The new documentary God & Country, inspired by Katherine Stewart’s book The Power Worshippers, fortunately escapes most of the major pitfalls of political documentaries as it addresses the rise of Christian nationalism.
This is largely because director Dan Partland and producer Rob Reiner understand that both progressives and conservatives are concerned about the attitudes that led people to elect Donald Trump as president and storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The film, which is in theaters Feb. 16, presents a useful explanation of Christian nationalism’s takeover of evangelical culture, the loudly proclaimed lies at its heart, and hope for how socially minded Christians and concerned people from across religious and political spectrums can respond to it.
God & Country serves as a crash-course in how this hyper-conservative, white-dominant minority — one that doesn’t represent the values of most Christians or even most evangelicals according to the film’s data — came to be such an effectively vocal voting bloc. The film also analyzes the movement’s frequently espoused talking points, such as the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation, an oft-repeated line by Christian nationalists that has no basis in historical fact.
God & Country also offers space for more conservative viewers. Leaders like Schenck and Moore, and writers and commentators like The New York Times’ David French and Bulwark editor-at-large Charlie Sykes, balance out the film’s otherwise progressive-leaning cast of experts. Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist and the subject of Abigail Disney’s 2016 film The Armor of Light, discusses in detail first using Trump as a sermon illustration in the 1990s of how a Christian ought not to be, then watching, stunned, in 2016 as his colleagues claimed Trump had been “divinely ordained” to revive the country.