New documentary highlights Dallas pastors fighting injustice

Welcome back across the country, faith leaders standing up, speaking out in face of discrimination and injustice. There's a new documentary called Faith on the Front Lines. This follows faith leaders who choose resistance over just being silent. And we say good morning to filmmaker Cheryl Griffin Allison. You may remember Ms. Cheryl here from Honk, the whole goose documentary followed Honk's story. It was during the pandemic. I remember I talked with you daily about that. you also have a huge connection here to Fox 4 because you also work in our human resources department for Fox stations now including Fox 4 this project not affiliated with Fox we should mention but boy you've poured your heart and soul into this one again and and I know that your your wife is a faith leader and has faced a lot of challenges with things that have happened and That she has, you know, been very boldly, you know, has taken the helm and has spoken up. Is that what first kicked this off? Yes, yes. She's the senior pastor at Oak Lawn United Methodist Church. And watching the work that the church does and that she does, I started thinking as, you know, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism was on the rise. I started thinking about faith leaders across the nation that are doing incredible work. So the film focuses specifically on faith leaders in Dallas, including my wife, in Chicago and D.C. Some people may say, I don't want to listen to this politics, but it's not about politics. It's not. It's not. How do you do that? How do you make it? Because I feel like it's the politics that's making them speak up. Right. But here's the thing. We can debate policies, right? We can argue about funding and anything like that, but how can we argue and debate when it comes to human rights and the stripping away of human rights? So what these faith leaders are doing in a very challenging time is they're stepping out from behind the pulpit into the streets in an act of sacred resistance to confront abuse of power, but to also protect and stand up for and comfort these communities that are under threat. And that's an inspiring thing to see. So it's about the humanity. What do you hope people take away from this? Hope. Yeah. That there is hope to kind of bring back that humanity. I also hope that the film can be seen as an archival document for future generations to see what faith leaders were doing. Because we do tie this back. I have a really special interview with a former pastor in the United Methodist Church who is of Japanese descent. And his mother, at the age of five, was in an internment camp during World War II. And so, seeing how history is repeating itself, I think it's important to educate that. Because I wasn't very aware or educated about what happened during World War II. I bet making this movie, you just learned a lot. Absolutely. And really, probably were inspired by some of these people, too. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Biggest surprise while making it? Well, I think that story about the Japanese internment camps, I had no idea. This was in, you know, 1942. And I kind of, we thought, what were faith leaders talking about back then? What were they doing? And it was a tough position they were in to show, to be patriotic and support their country. But also walk that line of the human rights that was happening to that community. At that time. Being stripped away. Oh, they lost everything. so um you know that was very enlightening for me to to edit and film that part of the the documentary well you're bringing it to the forefront so people can watch it it's called Faith on the Front Line so there's going to be a screening of the film sunday night right November 1st at the Angelica Film Center in Dallas Faith on the Front Lines we've got all the details on our website fox4news.com how long did it take to make you this make a year a whole year, a year in the making, yes, pretty impressive that along with your your job here at Fox 4, so that's right, busy busy, all right coming up here on a good day we're talking about the weather, pretty nice out there right now a few more clouds coming this weekend but i think you're gonna like it, we'll check in with Allie in just a bit