(REVIEW) A new documentary “God and Country” tries to warn against an American political movement that is corrupting both politics and Christianity — but its misrepresentation of the topic only makes its audience less informed and instead gives strength to the movement.

One of the most common rules passed around in film critic circles is that you should always review the movie that the filmmakers wanted to make, not the movie you wanted to watch. For example, you don’t review a rom-com badly because it wasn’t a horror movie, but because it was a bad rom-com. This requires a little bit of textual mind-reading, but it’s still an important principle in most cases to help you be fair to the filmmakers.

I thought about that a lot watching “God and Country.” Christian nationalism is a growing movement on the American Christian right, and so I would be really interested in a documentary that explored it like a journalist would, with curiosity, in trying to understand the movement from the perspective of both its advocates and its critics – even as it clearly had a point of view. Much like the documentary “The Mission” attempted to do, but given that “God and Country” didn’t interview any proponents of Christian nationalism for the project, that clearly wasn’t the movie the filmmakers wanted to make.

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The film tells the story of the history of Christian nationalism in America through interviews with both secular and critics of this movement. “God and Country” has been controversial ever since it was announced, with many seeing the trailer and accusing it of being a cynical takedown of conservative Christians.

Many of the interviewees, such as Phil Vischer, David French and Russel Moore, are members of the right who received backlash and outright rejection for their strong criticism of the growing movement. The movie’s IMDB tagline describes it as one that, “looks at the implications of Christian nationalism and how it distorts not only the constitutional republic, but Christianity itself.” 

I think it’s safe to say that the movie the filmmakers wanted to make was a takedown of Christian nationalism which discredits the movement for its viewers and decreases its influence in America by showing us how it is a betrayal of both American values and authentic Christian values. At the very least, that is what it presents itself as trying to do.

If this is the movie’s intent, I can say emphatically the movie is an abject failure. In fact, the movie will probably increase support for Christian nationalism and contribute to its growth. 

Nationalism or the Christian right? 

“God and Country” starts out by assuring us that this movie is a takedown of Chrisitan nationalism — not traditional Chrisitan conservatism. Conservative Christians like Moore come on and differentiate between good conservative Christians who are against abortion because they want to protect the vulnerable and Christian nationalists who are all about power. 

But the rest of the movie constantly conflates conventional conservative Christians with Christian nationalists, particularly in regards to abortion. They will show a talking head warn about the radical rhetoric and cynical use of power of Christian nationalism and show a conservative talking about the evils of abortion or celebrating the overturn of Roe v. Wade. They tell the history of Christian nationalism by recounting the origin of the Chrisitan right in the 1970s. They claim conservative evangelical opposition toward abortion was invented by segregationists in order to unite the right against government encroachment on Christian schools. Both of which are — at best — a highly partisan and contested read of the history of the Christian right. 

They describe tax cuts and opposition to gay marriage as Christian nationalism. They point to Christian nationalist funders and list The Heritage Foundation as one such organization. They describe anyone who says that America (or the West in general) as “founded on” Christian or Judeo-Christian principles as a Christian nationalist.

Christian nationalism is a hard thing to define even for its adherents — another reason why a more journalistic documentary exploring it and asking questions might have been a better use of time and money.

The “Statement on Christian Nationalism” from some of its biggest proponents describes it as “is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation.” 

Political idolatry vs. sincere Christianity

The documentary tries to frame the American political landscape as one of sincere Christians who uphold true values versus Christian nationalists driven by power who use the Bible as an excuse to impose their social views on everyone. Because the movie frames Christian nationalism with the Religious Right, this essentially falls into Mainline-Progressive Christianity being true Christianity and conservative Christianity as an idolatrous elevation of politics over faith.

One of the problems with trying to conflate Christian nationalism with Conservative evangelicals is that conservative Christians are the least likely group to make politics their religion. In the book, “One Faith No More,” respected sociologists George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk show in a massive study that when you compare conservative Christians vs mainline-progressive Christians, conservative Christians are the most religious and least political.

Between liberal and conservative Christians, conservative Christians are the most likely to have their theology drive their politics rather than the reverse – most likely to tolerate political dissent and the most likely to define their “in group” by theology rather than politics. If we’re comparing the two, it's liberal Christians who make politics rather than religion the primary driver of their values and identity.

