Video Review: Jesus Camp.

(note: this is probably the least political -in the sense of elections- post I've written so far. But this is kind of the cultural, philosophical, etc. direction the blog will go in the future, particularly after this election cycle ends. A lot of that, I'm sure, will be me trying to apply some degree of rationality to subjects where clearly none exists or is in short supply.)



I've finally gotten around to watching Jesus Camp, I saw it on Youtube over the weekend. A quick aside to anyone who feels the need to leave a comment on a Youtube video: if you are going to claim intellectual superiority or belittle anyone else's intelligence based on their belief system, feel free to at least be able to cobble together coherent sentences decipherable to people familiar with the English language. Other wise it's going to be difficult for people like me to take you seriously. (I'm not talking about misspellings here, I'm talking about a frontal assault on the basic concepts of language and communication.)

Now with that out of the way, this was a very interesting film which was both amusing and saddening at the same time. The film documents the training of small children in an incredibly radicalized form of fundamentalist/pentecostal Christianity. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people who haven't been exposed to this kind of movement probably found this film incredibly frightening. Having grown up in a somewhat tamer version of this movement, I wasn't particularly surprised on the whole, but there were parts of the movie that took me by surprise. I think this is because of the complete lack of politicisation I experienced growing up in this movement. I'm not sure if that's because this wasn't as prevalent when I was growing up or if I was just not immersed in it because my father (who was my pastor as well) is a Democrat, who never wanted much to do with the religious right. Most of the kids in the film remind me of some of the kids who attended the Assembly of God-run school that I went to as a child who were brought up to be radicals, far-right Republicans, fundamentalists, and Christians. (and they were taught these traits in exactly that order of importance)

The film starts out with the leader of the camp, whose name escapes me at the moment ( and I really don't feel like looking it up) a seemingly friendly woman who clearly has a gift for working with and connecting to children. It quickly becomes obvious that she is more interested in training up an army of activists than in teaching Sunday School. We start with a meeting at (presumably) her church where she's promoting her summer camp to the kids in attendance. This seems perfectly normal until they bring out the children's "worship dance" team. This struck me as funny since dancing and fundamentalism (which this brand of Christianity falls under the branch of in my classification, though a lot of official Fundamentalist groups would probably bristle at given its fusion with Pentecostalism, but I believe the overlap here is too significant to overlook) have often been seen as natural enemies. I assure you that there was no "worship dancing" in a choreographed sense when I was growing up in the early nineties. The boys seem to be dressed up like soldiers waving sticks around to some of the most un-danceable music you've ever heard. Once this is done with she says to the crowd "let's pray in tongues". This was odd to me because I never saw glossolalia on demand growing up. I heard plenty of people "speaking in tongues" but it was always a spontaneous occurrence. It was also always somewhat unnerving to me as well, but I knew better than to express that opinion at the time. After the service ends we go to a few segments where we meet the kids who will be attending the camp (including one with a horrendous mullet that needs to be seen to be believed. On a tangent here, there should be a law that if you allow your child to get a humiliating hair cut you should be forced to get one too. That's the kind of change you'd see if I was president. We meet the children's families as well. We see one family in the dining room/home-school classroom. The weirdness doesn't take long to start here. While saying grace for their meal they ask God to end abortion and advise Him on what kind of people to put on the Supreme Court. I guess nothing whets the appetite like talking about any kind of surgical procedure. (We will be coming back to abortion many times by the end of the film) After this we see the boy with the mullet "learning" his science lesson from his teacher/mother. Like most of the children in the film he is home-schooled.We see him "learning" that the earth is 6,000 years old and that global warming is not a problem since the "rapture" will happen soon and the "anti-Christ" will take over the earth.( just like the bible does not say.) His text books reminded me of some of the ones we used in the Christian school I went to for 5-years (many of which were put out by Bob Jones University). The scientific illiteracy these kids are left with is not the most chilling aspect of this to me. If you were to destroy all scientific knowledge it would eventually be re-discovered in the distant future. What frightens me is the revisionist history taught to these kids, because if the lessons of history are forgotten then they will all have to be re-learned in a much more difficult fashion. We then cut to another child at the bowling alley where she is seen commanding her bowling ball to make a strike "in Jesus name". Sadly, the power of Christ is apparently no match for this particular bowling ball as it veers off to the right. She then is seen reading a Jack Chick tract! If you're a connoisseur of all things crack-pot you absolutely must take a look at this guy's stuff.

