screen play

I’m jealous when I hear Lea Salonga sing, or when I read anything written by Bill Bryson or Richard Russo.

Now I’m jealous of Dan Merchant, writer, director and producer of the new documentary Lord, Save Us From Your Followers. USA Today called the movie “a humorous and heartfelt examination of the culture wars,” and its theme can be summed up by one question Merchant asks early on: Why is the gospel of love dividing America?

To find the answer, he interviews Tony Campolo, Rick Santorum, Al Franken, and many others. He dons a white jumpsuit covered with contradictory and controversial bumper stickers and conducts man on the street interviews to gauge reactions. He conducts two liberal vs. conservative Family Feud-style games. He apologizes for his own judgmentalism to dozens of homosexuals in Portland.

Along the way (and sometimes in spite of these stunts), he discovers that even individuals with the most opposing beliefs can find common ground by relating as individuals instead of angry members of stereotyped groups.

“Maybe the gospel of love isn’t dividing—it’s just being turned into the gospel of being right,” he muses. Merchant unapologetically identifies himself as an evangelical Christian to viewers and to interviewees,  but he also goes out of his way to listen to those with other worldviews. “I’m finding there’s a translation problem when Christians try to talk to non-Christians,” he says. “We have no idea how we sound to others.”

We can also become insulated by the gospel of being right wing. In both rounds of his Family Feud game the liberals trounced the conservatives by hundreds of points. When guessing reasons a woman might not have an abortion, the liberal group guessed the #4 answer (there is no good reason to have an abortion), knowing that many conservatives feel that way and therefore this answer would appear on the board. In questions about "intriguing" aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution, the conservatives were stumped.

“We couldn’t get outside of the world we live in,” said Shel Reed, CEO of Good Samaritan Ministries and a member of the conservative team. “They did a much better job understanding us than we did understanding who they were.”

The film goes beyond politics to explore issues of social justice, finding hope in our willingness to work together in feeding the hungry or serving the homeless. It shows very different people—George Clooney and Pat Robertson, a secular radio station and World Vision—uniting around these issues, and discovering each other’s humanity in the process.

The film was didactic and idealistic at times, but I appreciated its consistent return to a central message: we’re all responsible for the polarization of America because we’re all on the defensive, all looking for an enemy, all talking more than we’re listening.

Or as Merchant says, “Outrage is way more exciting than humility.” That’s one of several things in this movie I wish I’d said first. I can’t take credit for it any more than I can Ms. Salonga’s version of “On My Own.” But I encourage you to check out both.