Believers' America

It was the usual Sunday night service in an unprepossessing church in Riverside, Calif. But dozens of worshipers in the Faith Tabernacle Church were struck to the floor, trembling in mystical ecstasy, after a visitation from what they believed was the Holy Spirit. Shouted their pastor, the Rev. Pat Yarbrough: "The Spirit of God is moving like the breeze!" One congregant, interviewed later at his job, said simply: "I got zapped." The most moving testimony was the choked-up avowal of the church organist, a pretty young woman named Judy, who said about Jesus: "It's a pity that such a man had to die for me." Then she broke down and cried.

Such vivid images pervade a new 13-part TV series called Religious America, which began two Sundays ago on some 230 PBS stations across the country. The series does not try to be a comprehensive sampling of U.S. religion. Roman Catholicism is represented by a Trappist monastery and a Mexican American parish, mainstream Protestantism by Manhattan's posh St. James' Episcopal Church and a Midwest Lutheran parish, the Jews by a Hasidic sect. Two segments are about black Christianity, one about a Jesus commune, one on Kundalini yoga. But the series' special focus is not on ways of worship but on individuals who have faith.

Deli Prayers. In an engaging segment called "Crow River Christmas," the camera records the life of a Lutheran congregation, mostly Swedish American, in a small Minnesota farming community. There is a Norman Rockwell family dinner, with the pastor leading a round of Swedish songs, and a young boy walking through the snowy woods, talking about his faith as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "What would you do without Jesus?" he asks. "How would you get along?"

One of the best half-hours in the series is the one called "Lubavitch," which will be aired on participating stations on Jan. 20. "Lubavitch" explores a world in itself--the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim, who practice their mystical, joyous brand of Jewish Orthodoxy in a close-knit community in Brooklyn. The bearded, black-frocked Lubavitchers are followed on their way through their daily life--pausing to pray in a delicatessen, arguing fine points of the Talmud in a yeshiva, gathering for a discourse from their revered leader, Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, in the synagogue. But there are also splendid celebrations. A bris--the ceremony of circumcision--is majestic and moving. And a rollicking, dancing wedding party, the beards flying as the festive crowd reels to Hasidic tunes, may be the best single moment in the entire series.

The films' ethnic richness is especially appealing. The music of an Easter celebration in Los Angeles' Old Plaza Church is a folk "mariachi Mass," now popular among Mexican American Catholics. But another service there also reflects centuries of Latin tradition, as parishioners take parts--Roman soldiers, Jesus carrying the cross--in a Good Friday procession. In Gary, Ind., a black community church goes in for karate lessons and the gospel of liberation, but the rich hymn singing and some of the rolling language from the pulpit recall old-fashioned black Baptist devotion: "Thank you Lord, for all of your goodnesses." Indeed, the series is so full of regional and ethnic accents and special religious language that it would overwhelm a foreigner who is just learning American English.

Producer Philip Garvin, 26, first immersed himself in American religion while photographing a book on the Lubavitchers. Later, after discovering Thai Buddhism during a stay abroad, he decided to investigate spirituality in the U.S. and started a pilot film on the California Pentecostal church. Station WGBH in Boston heard of his work and financed the rest of the pilot. Foundations aided the others. Garvin took pains to let the people themselves tell the story; there is no narration. Thus the series is pithy and personal, but some basic journalistic questions--a number of important whos, whats, wheres and hows --are left unanswered. It is a minor fault, though, in a penetrating and provocative look at Americans for whom God is very much alive.

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