The Reliant (2019) and the rhetoric of necropolitical Christianity

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the manufactured controversy over the independent Christian film The Reliant (2019), a film advertised as a pro-gun action-adventure. Despite receiving virtually no attention from the political left, the filmmakers’ engaged in a public relations campaign to spotlight the putative opposition to the film as evidence of a broader effort by secular progressives to persecute Christian ideas and values. In this essay, we argue that such manufactured controversies are a rhetorical strategy of contemporary Christian nationalists to construct progressive secularism as a mortal threat to the survival of Christianity. Analyzing the promotional materials and staged events surrounding this film, we illustrate how Christian nationalism increasingly relies on contrived public controversies and faux outrage against its products, policies, and discourses to craft a warped impression that Christians face violent enmity and persecution at every turn. We advance the concept of necropolitical Christianity to name how Christian nationalists mimic forms of state sovereignty premised on the right to kill or maim in the name of collective self-defense. We conclude that manufactured enmity conjures a violent Other who despises and persecutes conservative Christians to bolster the case for more radical measures to ensure the defense and survival of the Christian nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Christian nationalism
• necropolitics
• cinema
• enmity
• manufactured controversy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 As of writing, The Reliant is the only film produced by Fervent House Media.

2 Britt Hayes, “Watch Kevin Sorbo Fight Antifa in This Batshit Trailer,” AV Club, September 4, 2019, https://news.avclub.com/watch-kevin-sorbo-fight-antifa-in-this-batshit-trailer-1837872825.

3 For more examples of the “third world” urban jungle trope see Stephen M. Underhill, “Urban Jungle, Ferguson: Rhetorical Homology and Institutional Critique,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 4 (2016): 396–417.

4 Stephanie Nolasco, “Kevin Sorbo Defends Faith-Based Action Film ‘The Reliant,’ Says ‘Hollywood Doesn’t Really Owe Me Anything,’” Fox News, October 24, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kevin-sorbo-defends-the-reliant.

5 See Ryan Neville-Shepard and Casey Ryan Kelly, “Whipping It Out: Guns, Campaign Advertising, and the White Masculine Spectacle,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 37, no. 5 (2020): 466–79.

6 The film was released in a limited number of cinemas through Fathom events. In its one day in theaters, it grossed $408,747. However, the film went on to streaming services shortly afterwards. Not only was The Reliant available on Christian streaming platforms, it was also available on Netflix for a time and, as of writing, can be watched on the free movie streaming app, Tubi. The authors were unable to locate statistics on how often the film was streamed. We believe the relatively small scope of the film only bolsters our point. As we discuss later in the article, numerous news outlets positioned the film as an object of public controversy (including Fox News) despite it being unlikely the film was seen much outside its target audience, which already agrees with its messaging.

7 The popular film site A.V. Club offered one of the only sardonic reviews of the film. Otherwise, the film passed without reaction from mainstream left-of-center critics. Generally, controversial cinema holds the capacity to incite heated yet productive disagreements between public stakeholders over contentious social and political issues. Cinematic depictions of obscenity, violence, and racial strife can stir protest and moral outrage as much as they can stimulate broader public discourse over seemingly intractable social issues. As Kendall R. Phillips argues, “the history of American cinema is rife with instances in which a film was deemed so shocking, provocative, and dangerous that some felt compelled to express their disapproval in loud and at times quite dramatic ways.” Given the lack of reaction from Hollywood or the political left, it would be difficult to argue that The Reliant was such a film. See Kendall R. Phillips, Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America (Westport: Praeger, 2008), xviii.

8 Kristina M. Lee, “‘In God We Trust?’: Christian Nationalists’ Establishment and Use of Theistnormative Legislation,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 52, no. 5 (2022): 418.

9 Lee, “‘In God We Trust?,’” 419.

10 Joshua Gunn, “Maranatha,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 4 (2012): 359–85; Christian Lundberg, “Enjoying God’s Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of an Evangelical Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 4 (2009): 387–411.

11 Philip S. Gorski, Samuel L. Perry, and Jemar Tisby, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).

12 We borrow the term “manufactured controversies” from Leah Ceccarelli, who uses the term to note how stakeholders in public controversies sometimes generate the false impression of debate and dissension to stifle public policy reform. See Leah Ceccarelli, “Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 14, no. 2 (2011): 195–228.

13 Christopher Duerringer, “The ‘War on Christianity’: Counterpublicity or Hegemonic Containment?,” Southern Communication Journal 78, no. 4 (2013): 311–25.

14 Sage Mikkelsen and Sarah Kornfield, “Girls Gone Fundamentalist: Feminine Appeals of White Christian Nationalism,” Women’s Studies in Communication 44, no. 4 (2021): 563–85; Casey Ryan Kelly, “Chastity for Democracy: Surplus Repression and the Rhetoric of Sex Education,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 4 (2016): 353–75.

