WASHINGTON (RNS) — Even though he always was taught religion and politics shouldn’t be discussed in polite company, Dan Merchant decided someone needed to start the conversation.
In his documentary-style film, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, which hits theaters nationwide Sept. 25, Merchant marches around the country asking everyone he meets why what he calls the “Gospel of Love” is dividing the nation.
Filmmaker Dan Merchant traveled the country, asking why the gospel has become so divisive. (PHOTO/RNS/Courtesy Rogers & Cowan)
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Wearing a painter-suit covered in bumper stickers that illustrates various sides of the “Christian issue,” Merchant travels the country asking tough questions. What Merchant really wants to know: How are Christians supposed to act, and how are they really acting? In short, does following Jesus mean loving others or being right?
“The goal is to try and understand,” Merchant said in an interview. “Am I the only person asking these questions?”
The film has been circulating on DVD for at least a year and has attracted a loyal underground fan base. Now, Merchant hopes the nationwide theater release will help spread the film’s message.
An evangelical Christian with a background in the entertainment field, Merchant was inspired to explore American Christianity after traveling to Ethiopia and meeting Christians there who sounded and acted nothing like the Christians back home.
“There’s one voice that reminds me of Jesus,” Merchant said, comparing Christian voices on American TV to those in small Ethiopian huts. “And it’s the voice in the hut.”
So, he set off to figure out if he was the only one concerned about how Christians in the United States are perceived. By interviewing everyone from church-goers to atheists, politicians to scholars, Katrina victims to drag queens dressed as nuns, Merchant looks for everyone to find their voice in this dialogue.
Merchant’s camera captures a range of opinions, because it seems that everybody has something to say. “Everyone has a dog in this fight,” Merchant says at the beginning of his film.
What worries Merchant, however, is that everyone seems to be talking at the same time.
“Outrage is way more exciting than humility,” says Merchant.
In his bumper sticker get-up, Merchant patrols the streets of Times Square and nationwide asking people what Christians are known for versus what Jesus is known for. Big surprise: the answers are often quite different.
After seriously considering issues where the secular world and the Christian world often butt heads — same-sex marriage, abortion, the “Hollywood agenda,” poverty, war, pornography and consumerism — the film takes a more hopeful turn.
From volunteers washing the feet of homeless people to a confessional booth at a Gay Pride event where people are invited in to hear Merchant’s own confessions, the film offers a glimpse into a kinder, gentler America. Those images and stories, which Merchant cites as the most important, suggest that we are all one in our humanity.