June 26, 2007 by Jim Spickard.

Film Title: Call to Witness: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Ordination in the Lutheran Church — by Pam Walton — 59 minutes

Distributor: Pam Walton Productions

Summary: (from the distributor’s website)

What People are Saying. . .

“Call to Witness is both an elegy to shattered lives and ruined careers and a testimony to the courage and commitment of queer pastors and their partners who are engaged in one of the most important and controversial battles of our time.”
– Outfest 2000, The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

“Call to Witness goes behind the angry rhetoric to paint a compelling picture of a denomination’s struggle to come to terms with its gay and lesbian congregants. It is an enlightened meditation on an issue that threatens to tear our nation apart and should be required viewing for both sides of the cultural divide.”
– Chris Bull, Washington Correspondent, The Advocate / Co-author, Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s.

“The stories in Call to Witness need to be heard if we are to seriously engage in the ’study of sexuality’ that is currently underway in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That study has multiple sides and this video presents one seldom heard by the people in our pews, or in the public.”
–Bishop Emeritus Paul Egertson, Southwest California Synod, ELCA.

“In just sixty minutes, Call to Witness captures not only an important piece of history, but also illustrates why religious debates are so essential to our struggle for civil rights.”
– Jim Mitulski, GLBT Outreach Coordinator, James Hormel Center, San Francisco

The Video Includes . . .

> The stories of Rev. Steve Sabin in Iowa, who was outed by his bishop, supported by his congregation, and “tried” by the national church because he refused to resign; Rev. Jane Ralph in Missouri, who was forced out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with no recourse; and Pastoral Minister Anita C. Hill in Minnesota, who at the time was working to be ordained as an openly lesbian pastor. (Rev. Hill was ordained in an act of ecclesiastical disobedience on April 28, 2001.)

> The stories of two San Francisco congregations that defied the ELCA in 1990 by calling Revs. Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart, and Jeff Johnson, openly gay and lesbian pastors not on the approved ELCA roster.

> An interview with Reverend Joseph Wagner, ELCA Division for Ministry, and Bishop Charles Maahs, ELCA Conference of Bishops.

> The vigilant work of Luthern Lesbian and Gay Ministries as they support pastors and congregations who are being forced out of the ELCA.

Posted in Congregations, Gays/Lesbians, Conflict, Christianity, Mainline Protestants, Religion and ..., North America | Print | No Comments »

April 13, 2007 by Jim Spickard.

Film Title: “Fall From Grace” — by K. Ryan Jones — 2007 — 71 minutes
Distributor: www.fallfromgracemovie.net

Summary:

“God hates fags,” “You’re going to Hell,” “Thank God for 9/11,” “Thank God for dead soldiers.” Even in the darkness, the picket signs glow, not simply because of their neon hues, but because of the incandescent hate with which they are branded.

This shocking rhetoric flows from the Reverend Fred Phelps and his followers at the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas - smack in the center of America’s heartland. Whether it’s on their toxic website www.godhatesfags.com or at one of the 22,000 demonstrations they’ve staged over the last fifteen years, the Church is focused on one key message: America is doomed because, for too long, it has tolerated homosexuality and allowed it to thrive. Church members picket daily in the city of Topeka and often travel abroad. Most recently, Pastor Phelps and his followers have targeted military funerals for soldiers killed in the war in Iraq as a venue to preach God’s wrath against a nation that has apparently been “taken over by the fags.”

Directed by first-time filmmaker K. Ryan Jones - currently a senior at the University of Kansas - Fall From Grace is the first in-depth documentary feature film to focus on Pastor Phelps and his hate group, and features unprecedented access, interviews with Pastor Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Fall From Grace also includes interviews with the myriad of dissenters: Topeka leaders and officials, ministers, theologians, and two of Pastor Phelps’s adult children who have chosen to leave the church and their family.

Westboro Baptist Church is led by Pastor Fred Phelps, a lawyer who was disbarred in the mid-90s for witness intimidation, who started the church fifty years ago. It is a small group, comprised mostly of members of the Phelps family, but their hatred is prolific. They demonstrate anywhere they feel that their message is applicable, like the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was killed for being gay and most recently, at the funerals of military servicemen and women killed in Iraq.

Fall From Grace takes the viewer inside this surreal world with rare interviews and footage of several pickets and church services. The film focuses on a group that represents a variety of contemporary American issues, including intolerance of homosexuality, the right to freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and the War in Iraq.

Posted in Conflict, Gender, Evangelism, Congregations, Gays/Lesbians, Family, Social Activism, Sects, Evangelical Protestants, Christianity, Politics, North America | Print | No Comments »

March 30, 2007 by Jim Spickard.

Film Title: “Parish Portaits” — by James Ault — 1999 — 51 minutes
Distributor: James Ault Productions — www.jamesault.com
Summary: (from the distributor’s website)

Portraits of four diverse Episcopal churches for the Zacchaeus Project and Trinity Institute’s national teleconference “Roots and Wings,” September 27-9, 1999. Includes short stings on different themes–Episcopal identity, youth, women clergy, etc.–and a longer version of challenges faced by an Anglo-Latino congregation in Oxnard, California.

Keywords: Amercian religion; Episopalians; parish life

Posted in Latino Religion, Youth, Congregations, Women, Gender, Mainline Protestants, Churches, Christianity, North America | Print | No Comments »

March 30, 2007 by Jim Spickard.

Film Title: “Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Church” — by James Ault and Michael Camerini — 1987 — 2 versions: 87 minutes and 58 minutes
Distributor: James Ault Productions — www.jamesault.com
Summary:

An engrossing and detailed look at a small Fundamentalist congregation in Massachusetts in the mid- 1980s. It follows several families, detailing their views of their religion and of the world. It provides an insider’s view without varnishing away negative details. First rate!

Keywords: Fundamentalism, worldview, conversion, family life, sects

Posted in Conversion, Congregations, Family, Christianity, Sects, Evangelical Protestants, North America | Print | 1 Comment »

March 29, 2007 by Jim Spickard.

Film title: “Knocking” — by Joel P. Engardio and Tom Shepard — 2005 or 2006 — 53 minutes (plus extras on the DVD)
Distributor: New Day Films — 888.367.9154 — www.newday.com/films/knocking.html
Summary: (from the distributor’s blurb)

KNOCKING opens the door on Jehovah’s Witnesses. While protecting their own rights, they have won a record number of court cases expanding freedoms for all Americans. In Nazi Germany, they chose the concentration camps over fighting for Hitler. They refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds but support the science of bloodless medicine. They are moral conservatives who stay out of politics and the Culture War. KNOCKING follows two families who stand firm for their often controversial and misunderstood faith. Their stories reveal how one unlikely religion helped to shape history beyond the doorstep.

Keywords: sects, pacifists, American religion, religion and law

Posted in Evangelism, War/Pacifism, Law, Christianity, Sects, North America | Print | No Comments »