The documentary ‘Jesus Camp’
Thanks to the stalwart efforts of robhu I got to watch Jesus Camp the other day.
It is, as you might guess, about a kids’ camp run by, and for, evangelical Christians. The kids do the summer camp stuff which they don’t show much of (go-karting, you get the idea) and lots of Pentecostal praising, sermons and lectures.
The film follows three kids who attend the camp. There’s a bit of their home life shown for context-setting. Home-schooled, naturally: young-earth creationist, anti-science, the whole gamut. Two of the kids are pretty scary, even at that age (nine maybe, I can’t recall) but one girl, Victoria, still has a bit of life in her. She dances to Christian heavy metal some of which doesn’t actually mention Lord or Jesus. Aw, bless.
They go to camp and we see the minister preparing for the coming days. This preparation includes blessing the seats, the overhead projector, the Powerpoint presentation (I kid ye not) and the electricity supply. All with “the blood of Christ”, which I found to be a particularly graphic expression.
When the kids turn up they get lectures on the evils of Harry Potter. The word warlock is used to describe him, despite only appearing about twice in the whole series. They also get a particularly offensive sermon about abortion, where the man leading it hands out tiny plastic effigies of fully-formed babies. Yeah, that’s not going to sway the kids is it? I’m sure I heard him say they looked like that after just a few weeks - less than an inch long but fully articulate in all their senses and abilities, no doubt.
Of course the lecturing with untruths is what I expected. The really shocking stuff was the hysteria. Every sermon seemed to end with “praising with tongues”, waving arms around and unleashing pent-up energy. This, along with the whole atmosphere of heightened emotion and the “presence” of Jesus resulted in what I can only describe as mass hysteria.
Anyone who has seen the film of The Crucible (I can’t remember if the play is the same) will realise what I mean. It’s a kind of positive feedback of histrionic behaviour; kids shouting, throwing themselves around, crying and wailing, waving their arms and so on. I find it unsettling, especially exploiting to create a feeling of supernatural presence. I’m really not sure what kind of person you’d have to be to find that acceptable.
But it’s amazing how easily the children would buy into it all. Show them a cardboard cut out of Dubya and they will praise and bless it (and him) on your command. Ask them to stand on street corners and hand out tracts and they will. The other girl followed in film, Rachael, was seen selling religion at the bowling alley (as well as attempting to bless her ball; it didn’t work).
The last of the kids, Levi… well, aside from that awful haircut he was pretty dedicated. Wanted to be a preacher man. He even met everybody’s hero, Ted Haggard (the man with the gruesome grin), who was really condescending. But the boy really thinks he’s special cos he’s been indoctrinated into a weird cult and given a sub-standard education.
The film’s really low on narrative. There are subtitles to introduce the main players and the scene of the crime, but after that what you see is just what happened. Including the video of the boy who looks like he’s having a seizure but may just be “channelling the Lord’s love” or something.
The children’s pastor, as she is called, who runs the camp urges them almost continually to be ready to “fight” for Jesus, and for a “war”. She makes favourable comparisons with Islamist military training centres where devotees are taught about munitions as well as Mecca. This is how she wants her kids to be:
I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine.
Well mark me down as someone who would rather not see more death in the name of religion. The troubles in the Middle East are not to be emulated.