JESUS CAMPS TWIST YOUNG MINDS

[PHILIP RACUEL]

Here is a good review I found- located here:

www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/

I saw this film at SilverDocs, a documentary film festival at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring. It's excellent, and I highly recommend it.
The basic storyline follows a year in the lives of three children from evangelical Christian families in Missouri, and focuses considerably on their experience at an evangelical summer camp ("Kids on Fire" in Devil's Lake, ND). The kids, 12-year-old Levi, 10-year-old Tory, and 9-year-old Rachel are, of course, endearing in their cuteness, but frightening in their fervor. Levi thinks that he will become a pastor, and his preaching to kids is starkly reminiscent of the Bible thumpers of Sunday morning TV. At camp, Tory is shown several times with tears streaming down her face, not least when a pro-life leader comes and distributes miniature plastic fetuses to illustrate the evil of abortion and again when many kids at camp begin speaking in tongues. Rachel, a nine-year-old evangelist, walks up to perfect strangers to ask them if they believe they're going to heaven and whether they would like to talk about Jesus. In short, the kids are the perfect spokespeople for the Jesus movement.

The documentary goes beyond their experiences at camp and paints a vivid image of the evangelical subculture in middle America. From scenes with a mother home schooling her son on the lunacy of evolution to kids at camp praying fervently for a cardboard cutout of George W Bush, the tenacious beliefs of the subjects and their utter lack of doubt is striking. The infusion of politics into religion is also notable, as the children are told of the evils of homosexuality, that prayer in school is necessary for schools to teach effectively, and that America is responsible for the deaths of fifty million innocent children since 1973. The families even travel to Washington to protest in front of the Supreme Court building.

The most awkward parts of the movie were scenes with Mike Papantonio, an Air America radio host. I felt the scenes involving him seemed a little forced, although a conversation at the end between the charismatic camp director, Becky Fischer, and Papantonio was an interesting microcosm of the larger political debate in this country. Interestingly, during a film festival question and answer session with the producers (Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady), they indicated that Papantonio was a late addition to the film because without him, there was no conflict. The people in the film were so sure of their beliefs that nothing in the movie showed them wavering. I wonder if the film might not have been stronger if they had left that sense of certainty alone.

Ewing and Grady also chose to use the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court as a thread to tie the film together. Unfortunately, none of the subjects of the documentary spent much time talking directly about the Supreme Court. They talked about some of the issues that the Supreme Court might deal with, but the nomination of judges didn't seem to be a big factor in their lives. There were a few scenes in which radio announcers and guest speakers at the camp encouraged the families to pray for the nomination of judges who agree with evangelical Christians, but I didn't think that there was enough to hold that particular thread together.

During the question and answer session, Ewing and Grady indicated that while they were both fairly secular, big city Democrats, they honestly liked the people in the documentary. In their view, the people in the documentary followed the law, and they worked to make the country better as they saw it, so what's wrong with that? They expressed interest in making a follow-up movie in five years to see whether the kids' faith survives puberty. It would certainly be an interesting experiment. They indicated that Fischer and the families that were profiled had seen the final project and thought that it was a fair representation of their lives. Fischer even thought that she could use it as an evangelical tool! At the same time, the audience I saw it with was overwhelmingly liberal and they also reacted positively (and, I'll say, with a fair degree of shock). To me, that says that Ewing and Grady did a nice job of ensuring that their biases did not show through into the movie, leaving audiences to read into it as they choose.

And this comment was posted by someone who actually was a kid who had to attend one of these mind-twisting Jesus camps:

I went to a "Jesus Camp". Not the one in the movie, but a Jesus Camp just the same. I am an ex-Christian, and I personally know the scary reality of Christian fundamentalist indoctrination of children.

That said, I REALLY want to see this movie. At that same time, however, I dread it. It's going to be like reliving those experiences, only this time I won't be young and impressionable. This time, now that I am an intelligent adult and non-Christian, I will likely be sad, angry, and ashamed that I was ever involved with such a travesty. This REALLY scares the *beep* out of me. I encourage everyone to see this movie, if only to understand an aspect of our country that most don't know exists. Sorry if it offends you (it is not my intention to insult anyone), but this bull crap needs to be exposed and stopped.

I may look into this story later in October if one of the other P&M writers do not. Forcing twisted religious beliefs on children is child abuse in my opinion.

In another thread, here in this section, I posted a link to a story I covered in June 2005. It dealt with a gay teen being forced to attend a "make you heterosexual in Jesus' name" camp.

On his blog the kid wrote this...from my post:

While Bryan does have a MYSPACE account I am not going to publish the address here, I will, however, show you a bit of what he has said, in his own words, so you can see the struggle parents and "fixed" gays impose on good kids that just want to love who they want and be who they are:

"Well today, my mother, father, and I had a very long "talk" in my room where they let me know I am to apply for a fundamentalist christian program for gays. They tell me that there is something psychologically wrong with me, and they "raised me wrong." I'm a big screw up to them, who isn't on the path God wants me to be on. So I'm sitting here in tears, joining the rest of those kids who complain about their parents on blogs - and I can't help it."

Sorry that is making me tear up, as some of you may know I lost my boy to cancer three years ago. I cannot understand how parents can be so selfish, so cruel and so oblivious to the pain the are causing their child. Their man-made beliefs and hate-based interpretations of the Bible overshadow the love their Christ told them to have towards their children...they make me sick.

and here is what the director of the camp had to say about the gay kids he tries to fix...again from my post that is linked below:

Here is a statement from FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LOVE IN ACTION, John Smid (pictured left) who operates THE REFUGE,the camp in which Bryan has been forced to attend. The Love In Action website describes the camp as "an intensive program designed to minister to adolescents struggling with broken and addictive behaviors, such as promiscuity, alcohol & drug addiction and homosexuality".

"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery."


GO BACK...read that again..."I would rather you commit suicide..."

Again these are the people the Bush crime family supports and panders to.

Doesn't this turn your stomach?

If you want to read the whole article you can go here:

pracuel.livejournal.com/50681.html