Reviews:

What They Are Saying About The Series

I was pleasantly surprised ... WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE is the most thorough and balanced treatment I've ever seen on this subject.

--Dr. Jerry Falwell, Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, Chancellor of Liberty

University and former President of Moral Majority, Inc.

Over the years I've seen plenty of documentaries, most of them "hit" pieces on the so-called "Religious Right." These pieces portrayed people of faith as aliens from some far distant solar system and from another time. Never have I seen anything on television that portrayed these people as they are-people who love their country and their God and believe they have a responsibility to stand for what they believe is a code of decency that never changes; people who sometimes make mistakes in applying that faith but, for the most part, have pure motives.

Yours is the finest, fairest and best of any I've seen. I thought it would be laborious to sit down and watch all six episodes, but once I started I couldn't stop. Not only did you "get it right," you got it the best.

My heartiest congratulations and I hope you have the widest possible audience for what I believe is a new standard by which all other documentaries on this subject will be measured. I was honored to have a very small part in it.

--Cal Thomas, LA Times syndicated columnist and former VP of Moral Majority, Inc.

[Note: Mr. Thomas is a series interviewee.]

It isn't often that a documentary has funders as ideologically disparate as the liberal Rockefeller and Robert Sterling Clark foundations and the conservative Smith Richardson and John M. Olin foundations, with many others in between. What they've got for their money is an absorbing look, over six hours, at the underpinnings of Christian political conservativism.

--Barbara D. Phillips, The Wall Street Journal; September 19, 1996

WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE... is one of the most stunning, bound-to-be controversial things ever done by PBS and it could not be more timely.

--Frank McConnell, Commonweal

...whether it's a cautionary tale or the delineation of a glorious political achievement will depend solely on the eyes of the viewer. Which is to say that the producers have done an excellent job of providing balance.

-- Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Inquirer

Television appearances notwithstanding, the Christian Coalition did not spring full-blown out of the head of Ralph Reed. "With God on Our Side," a spirited account of the rise of the religious right in recent decades, leaves no doubt of evangelical Christianity's deep and abiding power in American life. Paid for by foundations of both the right and the left, the six-hour documentary, which begins tonight on many PBS stations, is not out to score points but to explore the tangled terrain where religion and politics converge.

--Walter Goodman, The New York Times, September 27, 1996

...bounces through hot buttons...exploring the growing belief in this community that right makes might. It also makes you yearn to read a pamphlet called "Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles."

-- Scott Barwick, Total TV

A remarkably insightful and empathetic account of this important social movement through the eyes of its members, and, occassionally, through the eyes of those who have battled against it. ...well-balanced and fair.

-- James Penning, Christian Century

Ultimately "God's" strength lies not in how it judges its subject, but in how it lets its subject present-and thereby judge-itself.

-- Jeff Silverman, Daily Variety

"It is refreshing to see religious conservatives permitted to tell their own stories and present their own views without the bias that is often interjected into other productions."

--Pat Robertson (excerpted from a letter)

"Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't."

In a nutshell (provided by evangelical scholar Michael Horton), this is the conundrum confronted in With God on Our Side, a meticulously balanced historical survey of Christian activism in a pluralistic society.

Without being alarmist or preachy, this six-week series gives cogent, if not always compelling, context to the political education of conservative religious leaders who tend to view a government that acts on behalf of all people as an attack on the church's value systems.

The series is as thorough as it is nonjudgmental...

--Matt Roush, USA Today, September 27, 1996