October 29, 2015

Film Review: The Armor of Light


The Armor of Light

FORK FILMS

Rattled by a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, the Reverend Rob Schenck begins to question whether it’s possible to be both anti-abortion and pro-gun. In her arresting documentary, The Armor of Light, filmmaker Abigail Disney (Walt’s grandniece) trails Schenck on a journey of self-reflection to shooting ranges, a National Rifle Association convention, and small-town church halls. At one gathering, Schenck is left speechless after Lucia McBath, whose son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed at a Florida gas station, proclaims, “We’ve replaced God with guns as our protector.” Moments like this form a moving portrait of a conservative preacher newly at odds with his compatriots.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our newsletters

Subscribe and we'll send Mother Jones straight to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate

Share your feedback: We’re planning to launch a new version of the comments section. Help us test it.