Godless: Film Review of the Documentary Bad Faith
★★★★★
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Documentary film is a versatile beast. It can be used, as in Harvest of Shame or Sicko, as an expose; or, as in Steve Van Zandt: Disciple or American Movie as a profile or biography; or also; like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth or Supersize Me, a cautionary tale. Or, like the new and disturbing documentary Bad Faith, it can be a combination of all of the above.
The history of how Christian Nationalism has infiltrated the halls of government and evolved into the governing philosophy of the Republican Party is painstakingly chronicled in the documentary Bad Faith. The film provides a detailed and chilling portrait of how religion, big money, greed, and racism culminated in an unholy alliance to install a minority cultural view into our society, beginning in the early eighties when Christian Nationalist guru and Republican operative Paul Weyrich began to engineer a plan to install his religious vision as the moral and cultural standard in the country.
Directors Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones reference Shadow Network by Anne Nelson and Bad Faith by Randall Balmer as the foundations for the thesis of the movie, which details the process by which Donald Trump had gathered support from the religious right to win the 2016 election.
The film describes Christian Nationalism as a religious movement that seeks to install an exclusivist order of Christian morality as the cultural standard by placing its practitioners into every level of government. A cornerstone of Christian Nationalism is the belief that its practitioners are inherently superior to members of any other religion, and that American Christians, typically white, are superior to all others. This belief is deeply rooted in the racism that sparked the movement and which is seen today in the various white supremacy groups attached to the movement.
As chronicled in Bad Faith, the catalyst that brought elements of the Christian community together was not abortion, but the Green vs. Connally Supreme Court decision, which ruled that any private school that practiced discrimination could not declare tax-exempt status. Private parochial schools like Bob Jones University resented federal interference in their desire to discriminate with their enrollment policies. Abortion only later became a flagship issue for the religious right.
Consolidating huge voting blocs from various evangelical congregations, Weyrich and Falwell formed the Moral Majority which was instrumental in getting Ronald Reagan elected in 1980. He then garnered the support of oil tycoons to help fund The Council for National Policy, ALEC, and The Heritage Foundation—the moving force behind today’s infamous Project 2025. By carefully documenting Weyrich’s master plan and his implementation of powerful data mining, fund-raising, and shepherding of evangelical voters, the Christian Nationalist Movement was able to put a number of their members into office.
Frustrated with the GOP’s slow progress in implementing Feyrick’s plan, which included “destroying democracy”, the religious right began sponsoring far-right candidates to push their program—which resulted in the election of Marjory Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and their ilk. The traditional Republican Party began to slip away until it is now nothing but a shadow of its former self.
The evangelical support of Donald Trump even harkens back to Christian doctrine, when the pagan king Cyrus was used as a vessel for the word of God (which might explain evangelicals’ willingness to overlook Trump’s crassness, bullying, criminal conduct, and treatment of women—and more).
The 9/11 attacks, the election of Barack Obama, and the 2008 housing bubble provided more opportunities for the Christian Nationalists to increase and consolidate their power. Islamophobia, racism, and immigration became keynote issues to fuel the religious right’s fervor, which culminated in Trump’s election, his appointment of three ultra-conservative Supreme Court Justices who not only overturned Roe -v- Wade, but have weakened the Federal government, and granted the president nearly absolute immunity from prosecution. Their deliberate attempts to erode faith in the democratic process led to Trump’s “big lie” and the January 6th Capitol riots.
Directors Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones have created a compelling and frightening cautionary tale about what has been happening in our government. The insidious infiltration of this organization has been happening in plain sight but has, until recently, flown under the radar. That is, until this film has taken all the bits and pieces we’ve witnessed throughout the years and created a frighteningly coherent mosaic. We’ve watched as the Moral Majority, the Tea Party, and now the MAGA Republicans have created what Hillary Clinton once called a vast right-wing conspiracy. Although mocked for saying it at the time, it turns out she was right.
No matter what your religion or political leaning, every American citizen should see Bad Faith to understand how deeply our democracy has already been subverted and to comprehend the consequences of the road we’re traveling. Seeing it is as important a civic duty as voting.
Jones and Ujlaki have brought the religious right and its attendant financiers like The Heritage Foundation and political groups like ALEC into the light of day. More importantly, they have connected the dots between the rise of social movements like The Tea Party and MAGA to our present political divide. Pundits like Michael Steel, Steve Schmidt, and others lend credibility to these claims as does the detailed research and historical background they lay down.
Christian Nationalism is a clear and present danger that has spread slowly and nearly invisibly into our political institutions, and that has, like a cancer, nearly destroyed our democracy, but as the film points out, Christian Nationalists are still a minority in this country. Most citizens want reproductive rights, a strong democracy, and racial equality. We do not have to succumb to this threat.