Sex, power & cheap grace: a short film everyone should watch

“We wake up tomorrow in a Christian nation…will women have the vote tomorrow if we could wave that magic Christian wand?”

“No”

For Our Daughters is a short film about sexual abuse of women in the US evangelical church and how church culture perpetuated these injustices and covered it up. It contains powerful testimonies of women who came forward within the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, to share their experiences.

The film has been produced by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, the author of  the influential book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Fascinatingly, the film shows how a culture and theology of female submission to men directly ties in with the agenda of Christian nationalism. 

Watch the trailer:

The film explores why people who profess to follow Jesus can show such support for someone like Donald Trump. As Du Mez puts it:

“It may seem surprising that a self-professed ‘moral majority’ would end up supporting a candidate who brags about assaulting women. But if you look inside their own communities you see how, for decades, they have propped up men who have abused power and have excused all kinds of harm and all kinds of abuses for the sake of that power. The ends justifies the means.”

Easy reconciliation

The film particularly exposes the ‘cheap grace’ of churches who offered easy reconciliation and swift forgiveness to perpetuators which costs them very little. And in contrast, because this culture casts women as temptresses who lead men astray, those who have spoken up have been viciously trolled and threatened.

UK church culture is different to the US but we have our own brand of problems and scandals. This film is relevant for everyone because it’s fundamentally about speaking up and exposing the truth.

I would urge everyone to watch the film. It would be especially valuable for small groups, church leadership and staff teams to watch and discuss. The full 30 minute film is freely available on YouTube:

See the For Our Daughters website for more resources and information.