The God Makers by Ed Decker and Dave Hunt
[November 1997; reviewed 12-27-1999]
(Note: I was 17 when I wrote this review for Tekton, under just my initials “J.J.” for Jack Jeffries. I’m surprisingly still pretty satisfied with this review today. The final line originally read, “… kindling for the fire in case the lights go out this Y2K,” but that was edited as the Y2K joke quickly became dated.)
The God Makers, both the book and the movie, has been very popular among evangelicals since its publication fifteen years ago. Several members of my church have been recommending it to me for some time. Even the cashier at the store where I bought my copy (yes, I paid money for this) told me it was a great book and I should see the movie, too. Unfortunately, the people who say this really don’t know what they’re talking about. The God Makers is probably the most horrible dissertation on Mormonism that I have ever read in my life. To say the least, this book is overrated.
Read the rest of the review at Tekton
I’ve often thought that a Mormon who spends as much time as I do talking to Evangelicals really ought to have either read this book, or at least seen the movie (easy to find on YouTube). Every time I encounter some blogger who brings the movie up, I think this.
But honestly, I just can’t bring myself to watch a movie that looks so much like a bad Hanna Barbara cartoon. So I’ve not seen it yet.
You’re not missing much, though the cartoon part only takes up a few minutes of its running time. It’s kind of a fake documentary, also contains re-enactments from the temple ceremony which were accurate enough to upset my husband. I didn’t see the film until I was in graduate school.
I wrote my own post about this after I engaged in dialogue with an Evangelical who seemed to base everything he knew about Mormons on the God Makers film:
To Our Evangelical Friends: Don’t Be Suckered With “The God Makers”
http://latterdayspence.blogspot.com/2008/08/to-our-evangelical-friends-dont-be.html