Filmmaker Aram Garriga discusses his latest documentary American Jesus, which takes an in-depth look at the many faces of Christianity in America – from those who worship in nature to biker Christians to the faithful who flock to ever-growing mega-churches.
The original idea for his documentary was going to focus on the many varieties of Christian-related music scene in the United States, but Garriga said he quickly became fascinated with many other aspects of faith expressions in America.
“During the research process, we started coming across all the pop culture expressions of faith, and ultimately we ended up with the politicization of faith and all the social aspects of it, so it kept broadening during the research process,” he said. “So we started with almost an anecdote, and we ended up with a very big landscape of characters.”
Garriga talked about the access granted by various religious groups for filming, which became crucial to adequately telling the story. “I think the fact that we were from Spain helped quite a bit, because they were not suspicious about us being Americans with a liberal agenda or anything,”
“Mostly we found them on the Internet, and some others we found after reading books. Some of them were complicated to find and some others we just came across along the way. You know, when you start a documentary, you start this journey – you know where it starts, but you never know where it’s going to lead you, or end. So you always have to be very open to what might come up.”
When asked how the filmmaking process affected his views of America and its religious institutions, Garriga said ended up being a very eye-opening experience.
“One gets the idea – especially from Europe – that Evangelical Christianity is just one big block of really politicized and specifically ideological people,” he said. “And when you get to see all this diversity, then you realize it’s not like that. It’s much more organic and has many more colors and richness than one might think.”
Garriga addresses one of the most inspiring characters in the film, Pastor Bob Beeman, who is well-known in the Christian rock and biker communities and holds church and provides support to homeless people living under a freeway overpass in Nashville, Tenn.
“He’s a really, really inspiring character. And actually within the crew, he was everybody’s favorite, in the sense of when we got to meet him, we saw nice he was and what he was actually doing – down in the trenches, really being a Christian.”
Watch the full interview for several clips from the documentary, as well as to get introductions to many more of the film’s colorful characters.
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