THAT THEY MAY BE ONE

This is a documentary built to leave you encouraged, not entertained in the usual sense — and it succeeds. THAT THEY MAY BE ONE takes Jesus's prayer in John 17:21 and traces it through history: Saint Elena Guerra's letters to the Pope, the Day of Pentecost, the Azusa Street Revival, and the charismatic movement's influence on the Catholic Church. It weaves these together with testimony from believers across denominations, all pointing to one Spirit at work.

What makes it worth your time is the craft: well-cited arguments, well-presented reenactments, and a genuinely moving arrangement of interviews. There is nothing here for a parent to screen out — no language, violence, or immorality of any kind — and the message, a call to unity through the Holy Spirit, is one Movieguide is glad to recommend.

If you want a film that will challenge you to love other believers across denominational lines, watch this one.

Jesus prayed the night before His crucifixion that His followers would be one. This documentary drama asks whether the modern Church has answered that prayer — and traces moments across history where the Holy Spirit moved to draw denominations together: a 19th-century nun's plea to the Pope, a revival in Los Angeles, and believers today discovering unexpected common ground in the Spirit.

Three stars here mean a documentary that does its job well without reaching for spectacle it isn't after. The reenactments — of Pentecost, of Azusa Street, of the night before the crucifixion — are well presented, and the depiction of Christ is handled with care. The film's real strength is its arrangement of interviews: Church leaders and ordinary believers speaking with evident conviction, stitched together into a coherent, well-cited historical argument. It is informative first and cinematic second, but what it sets out to do, it does thoroughly and movingly.

This is a film built entirely on a biblical foundation, and it uses that foundation well. It takes Jesus's own prayer — that His followers "may all be one" — and treats it as a live command rather than a historical footnote, tracing how the Holy Spirit has repeatedly drawn separated Christians back toward each other across two thousand years.

The film's central conviction is that division among denominations grieves the Body of Christ and keeps believers from the "gift of each other" — from sharing love for Christ despite differing theology. It uses Scripture and church history not as ornamentation but as evidence, arguing that the Spirit's visible work through the ages backs up the truth claims of Christianity against secular scrutiny. There is nothing here to distort or soften; the film simply asks the Church to take Jesus's own words seriously.

The ache this film names is the ache of a divided family — and it answers with the same prayer Jesus prayed for us: "that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:21).

THAT THEY MAY BE ONE is exactly the kind of film Movieguide loves to recommend without reservation: clean, well-made, and centered on Jesus's own prayer for His Church. It will inform you, move you, and likely challenge how you think about believers outside your own tradition. Our answer: worth the trip.