Post by StevePulaski on Jan 27, 2015 23:42:10 GMT -5
Jesus Camp (2004)
Directed by: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Rating: ★★★½
Directed by: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Rating: ★★★½
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's Jesus Camp takes us to "Kids On Fire School of Ministry" in Devils Lake, North Dakota, a Pentecostal summer camp for young children who are given fiery, lofty sermons on God, Jesus, abortion, and the afterlife by Becky Fischer, the camp's pastor. The film follows three children who attended Christ Triumphant Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri, and their experiences with Fischer and the camp, as they are trained at the tender, impressionable age to be militants of God. Fischer believes that because in the Middle East, young children are being indoctrinated with Muslim fundamentalist values, learning how to strap on bombs at the ages of four and five, she is responsible for turning young children in the United States into foot soldiers for God. Her goal is to create an army of children that would selflessly lay down their life for God and their neighbor, thanks to the creation of a church and a camp where such values can be instilled.
Such material sounds like the work of a haunting dystopian fantasy, but Jesus Camp is a documentary and Fischer's plans for the children she ministers to are indeed legitimate. Within the first few minutes of the film, we see some incredibly haunting and telling videos. We see a crowded church, filled with young children and their parents, some of whom have brought their infant children along, with Fischer surmising about sin and preaching the gospel of intolerance for anyone who doesn't believe the word of God. Before these children can even recognize ideas of tolerance and acceptance of other people and learn the value of culture and knowing those with different backgrounds and religions than their own, fear and doctrine is instilled in their minds and they emerge with a narrow view on the world when they should be exposed to the complete opposite.
The three children we follow are Levi, a young boy who has preached at his church several times, claims being saved changed his entire life forever, and strives to be a minister when he grows up, Rachel, one of the bravest young girls I've ever seen, who walks up to total strangers in public or in a bowling alley to tell them that God wants those particular people in his army to preach his word, and Victoria, a young girl who enjoys dancing, but fears she is using the outlet for the benefit of flesh and self-expression instead of the promotion of God. We see many of these children are homeschooled by their parents, using books deeply rooted in Christian theology; one boy's science book has a problem that tells the reader to state why global warming is not an issue. The kid responds by saying that the temperature of the Earth is only rising .6°F a year and thus it's not worth worrying about.
Can you blame the boy? Can you blame the kids who waltz up to random strangers and regurgitate words and sentences with little conception of what they mean? The answer is no, for the protectors of these children have gone far and wide in ignoring the outside world and keeping these kids wrapped up in the protective shells of the church, denying abilities to think critically and analyze science. If you direct your anger anywhere, direct it towards the parents, not the children, whom we could also appropriately refer to as the victims.
Ewing and Grady, however, are too smart to direct their own anger, or even personal opinions for that matter, anywhere in the documentary. They confine themselves to the four walls of the church and the camp, completely immersing us into the rituals and practices carried out by fundamentalist Christians. The only dissenting voice is a mild one, coming from liberal radio host Mike Papantonio, who voices his opinion about the children being taught to deny science. Other than that, Ewing and Grady make sure the only way you're leaving with an opinion on the actions of a fundamentalist Christian church is because you came up with the opinion and not because you were fed it.
That's the beauty of Jesus Camp on a documentary level; the film is shockingly low-key, thoughtful, haunting, but in a manner that is quite poetic in nature, and shot with an almost dreamlike nuance. It's a stunning contrast to the kind of material being shown on the screen, as we watch kids crowded around one another, bawling their eyes out over sermons, listening to lectures about the sin that is abortion, and even have kids publicly answer questions about their loyalty to God or whether or not they have truly served him.
One little boy reminds me of myself in the film; he's a little blonde boy with the same kind of manners and speech patterns I had when I was a child. What he has that I lacked at about five or six years old is his bravery, as he stands before his peers and their parents and talks about the difficulty of putting your faith in something and building your life around something you cannot see or prove exists. He talks about how he truly tries hard to believe, but almost can't bring himself. I was taken aback to the days when my mother forced me to go to Sunday School and different Bible classes as a means of a babysitter while she was at work with a friend of mine; I was bored out of my mind and felt like I was left out of a big club that I had no idea how to join and no idea how to practice. In the boy's case, unfortunately, most of his peers, again, blamelessly, look onto him dead-eyed and passive to his comments, as if they've been denied the opportunity to even understand what he's communicating thanks to their own indoctrination. He's a non-believer and that's all there is to it, it seems.
Jesus Camp is a haunting, uncompromising must-see and the fact that it works to be unbiased in a narrative sense works towards its favor tremendously, especially on a subject that begs an opinion. It's the kind of film that makes me blessed to consider myself a free-thinker. if that means I'm headed to hell, I'll take my individualism with me.
Directed by: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.