After seeing Call Me Kuchu, I added God Loves Uganda to my queue because both documentaries focus on American Christian fundamentalist missionaries’ influence on Uganda’s homophobic laws. Call Me Kuchu predominantly follows Ugandans whereas God Loves Uganda primarily concentrates on Americans or Ugandans in America, specifically missionaries from the International House of Prayer.
I believe there is a correlation between fundamentalist funding of homophobic laws in Uganda. I agree that the missionaries featured in God Loves Uganda, while well-intentioned, have mistakenly conflated promulgating their fundamentalist gender and sexual cultural norms with the Gospel, are projecting their personal and possibly yet unresolved personal struggles on others and are oblivious to how creepy and imperialistic their attempts to relate and minister to Ugandans are.
I do not think that God Loves Uganda does enough to show the link between public policy and the missionaries featured in the film, but relies heavily on how weird they are. Correlation does not automatically equal causation. I am a weird Christian who probably worships in a strange way to most outsiders, but so are my fellow parishioners who are also part of the LGTBQ community. God Loves Uganda may aim to be the next Call Me Kuchu, but it ends up being Jesus Camp, the road trip edition, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately when movies like God Loves Uganda rely more on atmosphere than a cohesive narrative, the very people that need to change can dismiss the film instead of feeling convicted by it.
God Loves Uganda ultimately wants to be two movies. God Loves Uganda wants to show American fundamentalism then debunk it, but instead intersperses these points unevenly and relies more on spectacle than a well-organized narrative. If God Loves Uganda was edited in a more deliberate fashion, after showing the spectacle and debunking it by showing how other Ugandan ministers disagree, God Loves Uganda could then show the trail of money. Instead God Loves Uganda just juxtaposes the financial success of certain ministers with the exile of others and relies on the viewer to draw their own conclusions by comparing and contrasting the subjects. God Loves Uganda can be more effective in the fight against exporting homophobia, but sadly falls short and is just another preach to the choir documentary.