15 Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl, “Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,” Argumentation and Advocacy 48, no. 3 (2012): 123–41.

16 Theon E. Hill, “(Re)Articulating Difference: Constitutive Rhetoric, Christian Identity, and Discourses of Race as Biology,” Journal of Communication & Religion 39, no. 1 (2016): 26–45; Samuel P. Perry, Rhetorics of Race and Religion on the Christian Right: Barack Obama and the War on Terror (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); Scott R. Stroud, “Religion and Hate: Fantasy Themes within Christian Identity Rhetoric,” Florida Communication Journal 30, no. 1 (2002): 34–41.

17 Kristin Kobes du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020).

18 Jasbir Puar argues that modern state sovereignty is premised on the “right to maim” or debilitate precarious populations to instantiate state power. Puar adapts Foucault’s biopolitics, which is marked by the adage “make live, and let die,” to suggest that the management and control of life is accompanied by the proliferation of bodily injury and social exclusion. Similarly, Achille Mbembe argues that Foucault downplayed the degree to which state sovereignty requires the juridical right to kill in the name of biopolitical governances to eliminate threats to its existence. In rhetorical studies, scholars such as Paul Johnson and Eric King Watts observe that threat of racial difference, which postracial culture is unable to contain, registers as a disruption of white sovereignty that promulgates symbolic and material violence. See Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, reprint ed. (New York: Picador, 2010); Paul Elliott Johnson, “Fear of a Black City: Gender and Postracial Sovereignty in Death Wish (2018),” Women’s Studies in Communication 45, no. 2 (2021): 232–53; Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019); Jasbir K. Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Eric King Watts, “Postracial Fantasies, Blackness, and Zombies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14, no. 4 (2017): 317–33.

19 See Paul Elliott Johnson, I, the People: The Rhetoric of Conservative Populism in the United States (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021), 4. This scholarship includes but is not limited to Denise M. Bostdorff, “Obama, Trump, and Reflections on the Rhetoric of Political Change,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20, no. 4 (2017): 695–706; Casey Ryan Kelly, “Donald J. Trump and the Rhetoric of Ressentiment,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no. 1 (2020): 2–24; Jeremy Engels, The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015); Mary E. Stuckey, “American Elections and the Rhetoric of Political Change: Hyperbole, Anger, and Hope in U.S. Politics,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20, no. 4 (2017): 667–94; Robert E. Terrill, “The Post-Racial and Post-Ethical Discourse of Donald J. Trump,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 20, no. 3 (2017): 493–510.

20 See Casey R. Kelly, Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020).

21 Duerringer, “The ‘War on Christianity.’”

22 Lundberg, “Enjoying God’s Death.”

23 Casey Ryan Kelly, “COVID-19 Conspiracy Rhetoric and Other Primal Fantasies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 109, no. 2 (2023): 133.

24 Paul Elliott Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 3 (2017): 229–50.

25 Casey Ryan Kelly, “White Pain,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 211.

26 Michael J. Lee, “The Populist Chameleon: The People’s Party, Huey Long, George Wallace, and the Populist Argumentative Frame,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 4 (2006): 356.

27 Allison L. Rowland, “Small Dick Problems: Masculine Entitlement as Rhetorical Strategy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 109, no. 1 (2023): 28. See also Amanda N. Brand, “White Masculine Abjection, Victimhood, and Disavowal in Rape Culture: Reconstituting Brock Turner,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 108, no. 2 (2022): 148–71; Alyson M. Cole, The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).

28 Meredith Neville-Shepard and Ryan Neville-Shepard, “Outfitting the Conservative Civil Rights Movement: Rehearsed White Victimhood and the MAGA Hat,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 25, no. 4 (2022): 35–63; emphasis added.

29 See Dana L. Cloud, “Foiling the Intellectuals: Gender, Identity Framing, and the Rhetoric of the Kill in Conservative Hate Mail,” Communication, Culture & Critique 2, no. 4 (2009): 457–79; see also Casey Ryan Kelly, “Whiteness, Repressive Victimhood, and the Foil of the Intolerant Left,” First Amendment Studies 55, no. 1 (2021): 59–76.

30 See John Fritch et al., “Disingenuous Controversy: Responses to Ward Churchill’s 9/11 Essay,” Argumentation and Advocacy 42, no. 4 (2006): 190–205; Casey Ryan Kelly and Kristen E. Hoerl, “Genesis in Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy at the Creation Museum,” Argumentation and Advocacy 48, no. 3 (2012): 123–41.

31 Quote from Andrew Whitehead, “The Growing Anti-Democratic Threat of Christian Nationalism in the U.S.,” Time, May 27, 2021, https://time.com/6052051/anti-democratic-threat-christiannationalism/; see also Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

32 Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007).

