Network: PBS
Airing over three consecutive nights, this six-hour documentary explores America’s relationship with faith. From the first clash of Catholic priests with the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest to the 2008 presidential election, it’s a religious history told with sensitivity and reverence. With dramatic readings of the words of civil and religious leaders such as Anne Hutchinson, George Whitefield, James Finley, Thomas Jefferson and Bishop John Hughes, it puts a human face on the yearnings of immigrants looking for a fresh religious start in a new land.
The first hour of God in America explores the origins of America’s unique religious landscape — how the New World challenged and changed the faiths the first European settlers brought with them. In New Mexico, the spiritual rituals of the Pueblo Indians collided with the Catholic faith of the Spanish Franciscan friars who came to convert them, finally exploding in violent rebellion. In New England, Puritan leader John Winthrop faced off against religious dissenters from within his own ranks. And a new message of spiritual rebirth from evangelical preachers like George Whitfield swept through the American colonies, upending traditional religious authority and kindling a rebellious spirit that fused with the political upheaval of the American Revolution.
Hour two considers the beginnings of America’s experiment in religious liberty, examining how the political alliance between evangelical Baptists and enlightenment figures such as Thomas Jefferson forged a new concept of religious freedom—first in Virginia and ultimately in the Bill of Rights. The film looks at the impact of these new freedoms on the country as it pushed westward, creating a vibrant religious marketplace where new religions started taking root and new Protestant denominations began overtaking the old. But the definition of freedom was contested, its meaning igniting political conflicts between Irish Catholic immigrants and the Protestant establishment in New York over the reading of the Bible in public schools.
Hour three looks at how religious belief shaped the origins of the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s actions during the conflict. As Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders clashed over the question of slavery, each side turned to the Bible to argue its cause. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist newspaper editor, despaired that people who called themselves Christians could defend the evils of slavery. Protestant denominations fractured, with each side declaring God was on its side. Meanwhile, Lincoln, who had put his faith in reason over revelation, confronted the mounting casualties of the war and the death of his young son. In his anguish, he began a spiritual journey that transformed his inner life and changed his ideas about God and the ultimate meaning of the war.
Hour four explores the intellectual and cultural conflicts between traditional religious beliefs and the forces of modernity. In the late 19th century, the country’s leading Protestant denominations were challenged by new ideas about the history and authority of the Bible, leading to the heresy trial of Presbyterian biblical scholar Charles Briggs. As waves of new European immigrants changed the face of American religion, Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise advocated a new reform Judaism that adopted ancient traditions to modern American culture, but alienated Orthodox Jews. The battle over modernity reached a crescendo in the 1925 trial of John Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee teacher arrested for teaching evolution. The trial became a clash between religious and scientific truths fought by two American titans: the populist Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan and the secular freethinker Clarence Darrow.
Hour five considers a contradiction at the heart of the post-war era: at the same time the Supreme Court embarked on a series of controversial decisions that required government actions have a secular purpose, fresh religious energy surged through the nation, fueling the Cold War fight against “Godless Communism” and driving the Civil Rights movement. As America affirmed its standing as “one nation under God,” American presidents sought the approval of the popular and charismatic evangelist Billy Graham. And civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed the message of the ancient prophets as he called upon the nation to honor the commitment of the founding fathers to the principles of freedom and social justice. Meanwhile the US Supreme Court ruled against religious expression in public schools in a series of controversial decisions that persuaded many Americans that the Court was hostile to religious faith.
Hour six brings the series into the present day, exploring the political aspirations of the religious right, the dynamics of the contemporary religious marketplace, and the re-emergence of a religious voice in the Democratic Party. In the 1970s, led by the ideas of maverick evangelical intellectual Francis Schaeffer, conservative evangelicals set aside their longstanding aversion to political engagement and stepped back into the political arena. But their embrace of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush ended in disappointment and raised doubts for many about the high price they had paid. At the same time America was fast becoming the most religiously diverse nation as Hispanic Catholics, Pentecostals, Muslims, Buddhists and those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” entered the ever-expanding religious marketplace. In the wake of political defeat, Democrats recalculated their aversion to religion and the contestants in the 2008 presidential race, including Barack Obama, sought to define a new standard. God in America closes with reflections on the dynamics of faith in the public life of the country—from the unending quest for religious liberty to the enduring idea of America as the “city on a hill” envisioned by the Puritans nearly 400 years ago.
