Jesus Camp

I know it's been forever since I last updated this blog, but this is something I needed to rant about.

Jesus Camp (2006), a documentary following the lives of some fundamentalist families and their children while attending an evangelical camp, caused a something of a stir when it came out, and I wanted to see it then - but being that it wasn’t a movie theater release and wasn’t available in rental stores in the area I lived in then, I didn’t get the chance. Having finally gotten a hold of it recently, I had to wait until after the hustle of the Holiday and settling in back at home to watch it, and I have to admit, I felt weird watching it.

 During the opening, following footage of a Christian political radio show, children in darkly colored face paint dance to thumping music, waving rods during a choreographed number. I could see how some might see the scene as a bit ominous - but having grown up attending musical events at my own church, I could see the other side of the situation as well. I was fine up until the point they showed a couple hundred kids, hands in the air as they reached for God, being cried to to open their mouths and start speaking in tongues. It was creepy to say the least.

    Now, I don’t have an issue with people who speak in tongues - a Christian who speaks in tongues is told in the scriptures that the gift of tongues is a blessing and a sign of true faith. Tongues and convulsions as a result of spiritual ’God’ possession are phenomena that appear across cultural borders, both in some forms of Christianity and many instances of Voodoo or tribal witchcraft. What I have a problem with is Children - kids, immature human beings who have no perspective regarding spirituality - being pressured to accept radical ideologies without being given a choice or perspective.


    This applies to anything, not just religion - and as I the children in the movie again and again being taught to accept extremely radical ideas and political notions, I was a little scared. I winced as I watched rooms full of children - kids that seemed to range anywhere from five years to at oldest maybe fourteen - being told that they were hypocrites, phonies, that their behavior and that of their friends was shameful and that without God that they would go to hell. More than that, that the church they were attending was the only one (or type) of church that God was present in, that there are ‘dead’ churches where God is not present because the people in attendance do not jump and shout and speak in tongues.

 The tone was not a warning tone - it sounded as though the kids were being told they were inherently bad andthat they were going to burn for eternity just for being kids. That is, unless they rejected everything and anything but what the elders in their church taught to them - and only that. This came with thumping music, with chanting, with wailing women on microphones… all very intense. These children were not being taught, they were being indoctrinated. Hand in hand with the messages they were being force-fed in peer pressure loaded situations were lessons about how wrong and evil other cultures or beliefs are.

Harry Potter, for instance, they were SHOUTED at, would have been put to death in the Old Testament. A fictional character put to death for being something he was born as, according to the laws of a loving God. They were not told that good messages or lessons can come from people with different beliefs than theirs, they were not taught there are shades of gray, they were not being told that their leaders are also just human and may not be right or giving them options (or that there even are options). The Harry Potter comment carried enough weight that in footage of the group breakfast the next morning, one kid is visibly embarrassed to be told that his hair and glasses make him look like the fictional wizard. When another child admits smugly that his dad lets him watch Harry Potter movies at his house, the other children all regard him with quiet discomfort.

    There was a sort of strange bit where a cardboard standee of George Bush was put up in front of the kids. They reacted the normal way (that is, befuddled silence) - but that wasn’t what the speaker at that moment wanted. “Well, Talk to him!” She demanded. When they didn’t respond, she prompted them again. “Say, welcome President Bush!”

I think Bush was a little more... 3-dimensional than this

En masse, they repeated her words. “We’re glad you’re here.“ Again, they repeated her. In moments, she had the kids up and touching the standee, laying hands on it, praying in tongues. I tried to view this as just sending President Bush blessing, but the whole time, the speaker (while holding the back of the cut out and moving it repeatedly) kept telling the kids to basically treat it like it really was George Bush. “Here he is,” she says tiredly, “come to visit us.” She asked them not to say prayers for Bush - but to him, as she indicated the cardboard cutout.

During this scene, about three quarters through the movie, I had to pause and think about this. Why not just have a moment of silence, or ask the kids to pray for Bush? This moment, this weird little screen shot of the cardboard president smiling blankly over a crowd of shouting youth with upheld hands, a tired, older woman holding the figure up, seemed to crystallize the movie for me.

Here, you saw impressionable kids, brought by their parents, their families, to gatherings where community elders and spiritual leaders held up ideals that even children could see are strange and limited - but pressured and conditioned to react to as though it is the norm. To BELIEVE that it is real, and that to say otherwise wouldn’t be exploration of the truth, but stupidity and evil.

Hesitantly, I hit play again.

I had to hit pause again moments later. They were teaching (well… sort of) the children about abortion. There was a reference to Horton Hears a Who, which is often used as a pro-life story for kids (despite the fact that Seuss wrote it as a moral commentary about the occupation of Japan following World War II - and in fact dedicated the book to a Japanese friend). I always had a problem with the sort of argument being presented to the kids during this scene - if God has a plan for the unborn that are aborted, how do everyday mortals manage to get the way of an all powerful being’s plans? What about children that have no chance of surviving outside of the womb? What about children that will be born into a home that doesn’t have the means to take care of them - but will not be moved into a place that does? What about pregnancies where delivering the child may kill both the child AND the mother? And if God has a pre-written plan for every single person, wouldn't the choice to have an abortion been written in God's plan for that person? Either way, it means God doesn't care about every human, or that he is actively making people choose sin.

