyone else.

Fea continued trying to find fault with the film:

Likewise, what’s the difference between Christian nationalism and symbols of American civil religion? God & Country leaves viewers with the impression that the slogan “In God We Trust” on our currency or “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are somehow connected to what happened on January 6th. It’s true that the differences between such vestiges of civil religion and the dominionism undergirding actual Christian nationalism are not easily parsed. But Partland and Reiner seem uninterested in trying to make a nuanced distinction.

Yes, they’re connected. For decades now, conservative Christians have been using the government to advance their religion. Putting “In God We Trust” on our currency, and adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and declaring a “National Day of Prayer” may seem symbolic more than anything, but (as a speaker in the film explains) those moves make it much easier to push for (more harmful) policies based not on evidence but on faith. There’s no rational reason to oppose marriage equality but there sure as hell is a religious one, and if you can point to smaller victories in the 1950s, you can justify larger ones in the 2010s and 2020s. Allowing religion to infect the government in symbolic ways forms the basis for transforming it in more meaningful (and dangerous) ways.

What Fea refuses to admit—but what the film makes very clear—is that white evangelicals as a whole are the problem. Not just the 80% or so who voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections, but the whole damn bunch who give cover to them. The problem isn’t just people like hate-preacher Greg Locke; it’s also the pastors who spread misinformation to their congregations week after week without the amplification of social media. The same people who want to harm women, gay people, trans people and refugees are the same people who deny science and spread lies in the form of Purity Culture. They attend the same churches. They give money to spread these beliefs in foreign lands. They refuse to criticize their pastors for perpetuating lies. They refuse to put pressure on those pastors to use their platforms to condemn the right-wing members of their congregations.

Even Russell Moore, who ably criticizes Christian Nationalism in the movie, is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, a publication that believes committed gay and lesbian couples are “destructive to society.” He presents himself as part of the solution without acknowledging that he’s part of the problem. That’s because white evangelical Christianity, not just some nebulous Trump wing of it, is what’s hurting us. The people in a position to change that don’t have the guts to admit it.

For the most part, the people featured in the movie don’t act like there’s a difference because they know there isn’t one. That’s the big takeaway from the film.

If white evangelicals held all their same beliefs and didn’t try to codify them into law, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Their goal is to merge church (their church) and state. They need to be stopped at every turn by decent people who know better.

This movie serves as a helpful warning to anyone who hasn’t been paying attention. Yes, it “preaches to the choir,” as Fea complains, but given how many media outlets and Christian movie studios and conservative influencers openly promote Christian Nationalism, it’s important to hear people who actually tell the truth. After all, if we ignore the dangers, the end times will soon be upon us.

God & Country is playing at select theaters nationwide. It’ll hopefully be available to stream very soon.

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