PW: This book has been in the works for nearly 20 years—what kept you working on it for so long?
James Ault: I felt that I needed to write the book from the moment that I witnessed responses to my documentary film Born Again, which was released in 1987. Some people have characterized it as a soap opera, but real and set in a fundamentalist Baptist church. There were gripping scenes—like a pastor meeting in a Friendly's restaurant with a woman who had left her husband and was living with a boyfriend—and I think those scenes dominated the film. But some of the playfulness and humor that was part of the life of that congregation didn't really shine through. Though the film helped, I saw that it was still possible for viewers to dismiss the people in the film for faulty reasons. And I felt that more interpretation was needed than you can possibly do in a 90-minute documentary. People warned me to get the book out quickly—they thought fundamentalism would soon evaporate from public life. Yet fundamentalism is as timely a topic now as it was 20 years ago. That's one of the things I think needs explanation: why don't intellectuals see these realities as a stable feature of the environment? Again and again they think fundamentalism is bound to fade away, but it hasn't.
Fundamentalist politics often provoke a certain distaste, if not fear. What do non-fundamentalists need to understand about fundamentalists?
When you see fundamentalists' political rhetoric in the context of their lives, it seems much more understandable and human. For example, liberal commentators have seen hypocrisy in the religious right's support for both American militarism and pro-life causes. These people are illogical, they say. But when you put it in terms of the sacredness of family obligations, as duties that you must accept, then the two fit together perfectly. Each represents the ultimate obligations of one gender and the other, of men and women, which for fundamentalists are the linchpin of family life.
This is very different from the milieu of academic intellectuals, or documentary film people and our professional friends. Recently I went to karaoke night at a VFW hall here in Northampton, Mass., for a documentary project I'm working on, and the woman we sat next to was there singing it up with her mom. That was an ordinary Saturday night for her. I had just come from a party with arts people in this area, and no one's mother was in sight. It's hard for some of us to believe that kind of extended-family life still exists, because our own lives are so fragmented and individualistic. But many people in American society hold tight to their family ties, perhaps even tighter given the centrifugal forces at work.
How did your own life change as a result of your time at the church you call "Shawmut River"?
I think it helped prepare me to be a parent, even though when I met them I had no thought of having children. My time there helped me settle into the joys of being there for each other in a community, and with family. But the most important change was a reawakening of faith. I learned some ways of relating to God, like praying, expecting and looking for God's answers to prayer and sharing one's faith with others. They set a standard for me of what we can do for each other in a congregation, the way we can strengthen each other by our openness to sharing our struggles, and our doubts too, with each other. Some mainstream congregations privatize faith experience. But if it's not a collective reality it dissipates, it loses its grounding. I recall that being a recurring preaching point at Shawmut River—"there's no such thing as a freelance Christian."
