I was considering whether to add my voice to the sea of reviews of this film on the internet and having watched it last night I felt the need to write down some thoughts. I’m sure we’re all aware of Jesus Camp, a documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady which follows Becky Fisher, the director of summer camp for Christian kids in Devil’s Lake, Michigan. The film has stirred much controversy for what the world calls it’s indoctrination of children into hyper charismatic, right wing conservative political agendas. Children writhe on the floor, they receive the Holy Spirit with tears, they speak in tongues as they are directed by the leaders and they pray, hands outstretched, for a cardboard cutout of George Bush.
In many ways it’s an unusual documentary featuring no commentary but instead allowing the footage to speak for itself in an hour and half of carefully edited cinema reel. I say carefully edited because the manner in which the film is presented makes you realise within the opening minutes just where Ewing and Grady are coming from. Sentences are cut short, emotionalism is depicted in decontextualised scenes all nicely spliced with creepy music and professing Christian radio show host Mike Papantonio ranting, amongst other things, about the religious right and their insistence that global warming isn’t happening. The film makers allow the footage to do the speaking for them and that’s the imbalance in the film. There is no attempt to understand why Evangelical Christians believe what they do, instead the audience is left to decide, without any input from other sources, why Christians rally against abortion and send their children to a camp where they smash cups with ‘government’ written on them whilst pleading the blood of Jesus over the sins of the nation. Of course, without context, the only conclusion you can come to is that these people are stark raving mad and it’s no surprise, imagine watching a documentary on a tribe in the deepest part of the Congo with no commentary. How could you ever understand it and if you don’t understand it, how can you edit it fairly?
Type Jesus Camp into google and what do you get? Surprise, surprise, 5th hit down, there’s a review from Josh Tinomen, organiser of the Out Campagin on Richard Dawkins website. Here’s a small portion of what he says:
‘Jesus Camp’ speaks without commentary like an ice pick to the heart and mind. In the United States we are in the presence of a dangerous and powerful Evangelical Christian movement that runs from local churches all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Unless a person is steeped in such fundamentalism, I think viewers will come away from ‘Jesus Camp’ with an extreme sense of urgency for rational organization and action against this spreading virus.
http://richarddawkins.net/mainPage.php?bodyPage=article_body.php&id=183
While I don’t disagree that the tactics of Becky Fisher and other evangelicals like her are largely emotion based, the editing of the film leaves one in little doubt that the film makers want you to consider this child abuse. This feeds into the growing tin foil hat New Atheist movement who damn Becky Fisher (to where I’m not sure) and those who would spread the virus of faith to innocent children through their memes and underhand super conspiracies to drag America back into a mind sucking theocracy where rights will be impinged, religion will be enforced and those who dissent will be dragged to their death by a salivating mob of Jesus freaks. I still haven’t seen any scientific proof of these memes by the way.
One of the most amusing points I found while researching the film is that Jesus Camp has now closed down due to threats and vandalism on the camp site. Yet the threats have not only come from dissenters. According to one website some have threatened a boycott if the camp continues while others say they will protest if it doesn’t. The nut crackers on both sides are escalating the culture war in the US, Jesus Camp lights the blue touch paper, stands back and watches as the sparks ignite and explode in a flurry of Evangelical witnessing and Secular ‘rationality’. If the above review is anything to go by, I’m not sure I’d want my children going to either Becky Fisher or Josh Timonen for their values and reasoning.
I guess I’m revealing my viewpoint now so the following is written on a more personal note. I was brought up in the hyper charismatic pentecostal movement in the UK in the early 90s. I went to camps just like this so can witness first hand the emotionalism and hype that is portrayed on screen. The problem with much of evangelicalism today is that it relies to heavily on that emotion and subtly but not deliberately sweeps away the real issue of our personal sin before the Lord Jesus Christ. After leaving home, going to University and wandering in my faith I came across a group of Christians who knew their Bible’s inside out yet didn’t feel the need to throw themselves about on the floor crying, wailing and speaking in tongues. It encouraged me to read my Bible and in my private time I came across a passage which, for me, sums it all up.
Let all things be done decently and in order. 1 Cor 14:40
When I see this kind of behaviour from Evangelical Christians I am saddened that they feel it is a spiritual encounter when much of the time there seems to be so much fluffy emotional cotton wool that you have to wade through to come to the simplicity of the cross and focus on what Jesus did for us there. We don’t need to cry, we don’t need to writhe on the floor or speak in tongues, we simply need Christ. This film is honest in it’s intention but fails to understand the radical world view that fundamentalist american Christians hold. This behaviour stems from this world view and, while I find it cringe worthy and abhorrent in many ways, is passed on in a radical form to their children with love and sincerity. I wouldn’t ever expect a non evangelical to understand that. The rational reasonists see nothing but child abuse where I see misunderstood radicalism for Jesus. In one scene the children sit down for dinner and a gentleman thanks God for the food and provision, then pleads for the sins of the nation and for God to end abortion. I mean, couldn’t he just say thanks for the food? I admire his passion and agree with him but what’s abortion got to do with your ‘tater tots and sausages? I also wonder how capable these small children are of fighting the battle against abortion. How can they fight in the political battlefield when they’re only 9 years old? It seems that much of what they say and do is an off shoot of what their parents think. We have a Biblical mandate to bring our children up in God’s ways but I don’t believe we should put them on the battle ground before they have made a personal, repentant commitment to Christ and are old enough to understand the issues at hand.
Jesus Camp is the stereotypical view of fundamentalism which makes the papers, films and TV documentaries but doesn’t reflect the majority of Christians in the world. I’m a fundamentalist and I disagree with the methods these people are using to teach their children about Jesus but I also believe the core of it is true and that they are true brothers and sisters in the Lord. For people like Timonen I suspect that’s too hard to swallow but surely a free thinker could look at it from both sides instead of an outright condemnation of what Fisher and company are doing as child abuse. I wonder if secularists ever realise that fundamentalists consider their world view as dangerous since it not only fails to acknowledge God but seeks to eradicate it and catagorise belief as a mental disorder? It’s a thinker.
TRF
Perceptions of Reality 