“The Gospel of Eureka” – zaniness, sanity and love in the heart of the South

LGBTQ people from the South Central part of the country have long known that the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is a safe haven, as well as a major vacation destination for the community. An estimated 35 percent of the population of 2,000 identifies as LGBTQ.

Eureka Springs is also the home of The Great Passion Play. The play copies the passion plays of Europe in depicting the crucifixion of Jesus every year during the summer months. The play is a favorite of evangelicals.

So, one might expect that the combination of LGBTQ people and Christian conservatives might set the stage for a contentious community, always at war with each other. But that isn’t the way that Eureka Springs operates.

That was the genesis of the movie The Gospel of Eureka.

The documentary, written by Donal Mosher, and directed by Mosher and Michael Palmieri, seeks to show how people with differences could come together for the good of their community. Movie critic website Rotten Tomatoes summarizes the action: “Love, faith and civil rights collide in a southern town as evangelical Christians and drag queens step into the spotlight to dismantle stereotypes.

“The film takes a personal, and often comical look at negotiating differences between religion and belief through performance, political action, and partnership. Gospel drag shows and passion plays set the stage for one hell of a show.”

“I feel like in the south, the oppression is still the heaviest, the hardest, and the meanest, and progress is moving very slow, especially now,” Mosher told NewNowNext. “But also the strongest, most scrappy resistance is happening there.”

One of the people the filmmakers met with was Randall Christy, the executive director of the town’s Passion play. He has been an opponent of LGBTQ rights, opposing Eureka’s anti-discrimination ordinance. He had been treated as a bigot in many interviews.

But Mosher and Palmieri didn’t want to go in that direction, and saying they wanted to do the movie from “a place of love,” went ahead with interviews with Christy.

“It’s too easy to make these films where you take somebody down,” Palmieri told NewNowNext. “I don’t see the value in it. We all know there are Christian villains. We all know there’s plenty of reason to feel hatred against people who oppress other groups. But given that there’s so much hate out there in the world, just giving a little bit of love is not going to hurt.”


A scene from “The Gospel of Eureka”. Facebook photo.

“What emerges from The Gospel of Eureka is a portrait of two communities that may have more in common than is immediately apparent,” says NewNowNext. “LGBTQ residents of Eureka Springs regularly attend drag shows at Eureka Live, a gay bar described by its owners as a ‘hillbilly Studio 54.’

“Instead of Katy Perry and Madonna, the queens regularly lip-sync to devotional hymns and music with explicitly religious overtones—including the Maren Morris country song My Church and Pray the Gay Away by Broadway veteran Laura Bell Bundy. The film’s emotional climax is a performance to Yolanda Adams’ Let Us Worship Him.”

Mosher and Palmieri hope The Gospel of Eureka encourages faith audiences and LGBTQ viewers to “see the humanity of people that they don’t agree with,” concluded NewNowNext’s coverage.

The documentary screens at New York City’s Quad Cinema through Feb. 14 and then opens in Los Angeles on March 8. Later this year, it will be broadcast on PBS as part of the POV documentary series. The POV series begins in June.

Copyright The Gayly – February 12, 2019 @ 2 p.m. CST.