Little red Jesus Camps?

Some Pentacostalists are running a fundamentalist-based Christian camp, which has been featured in a current film called "Jesus Camp." The film has many critics upset -- not so much about the film, but about the subject matter.

Stephen Holden's "movie review" in the New York Times is hardly that. Without pausing to glance at style or technique, the film is regarded as a simple presentation of fact, and Holden dives directly into a long editorial about the subject matter:

Ms. Fischer understands full well that the indoctrination of children when they are most impressionable (under 13 and preferably between 7 and 9) with evangelical dogma is the key to the movement’s future growth, and she compares Kids on Fire to militant Palestinian training camps in the Middle East that instill an aggressive Islamist fundamentalism. The term war, as in culture war, is repeatedly invoked to describe the fighting spirit of a movement already embraced by 30 million Americans, mostly in the heartland.

At Kids on Fire we see children in camouflage and face paint practicing war dances with wooden swords and making straight-armed salutes to a soundtrack of Christian heavy metal. We see them weeping and speaking in tongues as they are seized by the Holy Spirit. And we see them in Washington at an anti-abortion demonstration.

Filmed during the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the movie visits a church at which the congregation prays in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of President Bush.

Praying in front of Bush? Now that intrigued me, because it evokes images of Bush deification -- something most fundamentalists would be wont to do, but which many BDS suffers would like to imagine them doing.

Say Anything has at least two posts about the film -- one opposed to the camp and one more or less in defense of it. This led me to a longer review, which offers an additional insight on what might be going on with the Bush prayer:

The part about worshipping George Bush is going to seem that strange, and would be indeed if that were what was going on, but I don't believe it was. There is something we do when we are praying for a person (or if someone else is standing in for the person who couldn't be there or whatever) and that is we lift our hands in the direction of the person and pray. For example, in a camp setting there would be far too many people to gather round and lay hands on someone while praying, so we, as a congregation, would lift hands in the direction of the person as a kind of substitute. I am not sure why it was necessary to have a cutout of the president as a visual reference; growing up we prayed for our leaders (Reagan, Clinton, the other George Bush) and the speaker would maybe tell us to lift our hands towards the front or towards a person standing in for whoever we were praying for as a way of unity while we prayed, but there were no cardboard cutouts... Whatever the case, it wasn't worshipping. I'm sure it looks pretty bad to anyone not raised in this. I admit to being unsure about the use of a cardboard cutout. I don't believe it had anything to do with worshipping George Bush. I grew up praying for Clinton and I can assure you there was no worshipping going on.
Fascinating. I'm wondering about something. Had this same film been shot in the 90s, with the kids praying before Clinton, might that have been given an equally ominous interpretation -- as if they were praying for a demonic "anti-Christ" president to be saved?

Considering some of the anger that is directed towards Bush for selling out his "base," I don't think it's at all unreasonable to imagine that the idea was to pray for him, as opposed to with him. The idea that they might be praying to him I find so logically untenable as to be almost humorous.

(But what's funny as an idea for me might be red meat for the BDS crowd.....)

While I don't like to accuse Holden of pandering to "fundyphobia" (is that a word?), I got the impression that he really wants his readers to be afraid -- be very afraid -- not of the film, but of fundamentalist summer camps and their ultimate agenda. Lest there be any doubt that these people are dangerous, Holden leaves his readers with a comparison evoking mass murder:

It wasn’t so long ago that another puritanical youth army, Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, turned the world’s most populous country inside out. Nowadays the possibility of a right-wing Christian American version of what happened in China no longer seems entirely far-fetched.
As most readers here know, I am adamantly opposed to the idea of fighting an American "culture war," and to the extent kids are being indoctrinated to believe in the concept, I'm against it. But I am not their parents, and the decision to send their kids to such a camp is up to them. But are they being trained to kill people in the name of God? I think if they were being trained in anything more deadly than fundamentalist proselytization, someone would be saying so. And loudly.

For this reason, I think the Red Guard comparison is unfair. If we consider that millions were murdered and imprisoned during the Red Guard period, I think that's a pretty strong charge to make against fundamentalist Christians. Outrageous, even. And in a movie review? (Well, at least Holden didn't make an al-Qaida comparison. Wouldn't want to "offend" anyone...)

I don't mean to pooh-pooh threats of religious violence, and I know that Christianity served up the Inquisition and the Crusades. But I just don't see anything remotely like occurring today -- least of all in these "Jesus Camps."

Nowadays (especially around here), I'm more worried about a thing called "Jihad camp." Yes, my local madrassa has been running one, and finally it was shut down after the FBI became involved.

If someone managed to make a documentary about the "Jihad camp," would it generate scary reviews in the New York Times? Would such a film even be reviewed?

Or would its producers be scolded for "Islamophobia"?


PLEASE NOTE: I do not mean to imply any moral equivalance between Jihad camps and Jesus camps, as there's a vast difference. As I said a couple of years ago,

....the fact remains, no matter how they have tried to spin it over the centuries, "Christian war" will always have an oxymoronic ring to it. "Islamic war," on the other hand, goes by the name "Jihad."
I shouldn't be so stuck in the past. What we really need to worry about are Mao's Red Guards.


AFTERTHOUGHT: Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but "Red Guards" came out of my keyboard so fast that I nearly overlooked the possible double meaning which now inheres in the word "red." (Red State Guards, of course....)

And to be fair to the other side, what are the Blue Guards going to do? Start their own camp?

How about "Camp Beat-Around-The-Bush"?


punchingbag.jpg

Now isn't that more powerful than prayer?

posted by Eric on 09.22.06 at 09:46 AM





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Comments

Thanks for the links.

I got a review copy of the movie yesterday and watched it last night. I won't be posting my review until next week, but I can tell you that despite the camp director's endorsement of it the film is pretty hard on the evangelicals. Pretty one-sided stuff.

My review will be up next week, and I'll actually be having the camp director on my podcast next Friday. So keep checking my blog for more info.

Rob   ·  September 22, 2006 11:48 AM

Thanks for coming! I'll keep an eye on your blog.

Eric Scheie   ·  September 22, 2006 12:41 PM

The Left desperately wants Christian fundamentalism to be as dangerous as Islamic fundamentalism and desperately wants there to be a major theocratic movement but, alas, reality is a bitch. Both premises demonstrate nothing more than wishful thinking.

And to suggest that Bush -- a United Methodist -- could be a fundamentalist demonstrates nothing but total ignorance of American Christianity. Actual theocratic fundamentalists consider Methodists to be apostate and Methodists wouldn't welcome such folk as authentic Methodists.

John   ·  September 24, 2006 08:17 AM

Before you develop a final opinion, ask a former evangelical Fundamentalist if this is dangerous. This is scary---very scary! Add child abuse to the list of what is wrong with this. This is brain-washing at it's "finest". These poor kids will probably never have minds of their own.

Karen   ·  September 27, 2006 11:26 PM


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