Over the past six months, several readers have asked me to blog the film Jesus Camp.
Jesus Camp is a documentary about a fundamentalist Evangelical children's camp in North Dakota. The doc follows the lives of several families and their experience at Jesus Camp. Many of the children in the movie were also home-schooled, so it felt a little like watching a review of my life.
I thought the film was fine. I wasn't particularly entertained, because I lived Jesus Camp, so they weren't teaching me anything I didn't already know. The movie is an accurate glimpse into the life of a fundamentalist Christian, and with one exception, the documentary is fairly balanced.
However, as I was watching the film, I kept wondering what these kids were going to think of the movie in 10 years. And one quote at the end of the film stood out. The leader of Jesus Camp, Becky Fischer, offers this opinion of the influence of her camp:
Some extreme liberals, they have to look at this and start shaking in their boots. The intensity you see of these kids, there's no doubt, they've got to be watching this and going "oh my goodness" I didn't know this was possible. What are these kids going to be like when they grow up?
As someone who was homeschooled in a Christian home, raised in a fundamentalist evangelical church, and went on field trips to protest outside of abortion clinics, well… I tend to think they might grow up to be just like me.
A 29 year-old college graduate, living in Washington DC, working as a lobbyist, whose biggest concern at the moment is how far the Oregon Ducks are going to advance in the March Madness Tournament.
You see, luckily, one thing I took from my childhood was the ability to think for myself, and 29 years later I have come to the conclusion that Evangelicals are more obsessed with their own power than with actually spreading the message of Christ.
So rest easy liberals, manipulation only lasts so long.
I also thought Jesus Camp failed to consider whether the childrens’ indoctrination would last beyond the teen years. I remember doing some crazy Christian stuff when that age (any remember the Power Team?). While I’m sure many will embrace the fundamentalism, it seems doubtful their faith will go unchanged.
I wished the documentary focused more on who the camp leader, Becky Fischer, was and the other creepy leaders. Is Fischer married, divorce, spinster? Does she have her own children? Who are these people who decide to make a career indoctrinating children?
Creepiest moment (besides the infamous Haggard scene) was when the anti-abortionist guy was taping the kids mouth shut and told a young girl, “You look good” (or something similar).
I haven’t seen the movie; could anyone tell me if it questioned why the adults were indoctrinating kids to change the world, instead of the adults changing the world for themselves? Seems like there’s a sort of affixing responsibility to the children, that the adults aren’t willing to embrace, or sending the kids a message that they’re responsible to clean up the mess the adults have made … in fact, there seems to be a lot of that message in the evangelical / dominionist messages I’ve heard, where the speaker is telling a young audience “you’re the elijah generation” or whatever …
Sam
Samaritan said:
The camp’s leader, Becky Fischer, pulled up some statistic about people determining their religious viewpoint by a certain teen age. And yes, they told the children that their generation was somehow a special generation — the same stuff that every youth group has been told for decades now.
I think Fischer actually admits that it is simply easiers to indoctrinate children than jaded teenagers or adults. In other words, children are fresh meat unable to question and ill-equipped to seriously analyze what they’re being fed (sorry, mixing metaphors).
It would be interesting to see a follow-up to Jesus Camp in five or 10 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if some weren’t embarrassed by the documentary.
i appreciate that the makers of Jesus Camp let the people interviewed do all the talking; over all, there is some useful truth in this flick… as long as it’s taken with a grain (or maybe a bucket) of salt