Synopsis: America is Being Born Again.

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement.

Jesus Camp follows Levi, Rachael, and Tory to Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire” summer camp in devil’s Lake, North Dakota, where kids as young as 6 years-old are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in “God’s army.” The film follows these children at camp as they hone their “prophetic gifts” and are schooled in how to “take back America for Christ.”

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Jesus Camp 8.0

eyelights: the intense conviction of these followers. the creepy indoctrination of all these influenceable children.
eyesores: the film’s limited scope.

“I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag…”

‘Jesus Camp’ is a 2006 documentary that takes us to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, at Christ Triumphant Church, where children are enlisted for a Christian summer camp in which they are to be indoctrinated and trained to be a part of God’s Army. It was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

Filmed in the summer of 2005, this 85-minute film is loaded with interview segments with the participants, footage of the kids’ personal lives and a lot of material on their time at Kids On Fire School of Ministry, which purports to teach them to become religious leaders, and which is ironically located at Devils Lake, North Dakota.

As I watched ‘Red State‘, I couldn’t help but think of this film: the extreme devotion to a religious cause was similar in both, and I could imagine the kids in this doc becoming zealots like the ones in Kevin Smith’s picture. It seemed only natural to dig this one up and watch it again. Plus which, it would make for great conversation fodder.

‘Jesus Camp’ focuses on just a few participants:

Levi: “I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ.”

Levi is a teenager who made me think of a young Nick Cave. He seems intelligent and certainly vibrant, and is extremely focused on his faith, desperately wanting to become a preacher. He seemed sweet, and I can’t help but be concerned about how he’s being formed by these adults. What were his teen years like (he must be around 20-years-old now), and what will his adult life be like?

I also couldn’t help but wonder about his rat’s tail, which is a style that was popular in the mid-’80s, some 20 years prior. I remember at the time that some people equated that with Satan, because he was traditionally portrayed with a twisted little strip of hair at the base of his head. Isn’t it ironic that this wannabe preacher and Soldier in Jesus’ Army has a look that’s taken from Lucifer himself?

Rachael: “If you were to die right now in this moment, where do you think you’d go?”
Guy on park bench: “Heaven”
Rachael: “Really?”
Guy on park bench: “Yeah, sure.”
Rachael: “Oh… okay. Have a nice day!”
(runs back to her friends)
Rachael: “I think they were Muslims!”

Rachael comes off an eager but naive little girl who is trying her hardest to do what she thinks is right. Of course, what one might judge to be the “right thing” depends on one’s beliefs, but she does her best. The key problem is that she’s been so hammered into believing that she’s righteous that she also has a narrow view of a lot of other people, which brings her one step away from prejudice and then bigotry.

She is so busy trying to decrypt people that she frequently puts them in boxes, whether they deserve to be or not. My favourite (apart from the “Muslim” bit above) is this moment when she criticizes church-goers who are solemn, saying that the more animated one is the more God responds. Ironically, the more animated churches are frequently African-American churches, and she probably would dismiss them as Muslims…

Becky Fischer: “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!”

Becky Fischer is the self-styled Minister behind the summer camp. She talks at length about her beliefs and intentions throughout the picture, and shows us all the preparation that she puts into her work. Honestly, much of it is simple-minded and unsophisticated. There’s plenty of footage of Fisher sermonizing to the children and their parents with a disturbing fervour.

Frankly, Fischer came off as a self-serving egotist. When she began one of her speeches by asking people about her hair, then her face (?) then her body, she expressed a disgusting amount of vanity given the children-oriented context. And given that she was ranting about sin with such vitriol (sinners should be put to death, she claims), I wonder what God would think of her vanity?

There are other players and other kids in ‘Jesus Camp’, but these three are by far the most significant, getting almost all of the screen time. The film also counters some of the religious propaganda with footage of Mike Papantonio, an attorney and a radio talk-show host for Air America Radio’s Ring of Fire, discussing the issues on his radio show; this provides some counterpoint.

There are these terrifying moments at the camp, which leave a permanent imprint on one’s memory:

• The Soldiers in Jesus’ Army are shamed into admitting that they have been hypocrites and have sinned outside of church. Fischer had all these kids group up at the front and douse their hands in water (from a mere Nestlé bottle, not “Jesus Water”) to wash themselves of their sins. Then some of the kids made humiliating admissions in front of the whole group. The psychological abuse that they were made to suffer is totally unjustifiable. Those poor kids.

• Fischer practices such intense fear-mongering that some of the children are visibly upset. There’s this fragile, blonde-haired boy who looks so deeply troubled by it all that I felt horrible for him. He was all red-faced and puffy from crying, and seemed inconsolable. Frankly, it seems to me that terrorizing children this way shouldn’t be a Christian thing to do. Even if one believes that there are dangers in the world, and that children need to be prepared, there are more strategic ways to do so – without psychologically traumatizing them. They are, after all, insecure human beings. This felt almost evil to me.

• Fischer has the congregation “speak in tongues”. Speaking in tongues is usually reserved for people gifted by the Holy Spirit with the ability to speak in a mystical language. What Fisher does is getting the children to ramble total gibberish and telling them that they are gifted. It is, in fact, a learned behaviour, not an actual gift, so she’s imparting upon them delusional beliefs – which could cause a crisis of faith at a later point in their lives.

Unfortunately, ‘Jesus Camp’ has a limited scope: it only focuses on this one group, and amongst them just a few people. It is hardly representative of the masses and thereby only serves to highlight a fringe group, making them seem more important than they are. Perhaps religious extremism is more significant, perhaps even rampant, but then the film should have covered a larger swath than this.

The filmmakers claim that they were trying to be objective, but I don’t believe they succeeded. The way that the events are portrayed makes the participants look a little crazy, possessed, and they countered many of the believers’ assertions in the form of a more grounded Papantonio. Admittedly, it’s possible that my own bias(es) colour(s) the experience, and that it could be viewed in a positive light by some.

Maybe.

To me, though, it’s a really scary notion that we might have such religious extremism on our own shores: Muslim or Christian, no matter what religion or where it’s form, zealotry is extremely dangerous – it can lead people to commit actions that wouldn’t be acceptable to them under normal circumstances, of justifying terrible deeds by way of their beliefs. We’ve seen plenty of wars and other atrocities because of this.

To make matters worse, molding (or twisting, really) children through fear is a profoundly disturbing notion. That anyone could do this and consider it acceptable should be a crime. Children should be taught, not hammered. I’m not against faith, necessarily, even though I’m not convinced that any religion has the answer, but I wish that one would find a loving God, not a vengeful one, at ‘Jesus Camp’.

“We believe that there’s two kinds of people in this world: people who love Jesus and people who don’t.”

Post scriptum: Due to the controversy that the film attracted, the “Kids On Fire School of Ministry” camp has been indefinitely put on hold.

Date of viewing: November 17, 2013