Jesus Camp
I have to admit that I went into this movie with a certain bias. Viewing it through my blue-tinted glasses, the film played to me as a scathing expose of the indoctrination practices of evangelist youth ministries in America. One of my companions (incidentally, a lapsed-Catholic atheist) pointed out that in no way did the filmmakers offer any angle of view. They let the subjects themselves tell their story and let the audience make their own decisions. The have the all-over access of a fly on the wall, yet no story-telling agenda beyond presentation of this intensely devout world.
It’s interesting to see how the politicizing of the Religious Right has brought new prayers and lessons into this evangelist world that have nothing to do with theology. Of course you would expect a religious response to something like the abortion issue or whether Creationism or Darwinism is the truth about our origin. To hear a specifically theological condemnation of global warming and prayer for righteous judges screamed out of the mouths of pre-pubescent children is chilling beyond compare. Somehow the neo-conservative right’s political agendas have wormed their way into this new religion, just as much as this religion has wormed its way into their agendas.
A small clutch of campers are highlighted in this film. We have Rachel, well-intentioned and awkward, Tori the dancer whose body gyrates to the spirit, a conflicted, questioning blonde boy who was not identified (but who I wished to see more of), and most unnervingly, charismatic and ambitious Levi. We get snippets of their stories and how they navigate in this place of misinterpreted scripture, then glimpse the mobs of desperately earnest, weeping children filling the room behind them, out-rapturing each other with tears and tongues and twitches; it put me in mind more than once of The Crucible’s Abigail Williams and her teenage cohorts, writhing and finger pointing to conceal their own guilt. I thought about these young, pliable minds being hard-wired to hate so many people and things, including themselves and their own desires and natures. What guilty and doubting and self-loathing wine will come from these sweet young grapes? I wonder how they will look back on this film in their 30s.
Reverend Becky Fischer defends her strategy of (brain)washing these children in the blood of Jesus by saying, hey, the Muslims do it from the age of 5, so we need to raise up Christ’s army to fight them. Her justification for home-growing our own terrorists is alarming to say the least. To step back and think that Rev. Fischer would probably think Jesus Camp the film is a great recruitment tool is petrifying. To see these kids on the brink of self-actualization being sucked into this anti-compassionate fear-mongering orgy of suffering (complete with actual Bush idolatry) is terrifying. To hear their uncanny mimicry of adult propaganda (”At five I got saved because I just wanted more of life”) and repetitive chants of issues they are barely equipped to process - to have learning and critical thinking taken away from them with such feverish determination - the mind reels. How far away from the Sermon on the Mount is the manipulation of children like C-4 clay, or hardwiring these little bombs with dogma without analysis or empathy?
The Jesus Camp content is interrupted periodically by a Christian talk radio DJ Mike Papantonio, who decries the radical extremism of this sect of Christianity, both as being unchristian but also as being bad for the country and the children. We hear him in his booth and only empty air as response, whereas we are treated to Reverend Fischer’s audience call and response for contrast. Is anyone listening to him? His segments are a relief from the rending raptures of the camp, but a tiny candle in the dark compared to these exploding evangelizing numbers. It’s a scary movie, but also very intimate and kind to its leads.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 9/15/06
Time in minutes 85
Director Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
Studio Magnolia Pictures
