“Jesus Camp”
Directed by: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
(Magnolia Pictures)
Grade: B+
By Steven Rosen
“Jesus Camp,” a documentary about children at an Evangelical
Christian summer camp with a decidedly conservative political agenda, arrives
in Cincinnati Friday with an unusual back story.
The filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“The Boys of
Baraka”), received cooperation from a Pentecostal children’s minister, Becky
Fischer, to record the goings-on at her “Kids on Fire” camp – as well as to
follow three children who attend. The children, from different Missouri
families, are Levi, Rachael and Tory – good, well-behaved kids.
Amazingly and too ironic to be coincidental, this camp is
located in Devils Lake, North Dakota. This is a place where children learn that
charismatic-style religion and conservative politics are intertwined in the
eyes of their adult authority figures. They pray for a cardboard cut-out of
President Bush, are warned about the witchcraft in “Harry Potter” and ghost
stories, and are encouraged to get into such an intense, trancelike state while
worrying about abortion that they suffer crying fits and mini-breakdowns. To
Fischer, they are capable of becoming child preachers helping to recruit for
her cause.
She expresses her agenda militantly and even
militaristically, comparing her task to that of Palestinians (Islamic
fundamentalists, presumably) using their camps to teach their children to
sacrifice themselves in a war for control of the Holy Land.
With an agenda like that, one would think Fischer an
immediately scary figure – like Robert Mitchum’s portrayal of a homicidal
preacher in “Night of the Hunter” stalking children with “Love” tattooed on one
hand and “Hate” on the other.
But because she actually is an engaging and outgoing person,
as are the children and their parents, the filmmakers and their distributor Magnolia
Pictures decided to open “Jesus Camp” in the red-state Heartland first.
Presumably, they thought, other Evangelicals would like this portrait. Fischer,
herself, is supportive of the film.
But an interesting thing happened. A Colorado Springs
religious leader – Rev. Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals
– blasted the movie and encouraged others not to see it. Haggard is in the
film, when the three children attend a service at his huge church. He has said
in the press he opposes “Jesus Camp” because it gives a distorted view of the
Evangelical movement by concentrating on a fringe wing.
The film has done poorly in those Heartland locations. But
in bigger cities it is attracting a far bigger and different audience. There,
many see it as the latest muckraking expose – along the lines of “Fahrenheit
9/11” or “Why We Fight” – of the secretive rightwing network that has allowed a
polarizing President to maintain power and push his agenda. In particular, they
say, this shows how some Christian conservatives indoctrinate their kids to the
point of child abuse.
Removing politics from the equation, the film might also
remind those concerned about religious teaching practices of the disturbing
“The Devil’s Playground” of a few years back. That showed how the Amish
encourage their children to drop out of school as soon as possible…so they
don’t learn anything contradictory to the faith.
Unlike “Fahrenheit” or “Why We Fight,” “Jesus Camp” isn’t a
leftist essay and doesn’t have flippantly editorialist comic montages. It
observes its subjects with little if any commentary or directorial intrusion,
although it has an awful score that seems to want to make every scene ominous
and foreboding.
Ewing and Grady’s role models here are the more
traditionally straightforward, verite-style documentarians like Frederick
Wiseman or the Maysles brothers, especially the latter’s portrait of
door-to-door bible peddlers, “Salesman.”
They do break away from their narrative to include on-air
commentary from Air America radio personality Mike Papantonio, whose show “Ring
of Fire” frequently targets the conservative Christian movement. (He is an
active Methodist.)
This provides a balance of sorts – it shows there’s a more
mainstream Christian view of American values than what otherwise is being
espoused here. But “Jesus Camp” would benefit from more background information
on where charismatic Pentecostalism, Evangelical Christianity, and conservative
Christianity intersect and where they diverge.
Still, putting all that aside, it’s hard not to watch the
scenes at the camp, where these kids are pushed to tears and beyond by the adults
and not ask, “What in God’s name is going on?” This doesn’t look like proper religious
education. And it’s heartbreaking to see sweet Rachael, for instance, wander up
to strangers like a beggar seeking a handout as she clumsily tries to convert
or recruit them.
It should be noted here that the parents of the children are
articulate and sincere. They worry about their children in a society driven by
crass pop culture and the act of violence that they consider abortion to be. And
they fear that secularism may be why that culture has gotten so extreme. They
home-school their children at least partly to protect them. Their aim is true.
They’re practicing their freedom of religion.
Yet, as they and Fletcher and her staff express their
beliefs to their young charges and to the filmmakers – pro-Creationism,
abortion is murder, global warming doesn’t exist, etc. – you have to wonder: What
if they’re wrong about that?
Doesn’t society have an interest in making sure the children
know the full body of knowledge on a given subject? Shouldn’t kids be learning how
to separate that which is provable from that which is believed on faith? And
shouldn’t they be able to learn without being worked into a panic?
(This ran in Cincinnati CityBeat, 2006.)
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