God’s Country: A Trip to America's Biggest Christian Music Festival



I Saw the Light is a documentary film about a trip to Creation, one of the largest Christian music festivals in the country. The film follows a youth group on their adventure from the outskirts of Baltimore to the middle of Pennsylvania—or as folks in the area like to call it, God’s Country. The 35-minute piece is produced by VICE’s Chloe Campion and hosted by Noisey’s editor-in-chief, Eric Sundermann.

Through conversations with Grammy winning pop duo for KING & COUNTRY and rapper Andy Mineo—along with speakers from the 50,000+ attended festival—the documentary takes a thoughtful look at the world of Christian music, belief, growing up, and Jesus Christ. To quote a character in the film, we’re “not going to call this the Christian Woodstock, but… it’s the Christian Woodstock.”

This documentary is dedicated to John Jeremiah Sullivan, whose essay ​”Upon This Rock” ​for ​GQ​ ​​inspired the film.​​

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33 comments

  6. The 2 musicians he interviewed in the first half seem sooo diluted lmfao I’d bet my nuts that they’re on copious drugs just riding the fame Christians mindlessly feed them.

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  10. One thing I find funny: If someone has the idea to start a festival in a small isolated village in the US, this happens. If someone has the idea to start a festival in a small isolated village in germany, the biggest german heavy metal festival happens. I wonder, how these kids would respond to "the exploited" or "slime"

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  17. As a Hindu , anyone who wants to worship the divine in their form or way is an amazing thing , god is a personal relationship and an experience not specifically limited in any one book , some see as a personal being others see the impersonal force of nature of cause and effect , we must destroy our egos and evil thinking like anger , envy , arrogance etc but also we can’t judge or arrogantly say that my faith or god is better , nor can anyone say just because someone doesn’t even believe in god is a bad person , on the contrary atheist or non theist people have their own paths to their liberation either through meditation or paths like Buddhism or stoic philosophy etc , god is within every living being in a literal sense big or small so let’s spread compassion to all beings and due our duties in our daily lives , god bless to all! Hare Krishna! May Jesus bless these people with happiness and importantly , compassion 🕉✝️

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  18. There was a slight spin on this video; I think the interviewer definitely wants to believe and I believe his chapter isn't over yet. If God's called you, you'll come.

    I was called early on in life. With some traumatic events in my childhood I left my faith and became a codependent and an alcoholic with food addition and love addiction… After a severe car accident in 2005 drinking and driving I turned my life back to God. In ICU after repeating, "Maybe this is my bottom" while thinking about God, God removed my obsession to drink alcohol. But after a few months I heard a voice in my mind say, "Maybe Jesus Christ isn't the only master." That led me to replacing Christ with angels, Buddha, crystals, yoga, Hinduism, and the like.

    I spent 10 years in hot pursuit of any and all spiritual teachings, awakenings, religions, cults, and spiritual healing modalities. I was deep in the New Age for 10 years- even moved at one point to India and to Sedona (where I still live near today). I was teaching classes, had a YouTube channel, taught retreats. But I also wasn't sleeping in the same bed as my wife, I was financially in ruins, my pride was through the roof, and I had no idea how to have a good relationship. I was spiritually oppressed and even possessed at the end of my run.

    One day when I hit my 2nd bottom in 2015 I somehow had a soft ripe heart to hear the truth. I called a neighbor to discuss my life with her and why I felt things were in shambles. It led to 6 months of recovery in a pseudo-AA form of healing, which led me to the hands of a strong Christian AA sponsor who didn't tell me about Christ but did tell me about how to depend on God for everything and be properly discipled. That began 4 years of intimate discipling with him which led to a restoration in my faith in Jesus Christ and multiple miracles along the way which continue today.

    From the outside looking it, what I do daily looks super weird. But when I was out there running and gunning, all I deeply wanted was inner peace, financial peace, mental peace, emotional peace, relational peace, familial peace, and community peace. And the 10 years I played the Guru in the New Age only landed me a seat in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was dead inside, I was dead outside, I had no money to give, broken dishes my wife would throw at me, addictions to 'spiritual drugs', two suffering girls at home, and daily highs and lows.

    Today, after being restored to a loving God, walking intimately with Him and a close mentor in my life I can say I have inner peace, financial peace, mental peace, emotional peace and the like. Its not perfect, but I walk with Him daily and He gets me through it. Before I used to grasp at anything I could to get me through- facebook, shopping, milk shakes, women, mushrooms, opinions, spiritual phenomena… But by believing in God, my income has grown for the last 72 months straight, and my new marriage- though challenging- continues to grow daily.

    Christianity is a condition of the heart. He gives us a new heart by walking intimately with Him and with others we're accountable to, and by doing so I get to say things and pray for people and give money, time, and love in ways that are not my own human ways- and people get blessed in the process and levels of pride and pain reduce within me.

    God is good. It's taken me 6 years just to know how much I'm love and cared for. And now that I know this, I can hear the message of hell and eternal separation from God, because I KNOW that I KNOW that He doesn't want that for me. But just like a rebellious son and a loving father, it's up to me to get over myself and come home back to daddy and surrender or submit myself to the guidance of someone greater than myself. God and our own parents will not force us to come home. We must get over our own illness, because each of us are responsible for our own lives.

    The good news is God is there to help me and us all along the way. All I need to do is look up and say, "Lord I need your help." And wait. Within a few minutes the world starts changing as He comes in to help me.

    God bless you all

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  20. Meh, looks like an advertisement for this festival. There's other documentaries that go into the corruption and fraud behind the finances perpetrated by the leadership of this sect. Feels like this wasn't researched at all.

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