Review: "Jesus Camp"

A few weeks ago I rented 2006's Oscar-nominated documentary Jesus Camp. It has received a tremendous amount of criticism. The film follows several children (one of them, Rachel, is adorable) as they prepare for and attend Becky Fischer's evangelical "boot camp" for preteens. Bill Maher, ABC News, atheists, and many feminists drew negative attention to the film, hinting it was the American answer to Jihadism - training kids to be "warriors".

Because I have had some exposure to evangelical/pentacostal beliefs, this film wasn't as startling to me as it would be to, say, an atheist or an Episcopalian. I understand, for instance, that when Becky Fischer and her staff urges kids to be warriors, she is talking about spiritual warfare. When the kids chat about the possibility of martyrdom, they're discussing an infinitely more passive form of martyrdom than strapping bombs to themselves and going on a homicide/suicide mission. They just mean that if they are persecuted to death for their
faith, that's OK.

The directors of Jesus Camp claim they wanted to give an unbiased portrait of the camp. That's clearly not true. Their choice of outtakes alone points to their intention to portray the camp and the families who send their children there as a mixture of zealots and simpletons. One outtake only shows Levi and his brother watching a VeggieTales video called "Where's God When I'm Scared?", singing along to the song "God is Bigger than the Boogeyman". This is supposed to be disturbing? Now, I have this video. Z-kid and Demi have watched it many times ....it's great. The song is really catchy. And you must admit, even if you don't believe in Him, that if there was a God he would certainly be bigger than the Boogeyman.

Fundamentalism and dominionism bother me. I would never encourage a child Rachel's age to proselytize to strangers in the street, or teach a child to reject the concepts of climate change and evolution, as some of the parents in the film did. Are these kids being indoctrinated? Of course they are. But would you rather have this generation indoctrinated by consumer culture, schooled by Paris Hilton? Is it so bad to bring up children as moral, responsible citizens?

One thing I respect about Becky Fischer is that she didn't talk down to the kids. She didn't underestimate them. What I saw were children with purpose, dedication, and heart. Kids being told that if they so choose, they can be the greatest generation, and that each one of them is precious.

There are disturbing scenes: It's creepy seeing kids in religious ecstasy, babbling in tongues and being "slain in the Spirit" with tears pouring down their faces. The dominionist aspects are creepy. In the film's most-cited scene, a woman props a cardobard cutout of President Bush in front of the kids and listlessly commands them to bless him, "lay some [spiritual] warfare on him". It comes across as some kind of Christian, sympathetic-magic hoodoo. Ted Haggard is creepy. All in all, though, I found Jesus Camp considerably less creepy than the documentary Hell House, which taught kids (in a fun, extra-gory Halloween format!) that sex usually leads to suicide and suicide leads to Hell.

It wasn't so long after this movie came out that Ted Haggard was exposed in a gay prostitute scandal. This has been cited by critics, too, even though Haggard's brief appearance in the film was unrelated to the camp.

Becky Fischer was forced to close down the camp after the release of this movie. Her landlords received so many threats of vandalism and violence that they refused to lease the camp to her in the future. And Christians are the fascists?