wanted to like God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, the new Rob Reiner-produced documentary on “the dangerous implications” of Christian nationalism. I wanted to like it in spite of the trailer’s focus on the ostensible “threat” of Christian nationalism to Christianity itself, a framing I’ve consistently objected to because the equation of “Christian” with “good” is false and harmful to both religious minorities and the nonreligious.
Still, in spite of the filmmakers’ use of the old evangelical “WWJD” fad in promotional materials—thanks for the not-at-all annoying reminder that I wore those cringe cloth bracelets in the 1990s, my dudes—I hoped the film itself would focus less on efforts to “save” Christianity and more on the very real threat to our democracy from authoritarian Christians. Unfortunately, the WWJD invocation was a tell.
At the end of the day, God & Country is more concerned with laundering the reputation of Christianity than it is with providing an honest historical and sociological accounting of how Christian nationalism both led to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and continues to threaten democracy.
While it’s unlikely that the whitewashing of Christianity was director Dan Partland’s primary goal, it is certainly the film’s primary impact. When you allow numerous “respectable” conservative evangelicals, including Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore, the cheap grace to distance themselves from their Christian nationalist coreligionists without interrogating the authoritarian aspects of their own theology, you inevitably fail to fully account for the causes of January 6