"Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi": HBO documentary from Nancy's filmmaker daughter

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Soldiers of the Cross
'Friends of God' Captures Movement's Zeal
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007; Page C01


The Battle Cry rally in San Francisco was one stop on documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi's tour of evangelical America. (Hbo)

"Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi," a new HBO documentary about America's army of impassioned evangelicals, doesn't address the question "Why are we in Iraq?" -- but the film's parade of believers has a fervent certainty that echoes President Bush's unwavering belief in the war.

The ranks of the Bush administration include more born-again Christians "than any other administration" in American history, one of the evangelical leaders says, and Bush is heard enthusiastically addressing an antiabortion rally via telephone hookup.

Bush has used evangelicals as a power base, and is not one to shy away from a quest. Meantime, the Christians we see in this film are unyielding in the rightness of their ideas (i.e., evolution and abortion are wrong, "Jesus is the only way" and America is a Christian nation), and if someone challenges them, they simply say God has told them the truth.

Certitude is the common bond.

Pelosi, an intuitive and accomplished filmmaker, calls her documentaries "road trips" because she drives around listening to people espousing beliefs, and the Christians eagerly oblige everywhere she goes.

Pelosi was out to define the movement through the words of the faithful -- words spoken from pulpits and blaring from billboards. But her film turned into another story more or less on its own. One of the many evangelicals Pelosi interviewed was the Rev. Ted Haggard, whose National Association of Evangelicals claims, or claimed, 30 million members. Haggard rails against gay marriage and, late in the hour, says that "if a pastor falls into corruption . . . it's heartbreaking."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/24/AR2007012402484.html?nav=most_emailed