When Americans talk about "Christian movies" or "Christian bookstores" or "Christian media" or anything like that, it's a sad statement that what they actually mean, mostly, by "Christian," is right-wing evangelical literalism. You're not going to find a John Shelby Spong book in most supposed Christian bookstores, but it's a near-certainty they'll be stocked up with Dr. James Dobson. "Faith-based" films take great care never to include elements that would put off the televangelist set, because every once in a while you get a movie like The Shack which, while devoutly pro-God, depicts God appearing as three different human beings in the main character's dream. And because, even in a dream, God-made-man can only appear as Jesus Christ, per the literalist take, this made it bad. There is a significant religious left, but in general they're not as vocal and visible as the rightists, perhaps because they don't feel the same mandate to win converts. And without big donors like Mike Rinder, they make movies like American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel on a budget of $700,000, start to finish, for release in three theaters this week, and seven more in the coming months.
If this is a topic that already interests you, odds are you've clicked on Facebook stories from groups like Kissing Fish that deal individually with some of the issues found herein. You might know, for example, that American Protestants used to think abortion was strictly a Catholic concern. You're probably aware the Southern Baptist church originally defended slavery, or that Bob Jones University being forced to allow interracial dating was a turning point that turned evangelicals into activists for "religious liberty," which most often means the right to discriminate based on your stated faith. But you may not have seen it all coalesce into one coherent argument, as seen mostly through the eyes of one Reverend Robert Meyers, who tries to start a liberal congregation in Oklahoma, deemed the reddest of red states by the filmmakers.
All the usual theological arguments for a loving rather than discriminatory faith are here, as is Carlton Pearson, the former Oral Roberts protegee who was excommunicated for saying that no just God could send unbaptized babies — or anyone else, for that matter — to Hell. (The Lion King's Chiwetel Ejiofor played him in the movie Come Sunday.) Religious conservatives will surely call the movie one-sided, and they're right: onscreen text at the end of the movie states that numerous conservatives were invited to give their perspective, and declined. It's a shame we don't see the debate between both sides more often, but as long as the default understanding of "Christian" in America means conservative, the right has no motive to allow people to possibly think otherwise. They'll tell you Democrats were the ones defending slavery, conveniently without mentioning that Democrats were the religious fundamentalists back then.
But it's not all preaching. Peter Hutchens' cinematography paints a picture of Oklahoma and the other red states as a visual paradise in summer, marred (or improved, if some of you like) only by the occasional garish displays of Scripture and Republican Christian imagery.
When the conservative anti-abortion movie Unplanned was coming out, a common refrain heard among its supporters was, "See it for yourself, and make up your own mind." It'd be nice to think they'd do the same for something like American Heretics, but I suspect they will not.