Jesus Camp

I generally take documentaries with a grain of salt, largely because most of the ones I've seen are very one-sided, promote a particular agenda or belief, and presume that the audience is dumb enough to blindly swallow what they're told (yes, I'm talking to you, Michael Moore!). That being said, you might very well ask, "Then why, Fritz, did you watch Jesus Camp?" To that, I have a very simple yet very honest answer: curiosity.

I first heard of the documentary Jesus Camp a few months back when it was discussed in an online chat on washingtonpost.com, and from there my interest was piqued. The film starts out on a solitary roadway somewhere in middle America, with radio voiceovers discussing various Christian values, the nomination of Samuel Alito, and then moves on to a radio commentator who discusses how Christian values are deeply permeating—and deeply dividing—American culture. Listening to him speak, you get the sense that he feels, while still a Christian himself, that the Christian influence is getting out of control, that it's being allowed to run riot and is going unchecked . . . particularly in Washington. From here we move onto the church of Becky Fisher, a Midwestern evangelical minister who runs a Bible camp in North Dakota. Along with Becky Fisher, Jesus Camp largely follows two of the camps attendees: 12-year-old Levi, who got saved at the age of 5 because he, in his own words, "wanted more out of life"; and Rachael, who finds self-confidence from the belief that she needs answer only to God rather than others her own age.

One thing that immediately struck me about this documentary is that directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady didn't openly narrate the story and outwardly control the film's progression (Michael Moore, I'm again looking in your direction). Rather, they let the participants speak for themselves, thus allowing them to show their own progression through Bible camp and how they learned to become better Christians. That aside, there's no other narration whatsoever, aside from a few screen notes about who's who, how many evangelical Christians are in America, etc. I can commend this approach, but at the same time, it also led to this documentary feeling more like news coverage rather than an actual examination of something.

And I don't really know just how accurate their presentation is of Becky Fisher, but she comes across to the viewer as very passionate about her belief system, and knowing just how to sway an audience. I was left rather uneasy with her sermons, not because of how they made me feel spiritually, but because of how her sermons teetered precariously on psychological manipulation. For example, they showed her using props to very great effect when she was illustrating how to come to faith, like inflating and deflating a balloon to show the gaining and loss of faith. Or how things like stuffed animals can symbolize temptation, or falling away from Christ. I guess I was bothered by these techniques because they were used on children—those at a highly impressionable age, via props that this age group can relate to. And in an early interview with Becky Fisher, she openly states that children are the perfect target audience for her message, simply because they're so impressionable. That just doesn't sit well with me—for obvious reasons, and also because I was watching children seeking out God because of guilt, because they were made to feel ashamed of who they were, thus leading them to want forgiveness from a higher power.

Guilt, in fact, was the big motivator behind all the teachings, because at every turn, everything these kids did was framed in the perspective of, "Does this make me a bad Christian?" Like when they were telling ghost stories late at night in their bunks, "Does this make me a bad Christian?" Or if one kid likes Harry Potter (which Becky Fisher heavily denounced), "Does this make me a bad Christian?" Me, I don't believe that guilt is a way to force spiritual acceptance on anyone, of any age. And again, I don't know how accurate a representation we're being given of Becky Fisher, but I wasn't left with a very favorable impression of her through this documentary.

But getting back to Levi and Rachael for a moment, I think both of them were home-schooled. We're shown several scenes of Levi's home-schooling, where particular emphasis is given to the Christianity vs. science debate. Essentially, Levi and his family choose to dismiss the findings of science simply because they don't conform to their Christian values. They dismissed outright as silly the notion of global warming (asking if 0.6 degrees per year will really make a difference) or the notion that the Earth was more than 6,000 years old. Levi's mother has the strong belief that society's ills stem from the removal of prayer from school—nothing more, nothing less.

But what really struck me—and bothered me—was when Levi was given a choice about the teachings of creationism vs. evolution. The way it was framed to Levi was, first his mother made the statement, "Evolution is stupid!" Followed up by, "Creationism is stupid!" Then he was given the choice as to which perspective he agreed with. Obviously he related more to the "evolution is stupid" motif, but what bothered me is that, not only is it intolerant of a different belief (and thus he's being taught that it's okay to be intolerant of people who don't agree with you), but that he simply chose without actually asking his own questions or coming to his own conclusions. He just automatically sided with whichever side came closest to his belief system, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it doesn't encourage any free thinking—and that's what bothers me the most about religion: it so often doesn't encourage free thinking. Rather, the more devout denominations I've seen suppress free thinking, and thus demand that everyone has to believe one way, their way, or else you're just plain wrong. Almost building on this notion, Levi, Rachael, and several others go to Washington, DC, and have their own little pro-life demonstration in front of the Supreme Court: they seal their mouths shut with duct tape emblazoned with the word "life." But essentially, these children are being taught to go out into the world to spread the word, and not accept anything less than the full embrace of their belief system by all of America.

But from a filmmaking perspective, the one major element about Jesus Camp that bothered me was the lack of counterpoint. Aside of that early radio commentator (whose name escapes me), there's no other body to present an argument for the other side, so for 80% of the film, you have only one viewpoint being presented. And without counterpoint, you don't have a documentary—you have propoganda (which I'm reasonably sure wasn't the intention of the filmmakers). It was only at the end, though, when Becky Fisher calls into his show, that we actually have our first and only point-counterpoint exchange of ideas. And while he doesn't necessarily come out and ask it, the radio commentator ever so subtly poses a very key question to Becky Fisher: if we're teaching such radical ideas to children, starting at such an early age when they're the most impressionable . . . where does indoctrination end and brainwashing begin?

I give Jesus Camp a 7.5 out of 10, and not because I agree or disagree with the subject matter, but because of how it was presented. It loses the most points for not having more counterpoint, which is essential in presenting ideas to an audience and encouraging free thinking.