33 Whitehead and Perry, Taking America Back for God; Duerringer, “The ‘War on Christianity.’”

34 Whitehead, “Christian Nationalism.”

35 Mbembe, Necropolitics.

36 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 6.

37 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 143.

38 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 6.

39 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 42, 43.

40 Puar, The Right to Maim.

41 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 43.

42 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 43.

43 Sara L. McKinnon, “Necropolitical Voices and Bodies in the Rhetorical Reception of Iranian Women’s Asylum Claims,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (2016): 215–31.

44 Meredith Neville-Shepard, “‘Better Never Means Better for Everyone’: White Feminist Necropolitics and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 109, no. 1 (2023): 2–25.

45 G. Mitchell Reyes and Kundai Chirindo, “Theorizing Race and Gender in the Anthropocene,” Women’s Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 429–42.

46 See Whitehead and Perry, Taking America Back for God; Perry, Rhetorics of Race and Religion.

47 We borrow the term “racial formation” from Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014).

48 See Courtney J. Dreyer, “The Right to Believe: Constructions of White Christian Victimhood in the God’s Not Dead Series,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 40, no. 4 (2023): 242–55.

49 See Eric King Watts, “The Primal Scene of COVID-19: ‘We’re All in This Together,’” Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture 1, no. 1 (2021): 1–26.

50 Dana L. Cloud, Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018).

51 Eric King Watts, “‘Zombies Are Real’: Fantasies, Conspiracies, and the Post-Truth Wars,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 51, no. 4 (2018): 444.

52 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 42.

53 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1992).

54 See Dreyer, “The Right to Believe”; J. Ryan Parker, Cinema as Pulpit: Sherwood Pictures and the Church Film Movement (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012); Heather Hendershot, Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

55 Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 33–4.

56 Claire Sisco King, “Hitching Wagons to Stars: Celebrity, Metonymy, Hegemony, and the Case of Will Smith,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14, no. 1 (2017): 98.

57 “The Reliant,” August 23, 2018, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Win-one-of-three-guns-used-in-The-Reliant-.html?soid=1103655986024&aid=kABDuxHrs28 (accessed March 17, 2023).

58 “The Reliant.”

59 Jacob S., “The Reliant,” The Dove Foundation, https://dove.org/review/18286-the-reliant/; “Tim Schmidt Discusses the Potential for ‘The Reliant’ to Impact the Culture on the Right-To-Keep-And-Bear-Arms,” Facebook, November 21, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/TheReliantMovie/posts/tim-schmidt-discusses-the-potential-for-the-reliant-to-impact-the-culture-on-the/821607554964565/; “USCCA Promo,” Facebook, June 15, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/TheReliantMovie/videos/310544006070925/; “Have You Purchased Your Tickets for ‘The Reliant’?,” US Concealed Carry Association, October 14, 2019, https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/have-you-purchased-your-tickets-for-the-reliant. The National Rifle Association also endorsed the film after its release.

60 J.P. Johnston, “How’d You Like a Chance to Win a Free AR-15 on Christmas Day?!,” listserv email, November 2018, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Win-a-free-AR-15--.html?soid=1103655986024&aid=BMMqe-_PBco.

61 “The Reliant”, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-reliant--2#/ (accessed March 17, 2023); emphasis added.

62 “The Reliant”, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-reliant--2#/ (accessed March 17, 2023).

63 Gun Talk Media, “Behind the Scenes of The Reliant; Using Firearms in Movies: Gun Venture S2 E4 P1,” YouTube video, October 28, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIGtQPRSm_0.

64 Gun Talk Media, “Behind the Scenes of The Reliant.”

65 Brett Lunceford, “Armed Victims: The Ego Function of Second Amendment Rhetoric,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18, no. 2 (June 19, 2015): 333–45; Michael J. Hogan and Craig Rood, “Rhetorical Studies and the Gun Debate: A Public Policy Perspective,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18, no. 2. (2015): 359–371.

66 Adam G. Klein, “Loaded Words: NRATV and the Making of Liberal America as a Public Enemy.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 10, no. 2 (2020): 1–21.

67 See Philip Wander, “The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory,” Central States Speech Journal 35, no. 4 (1984): 197–216.

68 Caroline Light, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Boston: Beason Press, 2017).

69 Bryan J. McCann, “On Whose Ground? Racialized Violence and the Prerogative of ‘Self-Defense’ in the Trayvon Martin Case,” Western Journal of Communication 78, no. 4 (2014): 480–99.

70 Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political (New York: Verso Books, 2020).

