Jesus Camp

Allen rented this mediocre documentary called Jesus Camp yesterday. It's really more a recording of a summer camp run by a radical Evangelical pastor named Becky Fischer. She is trying to rally America's youth into being soldiers of Christ. And by soldiers she means she literally wants them to be willing to DIE in the name of Jesus or Christianity.

Fischer says:

It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!

She particularly targets 7-10 year-olds, but it seemed like there were children as young as five attending this camp. In her sermons, she covers topics such as abortion, praying for the President and how to "take America back for Christ."


The girl to the right loves dancing, but she warns that people have to stay focused on Jesus lest they dance "for the flesh." She admits that she has trouble herself. In this photo still, I believe she is repenting after Pastor Becky Fischer scolds the children for being fake-Christians. If not, then she's crying over all the "babies" lost due to abortion. Some guy was handing out little plastic baby figures, fully formed with fingers and toes, and saying that that's what a 7-week-old "baby" (the rest of us would call it a fetus) looks like.

Many of the children focused on in the documentary admit that they're ostracized by other kids, but maintain that it's all worth it because in the end they will only be held accountable by God. Most of the kids are home-schooled by their mothers, including being taught that global-warming is not a real problem and that "science never proved anything." This may explain why President Bush, in his recent State of the Union, didn't use the phrase global-warming; instead he called it "global climate change."

Here's one of the more disturbing facts uncovered: Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, leads over 30 million Americans. Haggard speaks to President Bush and his advisers every Monday. Yeah, that's totally in keeping with the whole 'separation of church and state' ideology that this country was founded on.

Unfortunately, the documentary isn't as powerful as it could be. While most of the footage is very disturbing, showing small children crying, speaking in tongues, shaking on the ground and wearing tape across their mouths with the word "Life" scrawled on it - protesting our laws protecting a woman's right to choose, the film could have been much more compelling. It's worth renting just so you can see what's happening in some part of this country.