| An ecumenical, bipartisan team is heading into 10 early-voting states with a documentary about faith and politics that is loaded with provocative interviews in an effort to force viewers to confront biases they're never realized.
The film, to be announced Wednesday afternoon and released in theaters and DVD on Jan 15, is called "Article VI," after the section of the Constitution which says that "no religious test" shall be required as a qualification for federal office.
The announcement of the film comes as Mitt Romney prepares to give a speech Thursday in Texas that will address his Mormon faith.
A trailer says the movie "asks voters whether they would have denied America some of the greatest presidents in history because of their religious beliefs."
The director, Bryan Hall of Living Biography Media, tells Politico that one of his most surprising discoveries was "how many people feel their faith is being attacked."
"Every minority religion feels attacked," Hall said. "Then it was shocking to hear people in the mainstream religions – the Protestant religions – pointing out evidence of their religions being attacked," he said. "I never realized that all these other people feel the same way I do."
The co-producer is Reed Dickens of Newport Beach, Calif., a former White House spokesman and founder of the Outside Eyes corporate communication firm.
"A lot of people are walking away going, 'I'm more judgmental than I thought,' or 'Boy, I really rank religion as more of a criterion for candidates than I thought I did," Dickens said.
The film is scheduled to be finished Dec. 18. With the help of Watkins Global Strategies of Salt Lake City, the filmmakers plan to reach conservatives through evangelical leaders and pastors and liberals through grassroots-activist groups.
Traveling in a posse of four to six people, the filmmakers hit about 30 cities and interviewed more than 50 people, from the president of a Hindu temple to former Reagan administration attorney general Edwin Meese.
Among the more provocative moments:
—Hugh Hewitt, the law professor and conservative talk show: "If religion had been a test, we wouldn't have had Lincoln."
—Flip Benham, director of the anti-abortion Operation Rescue: "Hinduism is a lie straight from the pit of Hell."
—Charles Cohen, professor of Abrahamic religions at University of Wisconsin-Madison: "To my mind, the Mormons are the only people that have left the United States because they felt they weren't being granted their religious freedom."
—Bill Keller, an Internet evangelist and founder of Live Prayer: "Who could be more perfect than Mitt Romney? He's a great guy… But the problem is he's following a false theology straight to Hell."
—Clyde Wilcox, Georgetown University professor of religion and politics in government at Georgetown University: "The problem is that everyone's faith looks really weird from the outside."
Hall, 34, lives in Orem, Utah, and has 5-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter. He's Mormon and says he doesn't try to hide the fact that he likes Romney. But he said Romney and Mormon boosterism was left out of the film in part because his crew included a hard-core liberal.
"I was originally interested because of the questions being posed to Mitt Romney about a year ago," Hall said. "It took about a month of filming before I realized it was much bigger than me and my church. The entire discussion of Mormon doctrine, or anything that can be construed as what Mormons believe or I'm just defending Mormons, we took it out."
Hall said only an independent filmmaker could have been quite so raw. "When you get too much corporate involvement or political involvement in making a film like this, a lot of stuff's going to be edited out," he said. "We just let them say it."
Dickens said part of his role was to "help craft a storyline and a message taking into account the political climate and the political map of the primaries."
"It's almost as if the media and the voters have gotten to where they're trying to doctrinally frisk the candidates - -try to catch them off-guard on a doctrinal statement," Dickens said. "The hope is that voters will think twice: Am I unwittingly applying a religious test? Am I unintentionally holding standards to these candidates that was not meant to be in our country and by the Constitution?" | 
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