DVD Review: "Jesus Camp"

Here's another user-submitted DVD review from MH:

At the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, “Jesus Camp,” a documentary directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing - the creators of The Boys of Baraka, made its debut to a shocked audience. The film guides viewers through highlights of the camp Kids on Fire, a summer retreat at Devil’s Lake, North Dakota for Evangelical youths and their families held in 2005.

"Jesus Camp” paints a very vivid and disturbing picture of the modern radical Evangelical movement and its training, mobilization and indoctrination of children. The film follows three children, Victoria, Rachel and Levi in their immersion into the Evangelical religion. These children, despite their age, are very motivated, dedicated and emotional about their faith, routinely approaching strangers, handing out literature about the Evangelical Gospel. They have been taught through home schooling and their youth pastor Becky Fischer, who runs the Kids on Fire camp, that the responsibility for ending abortion and other “worldly sins” rests squarely on their generations collective shoulders. Other “facts” that the children are taught by Becky Fischer are that global warming does not exist, the earth is only 6000 years old and the science can not prove anything, ironically presented on a PowerPoint slide.

Levi, who has aspirations of becoming an Evangelical minister, delivers a sermon in a John Hagee-esque style to his peers stating that he believes, “we are the key generation to bringing Jesus back.” During the camp session, children are coerced into praying to a life sized cardboard cutout of George W. Bush urging him to appoint “Righteous Judges” to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The most ironic moment in the film comes when the directors visit the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was headed by recently disgraced pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard. During their visit, Pastor Ted delivers a sermon on homosexuality and the importance for Evangelical Christians to vote conservative to ban homosexual marriage. From sermons like these, it is hard to determine whether the Evangelical Right is a religious movement, or a political puppet for conservative republicans and with 25% of Americans describing themselves as Evangelical Christians Jesus Camp doesn’t seem so far fetched.

Here is the trailer