School Prayer: A Community At War
“The heroine of "School Prayer: A Community at War" is Lisa Herdahl, a woman who took on a Mississippi town in her fight against the religious messages broadcast daily over the local high school's intercom. But what makes this P.O.V documentary more then a familiar celebration of civil liberties is its portrait of townsfolk. Depending on a vier's attitude toward such matters, they can be seen as a pious community trying to maintain deeply held values or as people who have done more Bible reading than reading of the Constitution.”
- Walter Goodman, The New York Times
“We see all sides, with no self-righteousness. We also see how religion can end up dividing neighbors and wounding community.”
- John Leonard, New York Magazine
“School Prayer is so fair to both sides, it actually might help them find some common ground.”
- Noel Holston, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The independent, non fiction films on PBS's "P.O.V." series usually make that acronym which stands for point of view-their mission, offering up reasons why viewers should lean toward one side of an issue. But a film airing at 10pm Sunday makes a point of not presenting one side over the other, and viewers likely will come away from "School Prayer: A community at War" with an appreciation for both sides.”
- Diane Richer, Denver Post
“The P.O.V. film gives both viewpoints-in schools and churches, at protests and relies. The word is that the filmmakers present Southerners as people with sincere beliefs, not as stereotypes. That point of view alone should be worth seeing.”
- Gary Pettus, Clarion-Ledger
“The film avoids the talking-head approach and instead shows school officials, ministers, local activists, the local and national media as well as children in everyday situations. People expound from school hallways, the pulpit, at roadside protests, outside a courthouse and at post-trial rallies... This show-and-not-tell technique helps the filmmakers stay true to their desire for balance.”
- Adam Bernstein, Washington Post
“The Pontotoc school prayer battle, as captured by School Prayer: A Community at War, is according to PBS 'an intense ideological and legal struggle over the meaning of religious liberty in America' that is 'documented with respect and candor' All of which is true on some level. The debate over the role and jurisdiction of church and state is a foundation element of American society, and the film itself has been crafted with every degree of balance, objectivity, and distance that one would expect from a public television production. But despite all of the fair-minded sobriety brought to bear, what finally emerges is something both slighter and richer then the filmmakers likely intended. Portions of School Prayer play like a live action episode of the Simpsons - tortured reasoning and inane sound bites adding up to accidental satire on quintessentially American know-nothingism.”
- The Memphis Flyer
“A particularly striking portrait of an individual fighting overwhelming odds is found in Slawomir Grunberg and Ben Crane's film School Prayer: A Community at War... this is a frightening portrait of the tyranny of fundamentalism of any kind, and a reminder that individuals can and do have a significant impact on larger social issues.”
- David Zeigler, International Documentary
“Making incisive use of the case's Oprah-driven national media footprint and the NATO-like invasion of ACLU lawyers, School Prayer manages to be unexpectedly fair doc, letting its holly-roller antagonists make a legitimate points about how class and religion shape debates about "American" values even as they spew noxious brimstone.”
- Gary Dauphin, The Village Voice
“School Prayer shows that the issues driving this conflict have far deeper roots than the habits of one small town school system... It is extremely rare to see this aspect of American culture portrayed with empathy, but School Prayer does so, without endorsing it.... School Prayer demonstrates how insularity, insecurity and injustice can be fed by growing contact with the wider world.... it testifies to the malignant, long range effects of slavery and colonialism in Southern culture.”
Pat Aufderheide, In These Times
“'I don't think you have to take sides when you do a documentary', Slawomir Grunberg said. His latest film is about a woman in Mississippi who takes on the local school board to stop open preaching in the town's schools. 'Obviously I came with a certain predisposition, but I didn't come with a strong one-side position.'”
- Beth Pinsker, FORWARD
“Evenhanded and never sensational, the film hold a mirror to religious intolerance and presents a complex, poignant and truly terrifying reflection. Few viewers will fail to feel a chill when one stoic Mississippi resident proclaims, 'The ACLU is to the Christian faith what the Nazi was to the Jew.'”
- David Bahr, TimeOut New York
“Amazingly, Grunberg and company were able to film just about every key player on both sides of this hottest of hot-button issue, and the story just gets more and more bizzare as the trial approaches. School Prayer: A Community at War is an outrageous Orwellian look into a world as alien to most of us as it is terrifying for Herdahl and her family.”
- Bryan VanCampen, Ithaca Times
