The Biarritz International Documentary Film Festival (Fipadoc) has selected series for the first time for its demanding programming. A relevant choice allowing to understand in depth…
Interview
Fipadoc: the crusade of “Evangelicals to conquer the world”
“Evangelicals conquering the world”, a series by Thomas Johnson, selected for Fipadoc 2023. © Artline Films
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
The Biarritz International Documentary Film Festival (Fipadoc) has selected series for the first time for its demanding programming.
A relevant choice allowing to understand in depth historical and political the very disturbing phenomenon of the “Evangelicals to conquer the world”, an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-feminist movement, from Trump to Bolsonaro, also passing through countries in Europe, such as France, or the DRC in Africa.
Interview with director Thomas Johnson.
The Evangelicals Conquering the World, you filmed for four years on four continents. How do you define an evangelical ? Which evangelicals do you talk about in your film ?
Thomas Johnson: Evangelicals are the most dynamic Christian movement in the world right now. This concerns 650 million people, that is to say one human in twelve!
It seemed important to me to tell who these dynamic Christians are, with this church which is in the process of resurfacing and springing up everywhere.
Who are they ?
They have four main characteristics, shared by all evangelicals in the world:
1) they are great Bible readers, it is their reference book.
2) For them, Jesus came to earth to save us from all our sins.
3) Baptism in adulthood is fundamental, that is to say, one becomes evangelical as soon as one is old enough to understand what it means to become evangelical.
4) The duty of every evangelical is to evangelize, go out and spread the good word to others and to the whole world.
In your documentary, you are mainly interested in the political sides of the evangelical movement. For example, you trace history and show that evangelicals have long had a very important political role in the United States. At the same time, you underline the rupture that had with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2017. Of what nature was this rupture ?
The United States played a primordial role for the evangelicals, but the evangelical current was born in Europe, in Switzerland, in Germany, in France, with the reform against the Catholic Church. But in the United States, it took on a very important dimension, especially from 1945 with the evangelical preacher Billy Graham. What was a very religious movement became a political weapon, a political movement, from the 1980s. They brought Ronald Reagan to power, after George W. Bush, and then, in 2017, Donald Trump.
And with Donald Trump, evangelicals literally entered the White House for the first time. A break with very profound political consequences.
From there, evangelistic speech was used as a propaganda tool by the Republican administration and by Donald Trump to run the country. They installed judges in the United States Supreme Court who supported the values of the “moral majority” anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-feminist. All these values of the very conservative American right have been implemented at the state level and at the level of the American administration.
They brought evangelicals into the White House, including a woman who led the whole evangelical movement, and they placed evangelical representatives in all the administrations of the country.
On the international level, one of the great influences that this had was that the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro applied practically the same process during his election in 2019 as Donald Trump in the United States. Did they copy the Trumpist approach or should we speak of a coincidence of the same movement at the same time ?
The American, Brazilian and Swiss specialists interviewed in the film agree that Bolsonaro was completely made by Trump. Trump was Bolsonaro’s role model. They worked together to establish a new evangelical power in Brazil.
In Africa, you show, among other things, the impressive dynamics of evangelicals in Kinshasa. What is the current influence of evangelicals in Africa ?
In Africa, they have a very important influence, especially in Kinshasa, with the charismatic evangelical movement. They have a very important political power. In Africa, there has been a repression against homosexuals which has been provoked, among other things, by the evangelical anti-homosexual movements. A repression which went, for example in Uganda, until the death sentence of homosexuals. All this with the support of some evangelical churches in the United States and a lot of money coming from the United States.
There is an evangelical stream called the prosperity gospel, which advocates the idea: what you give to your church, God will give back to you. Which worked very well in Brazil, and also in Nigeria. This has allowed evangelical pastors to enrich themselves shamelessly.
Evangelicals in Africa, have they also brought to power African presidents ?
I wouldn’t say they brought African presidents to power, but that could come from one day to the next.
What is the dynamic of evangelicals in France?
In France, Evangelicals are relatively few in number, we are talking about 600,000 to 800,000, the figure increasing with the bankruptcy of the Catholic Church. With the current problems of the Catholic Church, one can think that the number of evangelicals in France will increase.
The evangelical current has given birth to an evangelical power which holds a very moralizing discourse and identity of society. They think that it is necessary to save the Judeo-Christian civilization against other tendencies, and in particular against the Muslims. This joins the discourses of the right of the nationalist right who have become Christian or religious nationalists around the world, especially in France and Germany, but practically in all Western countries at the moment.
American evangelical Christian right-wingers are behind these movements or directly influence them. This gave rise to far-right movements in Europe. For example, they are very close to Eric Zemmour or Marion Maréchal in France, far-right movements in Germany… And behind all this is also a gentleman like Mike Pence, the former vice-president under Trump.
Today, evangelicals clearly claim religious nationalism and a “great crusade”. Can we say that the evangelicals have turned into an anti-democratic movement ?
I wouldn’t say that evangelicals have turned into an anti-democratic movement. Among evangelicals, there is everything: many evangelicals are not at all on the nationalist and very conservative right, but they are rather progressive, democrats, for the separation of religious and political power.
So it’s not the evangelical movement per se.
It’s a very conservative trend, very right, it’s the American conservative right that has become a political movement that influences all evangelical movements in the world, but especially conservative politics.
That is to say, they give ideological arguments to the modern nationalist right which is emerging in many countries, whether in Russia, in Europe, in Africa or on other continents… In this moment, the Christian nationalist movement emerging in Russia with Putin is quite close to the nationalist right around Donald Trump. We know that there have been very important rapprochements between Trump and Putin.
Your documentary also highlights that some evangelicals are joining the white supremacist movement.
Yes, historically, there has been an alliance since the 18th century between white supremacists and white evangelicals – because there is also a whole movement of black evangelicals who nevertheless gave birth to Martin Luther King… But the evangelical movement as it is understood today, it is a white evangelical movement of the ruling class of the United States which was nevertheless slavery, segregationist, etc. That gave rise to this notion of white supremacy.
However, this relationship between the evangelical movement and the white supremacy of the early 20th century has never been seriously questioned. So it still exists today. Indeed, those who are afraid of the “great replacement” are also, in certain countries, notably in the United States, but perhaps also in our country, white supremacists... The fear of Muslims, Arabs, foreigners , etc., there, we see things coming together.
The Evangelical Church has never really made its mea culpa, it has never questioned itself in relation to this strong relationship that existed between this movement of white supremacy and the religious movement of evangelicals.
If we go back in history, there is also the story of the Indians in the United States who were eliminated, in the name of the superiority of Judeo-Christian civilization or the idea that Christianity was going to redeem humanity .
It’s something you can still hear today,
In your documentary, you question experts, academics, but above all many evangelicals. Was the challenge of the documentary to explain the evangelical movement from within their own movement ?
Yes, my wish was to hear the evangelists, the great defenders of the ideology of the conservative right. I wanted to hear how they express themselves on their ideology, on their vision of the world, etc. I was not in the confrontation. I was listening to what they had to say to me and their vision of the world. Their vision of the world frightens me, but they are very happy with it.
What surprised you the most while making this documentary ?
One of the things that surprised me the most is that the people who support these supremacist, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual theses are very nice people. But what they express is not sympathetic at all. The propaganda they present is a deception that leads to confrontation.
