As promised, I saw Jesus Camp yesterday, and now I have thoughts. I’ll warn you beforehand, though, that I’ll probably get into details about particular scenes, and if you feel like that will spoil the movie for you, then stop reading now.
Although it terrified me, I liked it. I thought it was well done, and sympathetic to its subjects. The film focuses on one Pentecostal parish, highlighting the children’s minister and a few of the kids. The minister runs a children’s Bible camp every summer in North Dakota, and the filmmakers head out there and document what goes down.
A primary theme of the movie is the combat mentality of the Christians featured in the film. Words like “battle,” “warrior,” “war,” “training,” “Christian soldier” and “enemy” are tossed around regularly. The children’s pastor repeatedly references the idea that Christians are at war against “the enemy” (Islam, secularism, the devil), and the kids are flat-out told that they’re being “trained.” There’s a lot of emphasis on obedience — in one scene, a little girl hands out an Evangelical pamphlet to a woman in a bowling ally, because she felt like God was telling her to do it, and one of the youth pastors congratulates her by saying, “Way to be obedient!”
But perhaps the strangest part of the movie was the deep cognitive dissonance displayed by the Christian adults. Islam is positioned one “enemy” early-on, and the youth pastor (Becky Fischer) talks about how “the enemy” is focusing on the children — in Palestine, she argues, kids are taught from the time they’re young that they’re part of an army, they’re given hand gernades and guns, and it’s no wonder that they’re willing to lay down their lives for their beliefs. This, the viewer quickly assumes, is a bad thing. Then she follows up by saying that Christians need to do the same thing, and that she wants little Christian soldiers who are willing to lay down their lives for Christ. The difference between Christians and radical Muslims, she says, is that Christians have The Truth.
And these sorts of logical disjuncts weren’t just limited to the church leaders. The film focuses on three kids — Levi, Rachael and Tory, who are all about 10 years old, and all of whom you walk out of the theater feeling incredibly sorry for. There’s a scene in Levi’s house where he’s playing a Creationism video game which “teaches” him that the world was created 6,000 years ago by God, and that humans didn’t come from “a bunch of goo — yuck!” He goes from playing the game to the classroom — his kitchen table, with his mom. And they’re learning about “science” from a Creationist text book. The most striking thing is how highly politicized their conversation is. The mom asks a question from the book, which is something along the lines of, “Politicians use the fact that summers are getting warmer as evidence of global warming. What is wrong with this line of reasoning?” Levi’s answer is that summers have only gotten something like 0.6 degrees warmer, and that’s not a big deal at all. They also talk about evolution, and the lesson essentially comes down to the idea that Creationism is the only possible explanation for the earth. The funny thing about science, his mom tells him, is that it never actually proves anything. It just has these theories and guesses, but it can never tell you anything for sure. Since Christians have absolute truth, why trust science?
The mother asked Levi, “How would you feel if you went to a school where they told you that Creationism was stupid, and you’re stupid if you believe in it?” Levi looked a little shocked, and said he wouldn’t like that at all. Then she asked him how he’d feel if his school told him that evolution was stupid, and you’re stupid if you believe in it — Levi laughed, and said that would be ok. His mom laughed and agreed.
The scene ends with Levi’s brother announcing that he’s going to write his paper on why Galileo should have given up science and followed Christ.
The sermons given at camp are also highly politicized. At one point in the film, a church leader brings out a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush, and all the campers pray over him and praise him for surrounding himself with Godly people. An anti-choice activist is invited in, and he passes around plastic fetus models, which all look exactly like curled-up babies in varying sizes. He announces that one of the models, which is about 2 inches long and looks exactly like a baby, is an exact model of a fetus at 7 weeks old. The kids touch them and look sad. The man announces that God knew each of them before they were born, and wrote the books of their lives before their birth. He further says that 1/3 more of their friends should be here today, but they were killed before they were born and so they couldn’t come. Isn’t that sad? Then they pray to end abortion in America, something he says has been going on since 1973 — which is interestingly revisionist, and I suppose means that abortion before Roe doesn’t matter. He gives them pro-life bracelets, and plasters their mouths shut with red tape with the word “LIFE” written across it. Why they’re having their mouths taped shut in Church, where it isn’t exactly a protest, isn’t clear. Everyone prays, and the kids cry. There’s lots of crying in this movie.
There isn’t much talk about what it actually means to be a good person, or what Jesus said beyond “follow me.” There aren’t any volunteer efforts or discussions about community service or helping others. There’s lots of guilting the kids for being “bad” — telling ghost stories, reading Harry Potter, or talking dirty — and the praise for being “good” is focused on their obedience, not on any actual good acts. This version of Christianity is clearly about war, not peace or kindness or helping others. This point was driven home in this interview with the filmmakers and the children’s pastor, in which the pastor says, “We adhere to that scripture. So it has nothing to do with your works. You can sing in the choir, give all your money to charity, give your body to be burned for the saving of a poor orphan child in Afghanistan, but if you don’t name Jesus Christ as the lord of your life, that’s the deciding factor of where’s your going to spend eternity.”