71 John Fea, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2018).

72 See Ersula J. Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019).

73 Bryon B. Craig and Stephen E. Rahko, “Visual Profiling as Biopolitics: or, Notes on Policing in Post-Racial #AmeriKKKa,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 16, no. 3 (2016): 287–95.

74 Hayes, “Watch Kevin Sorbo Fight”. The Rotten Tomatoes page for The Reliant features only two critical reviews, evincing the lack of attention given to the film by most mainstream sources. There are a number of negative audience reviews, but most of them were posted after the materials we discuss in this article.

75 J.P. Johnston, “Win One of Three Guns Used in The Reliant!,” listserv email, August 23, 2018, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Win-one-of-three-guns-used-in-The-Reliant-.html?soid=1103655986024&aid=kABDuxHrs28.

76 Fox & Friends, “Kevin Sorbo’s ‘The Reliant’ Defends Gun Rights and Faith,” Fox News video, October 22, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/video/6096740180001.

77 Dreyer, “The Right to Believe”; Parker, Cinema as Pulpit.

78 J.P. Johnston, “Producer: My Christian Film Got Rated ‘R.’ It Has No Nudity, Sex, Bad Language, Gore, Drugs,” The Western Journal, October 31, 2018, https://www.westernjournal.com/producer-christian-film-got-rated-r-no-nudity-sex-bad-language-gore-drugs/.

79 Johnston, “Producer: My Christian Film Got Rated ‘R.’”

80 “No Nudity, No Profanity, No Gore, Yet Christian Movie Gets R Rating from MPAA,” The Laconia Daily Sun, November 16, 2018, https://www.laconiadailysun.com/uncategorized/worship/no-nudity-no-profanity-no-gore-yet-christian-movie-gets-r-rating-from-mpaa/article_a3b955d8-e1ee-11e8-afb7-5f267f924f6c.html.

81 For example, see David Codrea, “‘R’ Rating for Film a Way to Keep Information on Guns to Young People One-Sided,” Ammoland, November 23, 2018, https://www.ammoland.com/2018/11/r-rating-for-film-a-way-to-keep-information-on-guns-to-young-people-one-sided/#axzz7xHm6QgVH; Jeannie Ortega Law, “Christian Film Starring Kevin Sorbo Gets R Rating Despite Family-Friendly Content,” Christian Post, November 30, 2018, https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-film-starring-kevin-sorbo-gets-r-rating-despite-family-friendly-content.html.

82 Johnston and others who worked on the film did end up cutting out some scenes and getting their PG-13 rating.

83 Nolasco, “Kevin Sorbo Defends.”

84 Nolasco, “Kevin Sorbo Defends.”

85 Nolasco, “Kevin Sorbo Defends”; see also Marissa Mayer, “Kevin Sorbo, Once ‘Blacklisted’ in Hollywood, Finds Success with ‘Movies That Move People,’” Pure Flix Insider, June 17 2022, https://insider.pureflix.com/news/kevin-sorbo-success-in-hollywood.

86 Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

87 Paul Bond, “Benham Brothers, Dumped by HGTV over Anti-Gay Remarks, Could Land at Traditional Values’ Network INSP TV,” The Hollywood Reporter, May 12, 2014, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/benham-brothers-dumped-by-hgtv-703203/.

88 For more information on Bosworth’s controversies, see ESPN’s 30 for 30 series film, Brian and the Boz (2014).

89 Although the email is no longer publicly available, the authors retain a copy of this listserv communication and can provide a copy upon request. J.P. Johnston, “How in the World Did the MPAA Give Family Friendly, Faith-Based Movie ‘The Reliant’ an ‘R’ Rating?,” listserv email, November 2018.

90 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (New York: Routledge, 2011).

91 Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).

92 Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne; Whitehead and Perry, Taking America Back for God.

93 Johnston, “How in the World.”

94 Kristy Maddux, The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian Media and Gendered Civic Identities (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010).

95 Johnston, “How in the World.”

96 The Reliant, “The Reliant: Official Trailer—in Theaters Oct 24,” Facebook video, August 29, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/100063554350825/videos/388728701833942.

97 Fox & Friends, “Kevin Sorbo’s ‘The Reliant.’”

98 Alex Trimble Young, “The Necropolitics of Liberty,” Lateral 9, no. 1 (2020), https://doi.org/10.25158/L9.1.8.

99 Tom Gjelten, “Militant Christian Nationalists Remain a Potent Force, Even After the Capital Riot,” National Public Radio, January 19, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/01/19/958159202/militant-christian-nationalists-remain-a-potent-force.

100 Gjelten, “Militant Christian Nationalists.”

101 Luke Mogelson, “A Reporter’s Footage from Inside the Capitol Siege,” The New Yorker, January 17, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/video-dept/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siege.

102 Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 4.

103 Gjelten, “Militant Christian Nationalists.”

104 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2005), 20.