A week ago today, Mary and I were heading north on I-65, back to places where our young family began our life together. This is about as close as one gets to having what could be called a “time machine” or sorts.

Traveling back in time, via I-65.

A week later, news is still filtering forth from the Hoosier State, fallout from the newly-minted documentary, Barefoot: The Mark Baumer Story. We got to hear a welcome voice yesterday afternoon. It was Julie Sokolow, the filmmaker. She’s remained behind after we flew back and her cohorts headed back to Pittsburgh. The festival actually has continued for another week. We were thrilled to hear that her efforts at telling Mark’s story were rewarded. The film landed the Heartland International Film Festival’s Best Premier Documentary Feature. As Mark’s parents, this elicited more emotion—but this time it was something more joyful and made us less sad. We’re thrilled for Julie and the film’s team that worked so hard in capturing Mark as elegantly as they have.

Barefoot wins award at Heartland Film.

I think Sundays will forever be a day that I remember as one that once centered on God and church, especially back in the days we first pulled up in our rented U-Haul in front of the Bible school I would be attending. Last Sunday, we drove onto the grounds of Hyles-Anderson College, where every day was focused on those two elements, at least in a theoretical and experiential manner for a 22-year-old who’d felt “called to leave everything behind save for his pregnant wife and a few belongings.

But as I learned (the hard way) back then, that concepts about God and Jesus often get filtered through agendas, ideologies, and human imperfection. These things, which caused me great dissonance at the time, were also endemic in other similar religious settings like the one in Crown Point, Indiana, back in the 1980s.

The King and Queen of Hyles-Anderson College

Before we left the first of last week, we drove downtown. We’d forgotten it was Indigenous People’s Day, and the city of Indianapolis felt sleepy. The festival and our hotel had kept us out on the northeast outskirts of the state’s capital and largest city. We did end up driving into the central business district of the city on Saturday after the matinee screening of Barefoot. But before boarding the jet for Maine and our return to reality, we opted to make a quick stop near the canal area where people told us to visit, as well as see Market Square.

Downtown Indianapolis is also where the seat of state government resides. The state house is a short walk from the majestic fountain in Market Square, a geographic feature that Tom Petty sang about in his song “Last Dance With Mary Jane.” My last dance with Mary (Jo) in the land where Mark was born was also in proximity to the place Petty mentioned in the song.

Leaving something so formative and also affecting as Bible school and a man like Jack Hyles requires finding replacement rituals to the highly-scripted way-of-life we had forced upon us in our early 20s. For me, I’ve supplanted church and meaningless surmising about deities these days with a leisurely reading of the weekend New York Times most Sundays, fueled with coffee.

But back in Indiana a week ago, I thought a lot about Mark, our time in fundamentalism, and the multitude of memories from that place: I also thought about Mike Pence. What kind of governor was he? How did the state shape his views and beliefs and make him into the political opportunist that he’s become? This article details Pence in a way that’s different than most of the other ones out there. It also, in my mind, shows that his religious orientation is second to other more prominent ones, like his political ambition.

Peter Baker, a Times reporter who covers the political beat for the paper touches on the “Faustian bargain” that Pence made in hooking his political star to such an odious partner in Donald Trump. He does it in a book review in this morning’s Times’ book supplement about a new book about Pence written by Tom Lobianco called Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House.

Pence obviously made a decision at some point to go against what orthodox theology is clear on, especially relative to Jesus and ignoring adultery, philandering, and hate, along with a host of other moral failures prominent in the president and his administration. In fact, Baker’s review of the book mentions how Pence’s wife, Karen, “was livid” when Trump’s Access Hollywood tape was made public, especially what Baker writes were “lurid” comments by the president. Apparently, Mrs. Pence refused to kiss the vice-president on election night saying, “You got what you wanted, Mike.” She then told him to “Leave me alone.”

I’m so glad that Julie ended up creating a parallel story in the documentary about Mark that touches on the run-up to Trump’s election because I do think it was a central element in the walk and what was going on in the country prior to Mark being killed.

Not knowing what was going to happen in terms of impeachment last March, I find it amazing that Julie came back to Maine to re-shoot some interviews with Mary and me, especially related to the election and thoughts Mark had been sharing and our own views about what was happening during the fall of 2016 tied to Trump.

At the time, we were both tired of being on film, pouring our hearts out in front of a camera and spending a weekend reliving painful memories. We’d done this once before. Why again?

Both of us have expressed that in viewing the beautiful final product, we’re gratified with it in how it truly honors Mark and his mission: it also has some real relevance to the time we are living in. That’s what great filmmakers are able to do and we’re thrilled that we have one in Julie Sokolow.

Mark was very clear about his mission. He never candy-coated how he felt about Donald Trump and his racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic (and a host of other descriptors Mark used in his final video on Day 100) ideology intended to foster division and hatred.

Pence it seems has lost his way. Or perhaps he’s simply the kind of cunning, calculating Xian that I found fundamentalist religion crawling with in Indiana back in the 1980s. It’s obvious that little’s changed since with American religion. He now has access to power—and he’s now one impeachment (if the president is convicted and removed from office) from his ultimate goal of being president.

I’m no Bible scholar (although I’ll put my knowledge of scripture up against anyone’s because I’ve read the Good Book extensively, as well at theology texts), but blind ambition and the quest for the things of this world (like power) seem to run counter to what Jesus taught his followers.