Jesus Camp
From RationalWiki
Jesus Camp is a documentary about children in the Christian Evangelical movement, and centers around scenes from the life of Becky Fischer, the organizer of "Kids On Fire School of Ministry" summer camp, as well as a handful of children who attend the camp itself.
The film highlights serious indoctrination of children using many of the same tactics of more traditional exploitative cults such as Scientology. Towards the end of the film, Fischer has the brass balls to claim that her camp isn't promoting a political position, but apparently she sees nothing wrong with wheeling out a life size standee of George W. Bush and encouraging the children to worship it while kneeling in front of it, touching the cardboard cut-out President in a moment of unintentional irony. During the camp, the children are also subjected to at least two different lectures on the subject of the evils of abortion. These children are too young to understand sexual reproduction, let alone the reasons why a woman might choose to have an abortion and the ethical considerations surrounding it.
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[edit] Themes of the film
The bizarre behavior of evangelicals features heavily in the film. Various people are shown praying over extremely trivial matters. In one scene, a small girl is seen praying that her bowling ball be guided to the pins by Jesus. The camera cuts away to show the ball heading for the gutter. In another scene, Fischer and her acolytes are seen setting up for the opening day of the camp. Her prayer includes the wonderful incantation: "...and please protect our Power Point presentation. Satan, I know how you just love to get in our Power Point presentations and mess us up. Get out! You have no power over us here." It's one thing to curse Microsoft for their crummy software, quite another to invoke divine malevolence.
[edit] Causes for hope
If there's one thing in the documentary that at least partially restores our faith in the rationality of humankind, and at least partially alleviates our despair, it is a single scene half-way through the film. A young child addresses the congregation saying:
| “ | I just wanted to talk about belief in God. I've had a hard time doing it and it's just really hard to do this. Just to believe in God is really hard, because you don't see him, you don't really know him much. Sometimes I don't even believe what the Bible says... It makes me feel guilty and bad. | ” |
...to accompanying squirms of discomfort amongst the faithful there present. Bravo, kid! But never feel guilty for questioning the idiocy you're being force fed. If one child can resist the brainwashing, then maybe there's hope for the others brought up in this environment.
[edit] Quotes
- "Warlocks[1] are enemies of God."
- "Had it been in the Old Testament Harry Potter would have been put to death."
- "Take these prophecies and do what the apostle Paul said and make war with them. This means war! This means war! This means war!"
- "I think that Democracy is the greatest political system on Earth but that's the problem, it's Earth. It is ultimately designed to destroy itself because we have to give everyone equal freedom and ultimately that is going to destroy us."
- "I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity."
[edit] Reviews
The film received strangely polarized reviews: negative ones from not-stupid people condemning the indoctrination shown, negative ones from fundamentalists who didn't like the way the camp was portrayed, positive ones from not-stupid people that saw the film as a balanced report on this hellhole, and positive ones from bible thumpers who apparently saw nothing wrong with the film or the chaos shown.
The most notable critique, however, comes from vandals who targeted the camp itself and caused it to be closed down[2] allowing the world to rest quietly once again.[3]
[edit] Criticism
Ted Haggard[4] features in the film as the pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, which the children from the camp visited. Shortly before the film's official release, he accused the film-makers of having an "agenda" and portraying the protagonists of the film as "sinister". The makers posted a response to this on their website, pointing out, amongst other things, that Haggard was the only person in the film who had a problem, and that everyone else involved, "feel it is accurate and fair and are excited about people seeing it."[5]
[edit] Ted Haggard
In an amusing-but-disturbing sermon, we see Ted Haggard rant against the evils of homosexuality. Haggard, of course, was an in-the-closet homosexual himself who despite proclaiming the joys of lots of sex, presumably with his wife,[6] actually enjoyed trysts with homosexual prostitutes and recreational hard drugs,[7] thereby continuing the rich tradition of evangelicals with major sexual hangups.[8]
On the DVD, there is an extended deleted scene in which Haggard jibes the English cameraman who is filming his sermon at the New Life Church. While hamming it up in front of the camera, Haggard discovers the man's Catholicism, and turns to mocking the Catholic Church, the Pope, priests, and form of worship, encouraging his audience to laugh at the church with him. Ah yes, ecumenicism is a lovely thing.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Referring to the Harry Potter series
- ↑ Kids in Minstry
- ↑ Remember, RationalWiki doesn't support vandals!
- ↑ Yes, the same Ted Haggard who had sex with a male prostitute, while allegedly also taking crystal methamphetamine...
- ↑ "Jesus Camp responds to Ted Haggard". Jesuscampthemovie.com
- ↑ "Friends of God - Ted Haggard and Sex". Youtube.com
- ↑ "Haggard admits 'sexual immorality', apologizes". Associated Press. MSNBC.com
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on Christian evangelist scandals.
