WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE:

The Rise of the Religious Right in America

FROM DISCUSSION TO PRODUCTION:
A Talk With Executive Producer Calvin Skaggs

It was hot, and it was controversial -- a documentary film about the rise of the Religious Right, tracing its roots from the "Christian anti-Communism" of the 1950's to the sophisticated politics of the Christian Coalition today. Calvin Skaggs, the president of Lumiere Productions and the executive producer of what would become the series, and David Van Taylor, who would become the series producer, were less than optimistic that their project would be picked up and funded.

"The subject was even more controversial when we were in the discussion stage three years ago," says Skaggs. "This is history, but not like [the PBS series] 'The American Experience.' It has a very clear connection to ongoing public policy debates -- at the same time that it's solid history. It was hard for some programmers to get hold of what it was and where it was going."

To the producers' surprise, interest in the project developed in a novel way. Ultimately, 20 percent of the funding was to come from PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the other 80 percent coming, over a three-year period, from funders across the ideological spectrum.

Skaggs began his fundraising by showing a 23-minute pilot tape to PBS. "They immediately saw it as a remarkable and distinctive thing -- something that had never been done before," he recalls. "Here was a chronicle of the interplay between religion and politics for over 40 years that is relevant to public policy issues in the late '90s. Once we were able to convince people that we literally wanted to tell this story from the point of view of Christian conservatives, and that we were going to bend over backwards to be empathetic and to look at the world the way they look at it, then people jumped aboard."

The first monies came in from larger foundations -- the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation -- and "two or three smaller foundations like the Andy Warhol Foundation, which is interested in fighting arts censorship, and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, which gives much of its money to organizations working in behalf of reproductive rights. "On the other hand," says Skaggs, "it was helpful that our flagship station was SCETV, which has a long reputation of programming with both conservative and liberal voices. Having that station as our partner in the series reassured conservative foundations that they could, indeed, believe us when we said that we aimed to do an ideologically balanced examination of the Religious Right."

Several foundations had the project proposal reviewed by outside reviewers who were experts in religion or politics, and who then came back with questions that the producers answered. Then funds came in: from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, and the William H. Donner Foundation in New York. "Both let us know that they thought it was important not only to explore the way religion is currently interplaying with politics, but also the way in which this particular grouping, which we now call the Religious Right, is affecting all of American politics," recalls Skaggs. The largest grant from a foundation usually considered conservative, came from the Smith Richardson Foundation, which further vetted the project. Then the John M. Olin Foundation came in.

Finally, late in the funding process, the series received news of a major grant from the Independent Television Service, a funding source required by its charter to finance public television projects aimed at, and featuring, "under-served audiences." " 'WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE' allowed them to help create programming for and about conservative Christians," Skaggs says. "It was perfect for them and we were glad to welcome them aboard." The largest funder of the series was the Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation with a great interest in religion.

Skaggs admits that the unorthodox funding mix in some ways made their job easier.

"Having a small percentage of the budget coming from public television, a large anchor grant from a centrist foundation, and the rest from [across] the ideological spectrum actually gave us an enormous amount of freedom to tell the story as we found it to be true," he says. "We felt no pressure, even unconscious pressure, to slant it in any way. Our funding helped us fulfill our original purpose, which was to tell the story of the Religious Right's growing power from as clear-headed and non-partisan a position as possible." How does he think the funders will react to the finished product? "I think they're all going to be very pleased with it because our film is a true, undistorted mirror of the history of this movement," he says.