And that certainly comes through in their acts, or lack thereof.
The filmmakers emphasize the fact that these people feel that they’re at war, and that they aren’t going to stop until they win. And it’s not about making the world a better place, or helping people out, it’s simply about acquiring more souls for Jesus and blindly following the word of the Bible — or rather, selected words of the Bible. The kids, for them, are footsoldiers for their movement to “take America back” for Christ. And the kids speak about their beliefs like miniature adults — they don’t sound like kids when they’re talking about God, they sound like they’re parroting things that they’ve heard grown-ups. Levi, for example, talks about how he was five years old when he “got saved,” and he found Jesus because he just felt like there had to be more to life. At five. The filmmakers follow that with a statistic that about half of Evangelical Christians are “born again” before age 13.
I hesitate to use the word “brainwashing” because I’m not sure that’s what this is, but it’s certainly disturbing. The kids are brought up being told that their generation is absolutely key in Jesus’s return, and they seem to think that He will come back in their lifetime. There’s an incredible narcissism in all of it, which is understandable in the kids, but is more disturbing when it comes from the adults. It’s a nice idea that Jesus cares about you specifically, and that you’re more special than the other kids at school because you know the Lord in a way that they don’t. That’s an acceptable belief for a ten-year-old, but when you hear 40-year-olds saying it, it’s a little more questionable. And when the adults start to compete with the kids for God’s blessings, it’s even more disturbing. There’s a scene with a famous Colorado Springs Evangelical preacher with deep political connections (he meets with George W. Bush every Monday) speaking with Levi. Levi tells the preacher that he wants to be a preacher too, and that he already gives sermons at his church, and people seem to listen. The adult preacher asks Levi if he thinks it’s his kid cuteness that makes people listen, or his content. Levi says he doesn’t know, and the preacher responds that he should milk his kid cuteness for as long as possible, and when he gets to the point where he can’t milk it anymore, he’ll hopefully have some content to what he says. The message is clear: You’re just a silly little kid with nothing to say, and don’t you dare try and creep into my terrority and challenge me. God loves me best, so step off, rugrat.
To compound just how disturbing the film is, several people in the film talk about how this is a great time to be a Christian — the best they’ve encountered in their lifetimes. George W. Bush is in power, and Evangelism is being spread world-wide. It’s socially accepted in unprecedented ways. They have an ear in the White House, and are seeing their religious beliefs being legislated across the country.
The film certainly had its weak points — I wasn’t a big fan of the liberal radio commentator, whose statements were interspersed throughout the documentary. But it was effective at focusing on a few basic things, and humanizing its subjects. I walked out deeply disturbed, but also feeling genuinely sorry for the kids in the film. It was clear that they’re taking the “culture wars” seriously, and that their culture of blind obedience to authority, war for Jesus, and little focus on actual goodness is being trumpeted across the nation. And why shouldn’t it work? It’s easy enough. Just accept Jesus into your heart, and nothing else is really required of you, except judgment of others who haven’t found Him yet, and attempts to make those other people see the Truth. You certainly don’t have to pursue anything intellectual — a cornerstone of the movement is that nothing is true except God, science is a joke, and intellectualism is a silly pursuit. And these people have a whole lot of pull in American politics.
The big unanswered question, of course, is how you shift the beliefs of people who don’t believe in reason or facts or science or physical proof, and for whom any argument can be trumped by simply stating, “But that’s not what the Bible says.”
The kids in the film are sort of a sad bunch. They’re all cute and sweet, and you certainly feel for them, but it’s relatively clear that they’re a little socially off, and Christian camp is very much a crutch for them. One of the more passionately religious girls, Rachael, is always by herself, even at camp. She mentions being teased at school, but says she doesn’t care because she’s a Christian, and what God thinks of her is what really matters. Christianity, for a lot of these kids, seems like a coping mechanism and a way for them to fit in socially, when they’re usually shy or awkward at school. They’re desperate to please adults, molding themselves into good little obedient soldiers and crying rivers when Pastor Becky guilts them in her sermons. There’s a scene in which one boy admits that he sometimes doubts his belief in God, and he absolutely bawls about it.
I hope that some of the kids in the film are able to escape it, but I have my doubts. There’s a great scene at the end where one of the girls, Rachael, is in Washington D.C. and approaches a group of three older black men to spread God’s word. She asks them, “When you die, where do you think you’ll go?” They respond, “Heaven.” She’s thrown off and says, “…are you sure?” “Pretty sure,” they respond. “Oh… ok,” she says, and retreats, confused. When she’s a few yards away from them she turns to her companion and says, “I think they were Muslims.”
These kids are growing up thoroughly insulated and under-educated. And yet they’re being bred to strive for powerful positions in government, and not rest until their religious beliefs are the ruling laws of our country. They’re being trained, and aren’t afraid to call themselves soldiers and warriors for their cause. And if there’s one thing that Jesus Camp drives home, it’s the idea that we should not continue to underestimate them.
Has anyone else seen it? Thoughts?