Certain US fundamentalist evangelicals would like nothing better than for the world to erupt in war, chaos and destruction. “The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes,” reads a line in the Old Testament that they take very closely to their hearts.
Figures like John Hagee, founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, believe that apocalyptic events will lead to the second coming of Christ. Hagee and his supporters are fervent supporters of the State of Israel. To observers, these zealots may seem like crackpots but they are very influential in politics and have close ties with senior figures in the US Republican Party.
Norwegian director Tonje Hessen Schei dives deep into the evangelists’ world in her disturbing new documentary Praying For Armageddon (co-directed with Michael Rowley and a world premiere at CPH:DOX).
“This film actually came about from different directions in my life. I’ve lived in the States for seventeen years in total. When I first moved to the States, I was really surprised to see the lack of coverage about Israel and Palestine in the US mainstream media,” the director explains.
Hessen Schei was very struck by the ignorance and indifference among Americans about what was happening in Israel. When she was making her 2014 film Drone, one of her interviewees, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (US Army, retired) advised her to “look into how the evangelicals are building a stronghold within the US military.”
One startling detail revealed in the film is that weaponry used by the US military has evangelical slogans written on it by the arms manufacturers.
“It’s really shocking when you see how engrained religion is in the military industrial complex as well as warfare,” Hessen Schei notes. “It’s disturbing to see the crusader iconography that goes into the military badges that are used. It’s frightening, and in the western world, we are so quick to point our fingers at the Islamic Armageddon lobby. We have this engrained fear for the ‘other’ and I think it is very important that we start taking a close look at how we also have an Armageddon lobby that is involved in the military, in our politics, and it is shaping US foreign policy. The evangelical policy is contributing to destabilising the whole political situation in the Middle East. To me, this is not just an American, Israeli or Palestinian issue. It is a human issue that threatens our very democracy and undermines the possibility for a real peace process in the Middle East.”
The director has been working on the project for eight years – and started researching it before Donald Trump and his vice president Mike Pence, both dangerously close to the evangelicals, moved into the White House.
“I don’t think Trump is a true believer in anything but himself,” Hessen Schei suggests that the former president’s relationship with the evangelists is one of convenience. Pence, though, seems to take Hagee’s firebrand theology very seriously.
Hagee is called the “kingmaker” of the Republican party. Those vying for power within the party are always keen to have his blessing.
Investigative reporter Lee Fang (who also featured in the director’s 2019 documentary iHuman) is shown in the documentary patiently trying to secure an interview with Hagee – but he is always brushed off. Fang has spent years investigating the evangelical stronghold over US politicians. “I felt Lee would be the perfect person to dig into this, to follow the money and to ask the right questions,” the director says of him.
The reporter will be in Copenhagen this week for the film’s premiere.
Hessen Schei doesn’t just show big-name politicians kowtowing to the evangelicals. She and Rowley also include footage of Hell’s Angel-like bikers who share Hagee’s beliefs.
Winning the trust of such subjects took patience.
“You know, it’s important for true believers and especially messengers to tell their story and get their message out,” the director says of why figures like Gary Burd, the motorbike-riding minister of the Mission M25 Ministry, were willing to talk on camera and to be filmed. It helped that co-director Rowley grew up in Amarillo, Texas, which is where Burd is also from, and is from an evangelical background himself.
“To me, Gary could be pretty much everybody’s grandfather. Yet he represents the grassroots of true believers who are preparing for the holy war,” Hessen Schei says of the denim and leather-clad preacher who looks like an ageing member of a heavy metal band. “We learned so much from Gary and his crew.”
The director insists that she depicts these characters with respect and allows them to tell their own stories in their own words. She may not share their beliefs but she doesn’t want to caricature them.
Alongside the material shot in the US is footage of Israeli settler communities harassing and intimidating Palestinian homeowners whose property they want to seize. These land grabs are supported and subsidised by the evangelists back in the US.
Praying For Armageddon was made through UpNorth Film with support from, among others, ARTE and Creative Europe as well as the Scandinavian broadcasters. It is a co-pro between Norway, Sweden and Finland with support from Germany, and was pitched at CPH:DOX and Sheffield Meet Market, among other forums. The film is handled in the international market by DR Sales.
