Don't miss Alexandra Pelosi's HBO special..."Friends of God"..Brilliant

madfloridian

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Sun Feb-04-07 11:13 PM
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Don't miss Alexandra Pelosi's HBO special..."Friends of God"..Brilliant

I did not see anyone mention it yet. Oh, my goodness, what a film! She just lets them talk and talk, never interjects anything....and it starkly shows their real nature.

I always make clear I was raised Southern Baptist...but now I am out of there. It is different since it was hijacked, but a lot of the things send me back to my earlier years. Baptists for some reason have always thought they had a lock on Christianity.

This is an amazing film. You have to see the part where a preacher is teaching them that dinosaurs roamed the earth with men. They teach little children to sing songs about Behemoth from the bible being a dinosaur.

Pelosi asked one of the girls what she would say if Pelosi told her she did believe in evolution. The girl sort of stammered, but never even considered anyone else could be right. She said Pelosi got a bad education.

Of course the part with Ted Haggard is a classic...he talks about all the sex evangelicals have and how often and how their wives always have orgasms. And then where did you think all the babies came from? Touching in a way, since they have all shunned him since then.

Tom Shales wrote an interesting piece about it called Soldiers of the Cross.

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

"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.

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."

Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the new speaker of the House, races from state to state, and much of what the evangelicals say has to do with loving thy neighbor and finding "eternal life." But there is also an unmistakable combative tone that grows more aggressive as Pelosi's travels continue.

And this paragraph is interesting.

At one point, a Christian rocker says that death is not to be feared, because "we've settled the issue of eternal life." But everywhere, beneath the widely smiling faces and facade of love in this film, there's a lurking hyper-nationalism that tries to link evangelicals with the U.S. flag and the Founding Fathers, and a seemingly paranoid hostility that maintains Christians are the most persecuted group in America.

It was disturbing to watch, though. My hubby was thinking that the power of these groups have been exaggerated. He was alarmed at the 35,000 a week-end who attend one of the megachurches, and so was I. It seemed like a complete social unit where they did not need the outside world.