God & Country

An upcoming documentary where I’m a commentator is already stirring controversy

Last week, acclaimed actor, director, and proucer, Rob Reiner tweeted out a trailer to an upcoming documentary called “God & Country.”

The 2-minute clip and Reiner’s involvement on the project caused an immediate firestorm that had him trending on the platform formerly called Twitter.

Reiner wrote, “Christian Nationalism is not only a danger to our Country, it’s a danger to Christianity itself. Our film will be coming to theaters in February. Watch the trailer here.”

His statement echoes my oft-repeated assertion: White Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to democracy and the witness of the church in the United States today.

The film is based on the extensively researched and revealing book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism by investigative journalist, Katherine Stewart.

Here’s how the godandcountrythemovie.com website describes the documentary.

Christian nationalism is the belief that America should be defined as a Christian nation, with government adherence to this ideology. GOD & COUNTRY takes a closer look at the dangerous implications and explores how a base of Christians has radically stoked a movement erasing the line between Church and State.

GOD & COUNTRY speaks directly to the almost 200,000,000 Americans who identify as Christians. Christians who fear their faith is being hijacked by an extreme right wing political movement known as Christian nationalism.

GOD & COUNTRY features many of the most prominent and well respected voices of Christianity. Their presence in the film will be a powerful tool in persuading Christians to watch.

But before even seeing the film, far-right opinionators have already latched onto a single feature in order to discredit the project and its participants.

They denounce Rob Reiner’s involvement in “God & Country” because he is not a Christian and has,in their view, joined this documentary simply to promote a leftist agenda and discredit “traditional” Christianity.

In response to Reiner’s tweet, Elijah Schaefer, a right-wing commentator with half a million followers on YouTube wrote:

Why does a Jewish agnostic Hollywood elitist care about Western Christianity in middle/southern USA?

Seems like maybe you hate Christians

We will take it from here kind sir

Robby Starbuck, a right-wing podcast host with more than 380,000 followers on X, wrote:

You’re not even Christian Rob so it’s pretty disrespectful for you to tell us what’s dangerous to our religion.

Megan Basham, a writer for the Daily Wire, wrote on X:

Last word on Reiner’s “Christian Nationalism” film for now (fam fun calls)—not only do the ppl behind film explicitly equate pro-life efforts w/ Christian nationalism, but they indicate that parents speaking out about transgender indoctrination at school board meetings is also Christian nationalism…

So once again, @drmoore @DavidAFrench @kkdumez @JemarTisby @philvischer @ndrewwhitehead are all helping to spread propaganda that resisting the trans agenda in public schools is Christian nationalism.

Despite accusations from people online, many of whom would likely approve of white Christian nationalism’s positions, the “God & Country” documentary is not anti-Christian nor is it disqualified from discourse because of its executive producer.

An executive producer’s role can range from highly involved to simply attaching their name to a project.

Generally their responsibilities include providing funding for a project, using their networks and connections to get the film made and distributed, and helping to promote the film.

Executive producers are not the main ones making the creative decisions. That falls to the director.

The director, Dan Partland, made clear that Christianity itself is not the issue. In an interview he said,

“To be clear, Christianity is not the problem, and having one’s faith inform one’s political beliefs is not the problem. The problem is the intertwining of a Christian identity with a political identity such that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”

All credit to the right-wing provocateurs online. They sure know how to create a distraction.

Within hours, the conversation had veered from the ways white Christian nationalists are undermining democracy, including an attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, to uninformed diatribes about the wrongness of Christian commentators featured in the film working with Rob Reiner as executive producer.

As you may notice, I’m one of the commentators in the film.

Studying and explaining white Christian nationalism has been an ongoing part of my work for at least the past three years and much longer in my work as a historian looking at racism in the church.

Now We Call It White Christian Nationalism. It Used to Just Be Called the KKK

None of the commentators, including me, were coerced or coached into giving certain answers. Most of us are not only scholars and experts on topics from politics, to history, to religion but are Christians ourselves.

In the online kerfuffle, I noted that the Black commentators featured in the trailer, me, Dr. Anthea Butler, and Rev. William Barber III, were often left out of the conversation.

The largely white detractors online focused their ire on Phil Vischer, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Russell Moore, and David French (all of whom are irredeemable leftists apparently).

Not that I’m volunteering to be trolled, but it does follow a pattern that Black Christians are rendered invisible in their internecine squabbles of white Christians.

Nevertheless, I wanted to state my position clearly. So I wrote online:

Let’s address this right now…

No one is trying hide Rob Reiner’s involvement in this project. But Google “executive producer” and see what these folks do.

Simply…Folks (not Reiner) asked us questions and we answered without pressure or coercion. There’s no nefarious plot.

I continued:

These accusations about the executive producer are making this documentary about guilt-by-association. The real issue is the imminent demise of democracy by people using authoritarian tactics and violence (cf. Jan 6) to enforce their theo-politics. Let’s protect the vote.

Perhaps the firestorm of criticism online based on no more than a trailer and a few social media posts indicates that addressing the threat of white Christian nationalism in a film has agitated the authoritarians.

Maybe the people who seek to enshrine political power under the guise of a small-minded conception of Christianity feel exposed.

That, in the end, is the goal of the “God & Country” documentary—to expose the rising tide of white Christian nationalism in this nation.

As we head into a presidential election year, our best hope of saving democracy is by revealing the threats to it.

Watch the trailer here…

What are your thoughts after seeing the trailer? Comment below.