I was delighted recently to have a conversation about dialogue across lines of difference and the transformation of conflict, inspired by the new documentary Leap of Faith. From the team behind the magnificent Mr Rogers film Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Leap of Faith is about one of the hardest things to do well (and one of the hardest things to make interesting in a movie): people talking about their differences. But Leap of Faith is a cut above - both psychologically credible and visually elegant, and ultimately asking of the audience the same thing it’s asking of its participants: to take what we already know to be true about love seriously enough that we would prove it.
Watch my conversation with Leap of Faith director Nicholas Ma above; and I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in how we can learn how to live together better.
Leap of Faith is released today, and you can find more information below and at www.leapoffaithmovie.com
Filmmakers Nicholas Ma and Morgan Neville first collaborated on the acclaimed 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The story of Fred Rogers, the genial, soft-spoken host of the long-running children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the film quickly became the highest-grossing biographical documentary in history. With its optimistic outlook and themes of hope, faith and love, the movie was quickly embraced by moviegoers and by the Christian community in particular.
In the aftermath of the film and the leadup to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Neville and Ma watched as many evangelical churches’ alignment with Donald Trump became a focal point politically and in the media. Instead of bringing people together, Ma observes that faith was beginning to push different Christian traditions apart. The filmmakers decided to explore the reasons behind the shift. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was a film that looked toward the past,” Ma says. “I was interested in looking toward the future with our next film.”
As the election grew closer, culture and politics began to infiltrate all aspects of American life, especially in the Christian world — and most notably in the evangelical world, observes Neville. “It seemed that every issue was suddenly forcing people to take sides,” he says. “Trying to figure out the nexus of community and politics and faith interested us. Nicholas and I interviewed so many people trying to figure out what we saw as an identity crisis with evangelicals on one side and non-evangelical Christians on the other. And at the end of every conversation, we still didn’t know where we were going, but we were sure there was something compelling in it.”
In 2020, the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Abortion, Guns and Trump: A Church Group Tries to Navigate America’s Divisions” written by Janet Adamy. It was Ma and Neville’s introduction to the Reverand Michael Gulker, a Mennonite minister based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the past 13 years, Gulker has led The Colossian Forum, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Christians build healthy conflict cultures in the face of increasing social conflict.
“At the time, we were deploying a small group curriculum for churches to learn how to talk across differences in ways that deepen love of God and of neighbor, instead of dividing them,” says Gulker. “The reporter learned about us and was intrigued. She started flying to Grand Rapids every week to be a part of the group.”
Ma and Neville were also intrigued. “Michael and The Colossian Forum were taking tensions that might have been tacit and making them explicit,” Neville says. “What appealed to us was that they are not trying to get people to agree with each other. They are trying to get people to respect each other. That’s one of the biggest issues we face as a country right now.”
They had found the subject for the next film they wanted to make. “Michael was trying to foster a feeling of belonging that sometimes seems impossible,” Ma says. “It was about loving across differences in a more authentic and beautiful way. It flew in the face of the assumptions we make.”
Learn more at www.leapoffaithmovie.com.
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