Welcome to Clinton County

Film Info: “Welcome to Clinton County” (1979) – Part of the”Profiles of Rural Religion” series produced by P.J. O’Connell for the Rural Documentary Project and Penn State Broadcasting – 58 minutes

Distributor:   Pennsylvania State University Media Sales DVD – $25

Summary: An introduction to the religious makeup of Clinton County, PA. From the ethnic Catholics of Renovo, through the fundamentalist Baptists of North Bend and the struggling Jews of Lock Haven, to the consolidated Lutherans of Nittany and Sugar Valleys, this is a survey of religious conditions and outlooks in this rural county. The film also serves to set the scene for the remaining films in the “Profiles of Rural Religion” series.

We’re Really in It With You, Charlie

Film Info: “We’re Really in It With You, Charlie” (1979) – Part of the”Profiles of Rural Religion” series produced by P.J. O’Connell for the Rural Documentary Project and Penn State Broadcasting – 58 minutes

Distributor:   Pennsylvania State University Media Sales DVD – $25

Summary: Rural pastor Charlie is an “Outsider” having moved to the area only one year before. Charlie Mason is a thoughtful smart aleck, irreverently reverent, a counselor, a politician, an outsider in the small rural city where he is pastor of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Lock Haven, PA. Rev. Mason is in conflict with his new congregation. He believes “they just want to have a church, and I want to do something important in the lives of people.” Conflict–real and imagined–is at the heart of this examination of a clergyman and his relationships with his congregation.

Three Who Care

Film Info: “Three Who Care” (1979) – Part of the”Profiles of Rural Religion” series produced by P.J. O’Connell for the Rural Documentary Project and Penn State Broadcasting – 58 minutes

Distributor:   Pennsylvania State University Media Sales DVD – $25

Summary: Religious involvement can be casual; in these three cases, it is not. Sue Jensen is a seminary intern, encountering the Salona Lutheran Church. Sue is suburban-raised, Princeton-educated, and a woman serving as pastor of a small, rural congregation. She is, to say the least, in contrast to her congregation’s expectations. Connie Richardson is a rural activist in the Gospel Tabernacle Assembly of God. She sings; she plays the organ; she teaches Sunday school; she is a missionary to her neighbors. And Connie believes: in the biblical “gifts”, in prayer, in healing, in her power to perform miracles “in the name of the Lord.” Celeste Rhodes Larsen is a nonbeliever in a strongly religious community, a former Jew in a predominantly Christian population, and a creative dance professor at a small teachers college. Her skepticism counterpoints prevailing attitudes. Rural religion is varied, intense, and decidedly alive.

Profiles on Rural Religion: Last Words

Film Info: “Last Words” (1979) – Part of the”Profiles of Rural Religion” series produced by P.J. O’Connell for the Rural Documentary Project and Penn State Broadcasting – 58 minutes

Distributor:   Pennsylvania State University Media Sales DVD – $25

Summary: To conclude the “Profiles of Rural Religion” series, the series consultants, sociologists Don Crider and Joe Faulkner, come to the TV studio for some analysis and some dialogue with the subjects of the six documentaries. But the dialogue develops most strongly between the subjects themselves, as questions of diversity and religious choice become prominent. And the program provides a final, frontal encounter between Suzie Andresen and Glenn Stover (see “Separate Realities”). Their quite different religious views, untempered and forcefully put, illustrate the range and intensity of religious expression in Rural America.

Sugar Valley Sampler

Film Info: “Sugar Valley Sampler” (1979) – Part of the”Profiles of Rural Religion” series roduced by P.J. O’Connell for the Rural Documentary Project and Penn State Broadcasting – 58 minutes

Distributor:   Pennsylvania State University Media Sales DVD – $25

Summary: Sugar Valley is a “bowl,” with only two breaks in the mountain rim. For 200 years, it was largely self-sufficient, economically, socially, and religiously. Since World War II, however, the Valley has slowly changed. There are two Lutheran churches where once there were nine, a group based out of the United Church of Christ is fighting a school merger with a district outside the Valley, and at the annual community picnic there are now electric-guitared rock groups. But the content of the lyrics–the gospel message–has remained much the same. This is a film of preservation and of change, of meeting the needs of the times and of holding on to what is dear. Sugar Valley is changing, but gradually, sometimes grudgingly and, when possible, on its own terms.

“Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Church”

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!

I find the shorter version more useful for the classroom, as it leaves time for a quick debriefing in an 80-minute class period. The discussion during the next class period works best if I give students study questions and ask them to relate the film to their reading.

Leave plenty of time for talk! Most students need it.  (JS)

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

Holy Ghost People

Film Title: Holy Ghost People, by Peter Adair (1967) — 57 minutes

Distributor: Available from GPod

Summary: Holy Ghost People describes the beliefs and practices of a snake-handling Pentecostal church and shows candid shots of the congregation during a service, including snake handling and glossolalia. In a dramatic ending, the leader is bitten by a rattlesnake.

For a longer review, see the above GPod link, which has posted most of a review by Gary Morris from: Bright Lights Film Journal.  (Click here, then scroll down the page to find the full review.)

God’s Angry Man

Film Title: God’s Angry Man — by Werner Herzog (1980) — 44 minutes

Distributor: ???????

Summary: A documentary about Dr. Gene Scott, televangelist, who used ranting anger to raise money on his nightly Festival of Faith. Tom Sutpen, in a review posted at Bright Lights Film Journal, writes:

A good deal of Herzog’s film is taken up with scenes of Scott live on the air, angrily rifling through pledges from viewers that were just called in — none of which are ever less than three figures — eventually flying into a hardcore Old Testament fury at the foul stinginess of the apostate public when he sees they haven’t coughed up that extra thousand he told them he needed. … In other hands, scenes like these would be used to advance the ever-fashionable cliché of television evangelists as mammon-obsessed charlatans…, but Herzog’s portrait of Dr. Gene Scott isn’t concerned with exposing hypocrisy … . God’s Angry Man is neither an exposé nor a malediction, and Scott is never branded a crackpot…. And for all his volcanic on-air bluster, he reveals a great deal of genuine vulnerability when he’s interviewed by Herzog.

Read the whole review here.

 

Battle for the Bible

Film Info:  Battle for the Bible – PBS “God and Politics” series (1987) – 60 minutes.

Distributor ??????????

Summary:  Illustrates a contemporary conflict between Christians who want to enforce a conservative orthodoxy in their denominations versus others who want to maintain their denomination’s tradition of freedom of conscience for individual believers.  Focused on the Southern Baptist Convention.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS

The Bible Belt: Politics of the Second Coming

Film Info: The Bible Belt: Politics of the Second Coming – Canadian Broadcasting Company (1972) – 90 minutes

Distributor: ??????????

Summary:  Examines the rise of fundamentalist Protestant sects in Western Canada during the 1920s and 1930s and their impact on Canadian politics then and now.

Film notice taken (with permission) from the “Teaching Resources” list in Meredith McGuire’s Religion: The Social Context, third edition. Her 5th edition (available from Waveland Press: see www.religionthesocialcontext.com) does not contain the resource list. I have only traced some of these films to current distributors. Please post updated information about them, if you have it. – JS