At this point the children are ready to head off to camp. It has also become obvious to me that these kids are being taught radicalism more than they are being taught Christianity. I believe they for the most part will either grow up to be radical fundamentalist Christians or radical Atheists. (perhaps "radical" is not the right word, because there was very little that was moderate about the man from Galilee. I think "militant" is probably a better word.) I'd be interested to see what percentage of the kids in this film would profess any form of Christianity in 20 years. My guess is that there will be far more who become disillusioned with religion than those who stay with this particular movement. The militancy will still be there, because that's what they have had drilled into them, but the faith aspect is not stressed nearly as much it would seem. It also becomes clear to the viewer by this point that these kids are repeating slogans that they have no clue as to the meaning of like "terminal generation", "spiritual warfare", etc.

As we pan over the camp grounds we notice that a) this camp makes the one in the "Jason" movies seem bright and cheery by comparison and that b) the camp is named "Kids on Fire!". I don't know about you but when I hear the name "kids on fire" I don't think of kids who love Jesus, I think of that picture from Vietnam of the girl who'd been napalmed. I also think that an accurate name for most summer camps would be "Kids Being Molested". Seriously, if you're ever bemoaning the fact that your child hasn't been molested yet, send them to summer camp. One last joke here, I want you to picture in your head what kind of logo you'd draw up for a place called "Kids On Fire". As we progress through the week of the camp, we see a lot of more of the kids repeating what they have been told about "reclaiming America for Christ", etc. with no sign that they understand what that means (I don't know what that means either). What we never see show up is actual biblical learning or any mention of how Jesus lived and taught us to live. This could be because that was edited out of the documentary, but I wouldn't be surprised if this weren't the case. I won't lay out everything that is shown from camp, but a few things really annoyed me. At one point we get an interview with the camp director talking about how she has the "skill" of being able to walk up to a group of 5-year olds on a playground and convince them to accept Jesus. Now, I don't make a habit of walking up to kids on playgrounds, (people tend to be on the lookout for that kind of thing, or at least they should be) but my uncle Gerald had a "skill" of being able to convince kids that age that he could pull his thumb off and put it back on. So convincing the kids to repeat a prayer is not nearly as impressive to me as being able to teach them how their religion says they should live their lives. That is a gift; scaring the bejeezus out of them is not.
A while later we come to the most well-known scene from the film. At the end of one of the services a card-board cut out of George W. Bush is brought out and the kids all reach their hands towards it and begin praying and crying and carrying on. The creep-o-meter really went off the dial here. I realize that they were praying for Bush and not to Bush but it's still a jarring visual. The Bible does say to pray for the leaders of your nation, but somehow I doubt anything like this would have happened if Bill Clinton (or Obama, McCain, Hillary, etc.) were in the White House. After recovering from this we go to the last night of the camp where the children are treated to a guest speaker. At first I'm kind of leery of him because as a rule I tend to distrust skinny preachers. But he seems nice enough and tells the kids how he has something to share with them. At this point I'm optimistic thinking "alright maybe he's going to tell them about Jesus; how he lived, what he did, what he told us to do, because it's off-base to expect anyone to "know Jesus" in an abstract sense when they don't know who the guy was". I'm also thinking "I wonder what's in the case he's holding". He opens the case to reveal......plastic dolls of fetuses at different stages of development! Apparently Christianity is all about being an anti-abortion activist! (note: I refuse to use the euphemisms "pro-life" or "pro-choice") I remember being given a plastic fetus from some group or another when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. Apparently people feel that if kids see the doll, they'll never be able to have an abortion. I happen to know for a fact that this view is a crock. Eventually the kids gather around the speaker and pray and then chant "Righteous Judges!" over and over again in the most creepy manner possible. I'm left to wonder if any of these folks see the irony in this. You don't want your kid going to a public school because of sex ed so you home school them at home like a good percentage of the kids in this film. You don't want your teenager to know about condoms but it's okay to teach 5-7 year olds about abortion in the most graphic possible terms? How can these views be reconciled? Don't any of the kids throw up or ask how the baby got there in the first place? I realize I'm probably expecting too much thought here.
As a bonus feature, we get to watch the kid with the mullet go listen to Ted Haggard ham it up for the documentary cameras from his pulpit. In an unfortunate coincidence, Ted is talking about homosexuality being wrong. I'm not going to go for the easy joke here, other than to point out that he looks very relaxed, yet very energetic at the same time. Overall, I think the incongruity in this instance was a microcosm of the film as a whole.