“God & Country,” which is produced by Rob Reiner, opens today. Earlier this week, I spoke to Partland via Zoom, curious to probe the troubling implications of his film. Below, Partland discusses his own religious background, why he thinks those on the left need to find common ground with moderate religious conservatives, and what’s up with Christian Nationalists’ insistence that Jesus was buff and tough.
Before we talk about “God & Country,” I wanted to ask about your own religious background.
I come from a secular, interfaith family. I was raised largely secularly because, at the time, my parents were from different faiths, and it caused a little bit of strife for the two families to figure out how to get together — so I think my parents felt like there was too much divisiveness. They wanted to raise the kids to find their own spiritual path and not consider it a deep part of their identity.
So did you dabble in different religions or philosophies?
I did, and I studied a lot. I grew up in a very conservative, largely Christian community — northeast United States, mostly mainline Protestants and some very traditional Catholics — and, honestly, I always felt a little left out. I wanted to understand what it was all about, and so I studied religion and Eastern philosophies and other things like that in college.
The interesting thing is that, in my adult life, I really have quite a lot of close friends and important filmmaking collaborators who are deeply devout people and who represent the best qualities of religious devotion — they do good works and are about kindness and spreading compassion. So when I was asked if I wanted to take on this project, I talked to them first — I definitely was looking to them for guidance, because I recognized that I had an outsider perspective.
One of my closest collaborators, when I said I was considering this project about Christian Nationalism, his total demeanor changed. He was stricken and I was worried — I didn’t know if I had said the wrong thing or maybe he felt like that this was a mistake. But when he gathered his composure, he said, “Thank you for taking this on. It’s tearing apart the country, it’s tearing apart the Church, and nobody’s talking about it.” That was a tremendous entry point for me to recognize that I was coming at it from the perspective of my concern for what it’s doing to American democracy — but I realized that the deeply devout are also really concerned about what it’s doing to their faith.