Jesus Camp

Since last night was Trivia Night, I am opening up the movie vault. I discovered recently that I like documentaries, but not just any documentary, it has to be one that displays the ugly side of something I hate, like FOX news. My family did not raise me to be religious, and kept me away from the people I refer to as "Nut Bags".

I see religion as both a power for good, and a power for evil. In Jesus camp, it shows the conscious effort of the religious evangelicals to begin to mold the minds of their future "army against evil" at a young age. A human brain does not fully finish forming until the early 20's, and therefor a child cannot make a conscious decision about matters of life. They choose what their parents choose, and display the same behavior as what they see around them, we learn language in this way.

The documentary takes place within the North Dakota summer camp for the "Kids on Fire School of Ministry" run by Becky Fischer who is a Pentecostal youth pastor. Due to the reactions of viewers of this film, the camp is now closed. Becky would preach and teach in a method similar to a basketball coach. She would film the actions of the children in church and study them at home for how susceptible they were to the preaching that was happening. The children would go into fits of crying and begin speaking in tongues. This a practice in the Pentecostal religion known also as Glossolalia, which is incoherent babble performed in a trance state and is thought of as religious ecstasy, or the workings of the Holy Spirit. Also known by me as bull shit.

The children are all home schooled to help the children "avoid" evil but is essentially to keep them away from other cultures, believes and perspectives as part of the religion, commonly known as brain washing. And they are allowed to grow rat tails, ew.

One of my issues/disagreements is the inability of the church to separate their religion from politics. This was shown in an all too memorable scene where a cardboard cut out of George W. Bush is brought out on stage for the children to pray to and lay their hands upon. He is called a "Holy Man", I assume this is not for his magnificent performance as President these last 8 years, but due to his religious beliefs.

But my main disagreement is with Fischer's emphasis on spiritual warfare. There is no gray in these teachings, it is only good and evil, and they must fight a war against all that is evil and all who they perceive to be evil. The ones who essentially are hurt, are the children, and during the movie it seems as though they are constantly being punished for actions in this world that they are not a part of, nor could they ever possibly understand at the age they are. These children look as though they are in agony, and I wonder if they even know why. Fischer is such a vile person, she has a complete understandidng of what she is doing to these children, she confesses at the end of the film that it's better to indoctrinate the "right" beliefs in children than not to at all. But what truly is right and what is wrong?

After the movie ended, I rang my mother and thanked her for the way she raised me.