Elizabethtown residents who appeared in the film “An American Pastoral” reflected on their experiences combatting Christian Nationalism in their community during a screening at Harrisburg’s Midtown Cinema on January 11.
Set in Lancaster County, “An American Pastoral” follows candidates in the highly contested Elizabethtown Area School Board race of 2023. The incumbent board at the time is all Republican – five moderate and four far-right. Throughout the year, the moderate Republicans lose their endorsements and later lose the primary. Democratic challengers are defeated in the general election in November, and the board flips, becoming completely influenced by far-right ideology.
Produced by French director Auberi Edler, the film first aired in 2024 at festivals in Europe. Kristy Moore, who was featured in the film as one of the Democratic candidates, said during that time she received encouraging email messages from viewers all over the world.
“I feel like the world has a lot to learn from our story,” she said.
After about a year in Europe, the film was picked up by a distributor in the U.S. Moore said she was relieved to finally share the experience with people close to her.
Kelly Fuddy, who appeared with Moore in the film as a fellow Democratic candidate, commented that the experience was eye opening.
“You don’t normally get this chance to see into your neighbors’ living rooms,” Fuddy said. “The conversations they have around their fire pit. To understand how much they do believe in a very different world than you do, with very different solutions.”
Division, militias, and censorship
Throughout the film, Elizabethtown community members on the far-right speak about the threats they perceive from the radical left. While canvassing the community and speaking to residents, one candidate brings up the school district’s SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) policy and calls it “Marxism.”
Several scenes are filmed at Lifegate church, which all four of the far-right incumbent board members attend. The pastor and other speakers there are shown denouncing the LGBTQ+ community and gender identity. The church’s website claims part of its mission is “to fulfill the Great Commission” – referring to the Biblical passage from Matthew in which Jesus says to make disciples of all nations. The Great Commission has been invoked by leaders of the Christian Nationalist movement.
The documentary follows Lifegate parishioner and school board member James Emery to an event with all-male attendees, where he leads a group discussion about training and preparing to use guns to defend their community, if necessary. A collection of firearms is later shown sprawled out in his living room.
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“That was my takeaway,” said Alisha Runkle, an Elizabethtown resident, parent, and activist who attended the screening. “There were a lot of guns.”
Runkle, who supported the Democratic candidates, frequently spoke out at school board meetings, and advocated for LGBTQ+ students, said she felt shocked and uneasy viewing the scenes with firearms.
“I feel like the world has a lot to learn from our story.” – Kristy Moore
“They have called us demons, and vehicles of Satan, and lunatics,” she said. “Just all kinds of really nice stuff. You know they feel this certain way about you, and they have all these guns.”
The film also explores censorship.
At the center of discourse is school board policy 109, which passed in 2023 during filming. The policy calls for a continuous review and re-classification of the books within the school libraries to flag what some Republican board members and parents call explicit reading material. Others in the film argue that placing additional barriers between children and books causes harm and is unconstitutional.
Scenes filmed at Elizabethtown Area High School show a class discussing the play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” with a teacher referring to the cover art as “smutty.”
Later, students converse about gun violence at the national level and give mixed answers as to whether they feel safe in school. Toward the end of the film, the class of 2023 graduates, and the commencement speaker encourages them to go out, meet new people, and keep their minds open.
Moving forward for the adults, youth
Since the film aired, Moore, Fuddy, and Runkle have all said they’re grateful for the opportunity to openly discuss the issues the film brings to light.
“It’s a small town that is a microcosm of what’s going on in our country right now,” Moore said. “The lesson I learned is that you just have to keep going.”
After seeing the moderate Republicans lose endorsements from their local committee during the course of the film, Moore said she reached out to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania which amended its bylaws, allowing for Democrats to endorse Republican candidates in non-partisan races. As a result, the Democratic party backed a bipartisan slate (two Democrats and two Republicans) in the 2025 Elizabethtown Area School Board race. While they didn’t win, Moore said it was inspiring to get 48% of the vote in a district that went 62% for Trump.
“Slowly but surely, we’re moving the needle,” Moore said.
Community cooperation is growing, not only between political parties, but also within religious organizations.
“Other churches follow the rules,” she said. “They don’t engage in political activity, but they’re starting to find ways of working around that.”
Runkle added that she and fellow activists have started working with food banks and clothing drives in hopes of engaging more people.
“A lot of the service projects and outreach in the town are run by those (radical) churches,” she said. “Because they’re out there trying to evangelize all the time – they’re the ones doing the service projects. We’ve made a really big effort to get in those spaces.”
And while some adults in the community seem to be building bridges,the youth have also been stepping up since the film. A group of Elizabethtown Area High School students have collaborated with students and teachers from the Central York School District to learn how their community successfully overturned its book ban policies in previous years.
“The kids are starting to organize,” Fuddy said, followed by claps and cheers from the audience.
Moore, Fuddy, and Runkle are all founding members of Etown Common Sense 2.0, a group whose mission is to build an engaging and welcoming school system for all students in Elizabethtown.