One moment they were preaching to the children that the omnipotent Christian God has a plan and that everything is prewritten (fate/destiny) and in the next, they were shouting about all the evil humans that are getting in the way of those plans by their choices - choices which don’t exist if there is such a thing as fate. And if that’s true, again, why would a loving God create people that sin or wouldn’t be saved, or allow for evil?

The lessons they were preaching to the children were that there is such a thing as fate, therefore there are no choices, but that there are people who will go to hell and burn for the ‘choices’ they make. And the kids seemed to be eating it right up, red wrist-banded arms held high, their mouths silenced by red tape with the word LIFE written across it.

It call came down to teaching the children WE are right, THEY are wrong, and backing all of it up with the Christian God.

I felt badly for the kids in this movie. I hope fervently that they grow up happy, and that the choices they make - and the choices their parents made for them - give them happiness. Because if they don’t, they weren’t given any other options. I have yet to meet atheists or agnostics more forward in their stance against faith than so called Lapsed Christians - people who have ‘fallen from faith.’ Most of them are people who grew up and moved away from their own stories of indoctrination - and realized the world was not what was taught to them growing up.

The radio show, “Ring of Fire” hosted by Mike Papantonio, bits and pieces of which were shown throughout the movie and provided a backdrop that managed to show that this was a movie about the practices of fundamentalist Christians - very radical, extreme people with very radical views.

Mike did a good job showing that being Christian does not mean being extremist. During one hard to swallow scene, I watched children being taught out of a text book that the concept of Global Warming is a non-concern because it isn‘t real - and then you hear Mike speaking aghast about how fundamentalists are teaching their children it’s okay to rape the earth and destroy it because earthly life doesn’t matter, and that they won’t be here long anyhow. After watching the segment where children are told to pray over a cardboard President Bush and then spoon fed a stance on abortion, Mike speaks about how he believes it is wrong to use Children as political tools and that it does harm to the progression of mankind.

Men like Mike rouse my hope for humanity.

During a call in from a fundamentalist mother, he said this in response to her wish that more churches should practice indoctrination:

“You can tell a child anything - just like I said, you can tell a child - you can make a child into a soldier, that carries an AK-47-”
She cut him off to tell him,
“You can call it brainwashing, but I am radical and passionate in teaching Children about their responsibility as Christians, as God fearing people, as Americans.”

The rest of their conversation went as follows:

Mike: “Well, Becky, let me ask you this: how do we ignore that all of a sudden, we are creating Children soldiers for the Republican party? How does that figure into anything that Christ had to say how we should live our life on the earth?”
Becky: “It’s, I’m not sure - I - I’m not sure - aware of any churches, that are out there with a political cause. I - I’m not going after my kids politically, but that, you know, that at the same time, I wanna say, I don’t have any problem saying to my children, ‘we are pro-life!’”
Mike: “I gotta tell you, God is watching us. And - and God has a very special place for those people who mess with our children. It’s not a pretty place-”
Becky: “You know what, I’m not gonna go there Mike.”
Mike: “You know what’s always made this country special, what’s always set this country apart, is because there is something we call a separation between church and state. That’s always been something that separates us and has separated us for two hundred years. It has worked. I respect your right as a fundamentalist to teach your children whatever you want to teach ‘em, but don’t let that bleed over into the public sector. Don’t let that bleed over to the schools.”
Becky: “I beg to differ with you. Christianity is important. We believe what’s the most important religion in the world because it changes the lives of people.”
Mike: “But Becky, it’s a witch’s brew. It’s gonna take over democracy.”
Becky: “You know, I think democracy’s the greatest, uh, political system on earth, but that’s just it, it’s the only, it’s the only, it’s, it’s just what’s on earth. There, you know, it’s ultimately designed to destroy itself because we have to give everyone equal freedom. And ultimately, that’s gonna destroy us, you know? And so, a perfect world is not gonna be perfect until Jesus is truly lord.”
Mike: “Okay - Becky, thanks for joining us, okay?”
Becky: “You got it.”

Taking off his headphones, he shakes his head. “The more I hear about this, it just gets crazier and crazier.”

The movie ends shortly after, and I was left feeling drained and vaguely disturbed. Hopeful, because I know for a fact that not all Christians are fundies, but still saddened by the fact there are kids out there who believe in the ‘truths’ presented in Jack Chick comics and will probably grow up knowing nothing more than what was handed to them by their parents.

Though I tried to watch this movie with an open mind, I’ll admit, I raged a bit - several times, you saw ‘educational’ films mocking scientific theory, and super-simplifying concepts such as the big bang, wording things in such a way as to make them seem ridiculous, especially to kids. The same people demanding that creation theory be taught in schools alongside evolution - which I also have no issue with - seemed to be doing the opposite, and teaching creation while evolution is actively decried. Mike was right - this sort of ‘education’ stands in the way of progression. This movie scared me, a lot, but I came away with an important lesson.

If I have kids, I’m not going to force any sort of religious ideas on them. I will do the best I can to let them see both sides to anything they ask about, and raise them with the morals I believe are right - but they will be allowed to question me on certain things. I want them to respect me as an adult and as a mother, but I will not force them to accept without thought any version of what is right and wrong because no matter what I believe in, I am only human. No matter what God I might recognize, I am fallible. If, when they are ready, they choose Christianity or whatever else (and provided I don’t think it’ll get them hurt), then I’ll support them.