Jesus Camp
Genre: Documentary
Cast: Kathy Fischer, Mike Papantonio, …
Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
Release: (2006)
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
- Proverbs 22:6
“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.”
- Becky Fischer, Jesus Camp
Thus spaketh the camp director, and thus summeth the tale. Depending on your particular religious orientation and level of paranoia, Jesus Camp is either an inspirational cause for hope or the scariest horror movie of all time. Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady take their skillful eyes for detail along deep into the heart of evangelical America, following a group of children and their families through a summer at the merciless “Kids on Fire” summer camp in, of all places, Devil’s Lake, ND. Becky Fischer is the director and driving force behind the camp and its crusade to save the souls of lost elementary schoolers in the name of her version of Jesus. A crusade which demands causing children to cry for their wickedness and beg for repentance, driving them to making up jibberish sounds to pretend that the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues through them so they are not suspected as heathens, and reminding them fiercefully that if Harry Potter had been in the Old Testament he’d have been put to death as an enemy of God.
In a different context, Fischer would be an absolutely fascinating subject to watch in and of herself. But Jesus Camp does the important job of reminding us that she does not exist in a vacuum. Suddenly what might have just been an interesting story of an eccentric individual feels more like an ominously gathering storm when we see the number of children and families being shaped in her mold. We are left gaping in disbelief as we hear both children and their parents reciting clearly memorized platitudes and passing them off as their own reasoning as they dismiss out-of-hand any discussion of evolution, global warming, and science in general. Radio personality Mike Papantonio, a religious man himself, is the only comforting presence to be found as he occasionally chimes in to voice our own incredulity for us.
Jesus Camp is a compelling, if not emotionally draining, film from start to finish. For all the anger and sympathy created for the adults and children, respectively, there is also a general poignancy to it about the desperation of trying to find meaning for one’s life. Becky Fischer, for all her obvious issues, can also be seen as a painfully lonely and disappointed woman who has found a way to position herself as a surrogate parent to other people’s children. In the parents, we can see an array of the voiceless middle class who have shifted their expectations for greatness from their own lives to their children’s. And in the children, we see the anticipation of youth who believe they are destined to change the world because grown-ups have told them so. It might all be sad, if it weren’t all so scary.
Grading
Story: N/A
Acting: N/A
Visuals: A (Great attention to mundane but meaningful details in shots)
Originality/Innovation: N/A
Enjoyability: C (Very uncomfortable to watch, but perhaps a must-see)
Overall: A
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