But the filmmakers warn about the echo-chamber of the Christian media ecosystem, while admitting that — although evangelicals watch secular Hollywood movies, read and watch secular news outlets and go to secular schools — a non-Chrisitan can go through life unaware of the Christian media landscape. 

It’s also dishonest to pretend that Christian nationalists are out there trying to impose their values on society through government power and violence and “true Christians” on the left and mainline that the movie supports are not. The movie speaks positively about the federal government forcing desegregation in schools (rightly so). The Christian left and mainline traditionally support gun control, forced redistribution of wealth to the poor, forcing businesses to give women maternity leave and any litany of anti-discrimination policies based on race, gender-identity and sexual orientation.

All of these they wish to be enforced by law, which means imposed via the threat of state-sponsored violence. I’m not arguing that they’re wrong to do so, but you can’t support all of that and pretend that you aren’t in favor of using the government to impose your Christian values on other people. You just want it to be your Christian values, not the Christian values of Christians who disagree with you.

Ironically, there is a group of Christians who do believe in trying to limit how much they impose their Christian values on the rest of society: The traditional Christian right that they conflate with Christian nationalists. Small government Christians like Rachel Ferguson argue against Christian nationalism based on the belief that the government’s role in enforcing morality should be limited for everyone, both Christian and secular values.  

In my conversations with and what I’ve read, Christian nationalists, this seems to be the biggest difference between traditional Christians and their Christian nationalist counterparts: Traditional conservative Christians want the government to reflect Christian values, but believe that the government should be as small as possible — to impose as few of those values as possible and leave the rest up to civil institutions like church and family.  

Christian nationalists are disillusioned conservative Christians who believe in helping the needy and vulnerable, whether that’s the unborn, the unwed mother (which is why pro-life Christians have created three times as many crisis pregnancy centers as there are abortion providers), the poor (which is why they support free market policies which they believe help the poor) or the child confused by gender ideology. And they see that, for as long as small government Christians have been leading the movement, the tide of secular liberalism that they believe harms those groups has only gained ground culturally. So the Christian nationalist asks, maybe leaving the sword to the left is where we went wrong.

Why does this matter? 

Why does it matter that the documentary creates a wrong picture about Christian nationalism and the debate around it? Well, beyond the fact that the truth matters, if the goal is to discredit Christian nationalism so that Christians reject it and the Christian nationalism loses power in American life (a goal I agree with), making the mistakes this movie does will undermine that goal.

For many conservative Christians who watch this film, conflating the Religious Right and Christian nationalism will only make them identify more with Christian nationalism. What they will think watching this movie is, “When they say ‘Christian Nationalism is bad’ they mean regular traditional Christians. So if they’re right that Chrisitan nationalism and traditional Christianity are the same thing, then I’ll embrace Christian nationalism.” This will only make the movement stronger. I already see this attitude among people who I know.

For Christians who watch this and reject Christian nationalism, embracing the movie’s view of Christian nationalism will make it impossible for them to talk their Christian neighbors out of Christian nationalism. Because they will, they will be appealing to them on bases that have nothing to do with the reasons they embrace Chrisitan nationalism.  

If you are a small government Christian, you can’t talk to them assuming they are insincere with their Christianity. You have to explain to them how an embrace of small government isn’t the reason that conservative Christianity has failed. If you’re a member of the Chrisitan left, you can’t argue that Christians aren’t allowed to take up the sword without exposing yourself as a hypocrite. You instead have to focus on explaining why your politically left values are the correct values to impose on others with the sword.

The sci-fi book “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card has a line that has stayed with me ever since I’ve read it: “In order to defeat your enemy, you first have to love them.” It’s a confusing line, until you realize that he’s using “love” as a synonym for “understand.”  

You have to understand your enemy in order to defeat them. And in order to understand them, you have to, to some degree, care about them enough to pay attention to them. The film “Lady Bird” alludes to this in one of its most famous lines. “Isn’t that what love is? Paying attention?” If that’s the case, perhaps the biggest sin of this film is a failure to love its enemies as Christ commands.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.