Review: Jesus Camp
After my post last Tuesday about the documentary Jesus Camp I was lucky enough to have received a review copy of the film a few days later on Thursday. Over the weekend I watched the film and have come to two basic conclusions about it:
- Despite the fact that Becky Fischer, the director of the camp in the film, endorses this documentary I just don’t think it was an entirely fair portrayal of the camp or America’s evangelical Christians in general.
- I’m still not very comfortable with everything Fischer and her colleagues are doing at their camps, nor am I comfortable with some of the behavior I saw from the “evangelicals” portrayed in the film.
Let me address the #1 first.
I think it would be fair to say that if you took a bunch of video footage and edited it down to a few selected clips of specific activities and then added in ominous music and commentary from an ardent critic you could make just about any youth summer camp or church service look bizarre, fanatical and even dangerous. And that is, in a nutshell, what Jesus Camp does to Fischer’s Youth On Fire camp in Devils Lake, North Dakota and the evangelical Christian movement in general.
The evangelical Christian movement is undoubtedly a very easy target for these kind of tactics. As my friend Julie (herself an adherent to this particular brand of religion and a former camp attendee) pointed out in her reaction to the flim, to outsiders many of the rituals, sayings and customs that evangelicals take for granted can seem strange to outsiders, if largely harmless, even when put in their proper context. But put them in the hands of a talented filmmaker and they can be made to look very sinister indeed.
For instance, at one point the film shows Fischer leading what appears to be a youth service at her church. For several minutes she gives what I felt to be a typically standard, if rather forceful, Christian sermon. She talks of being faithful, honoring God with one’s actions and not leading a double life by being a Christian only at church on Sunday. When her sermon concludes, though, she tells the congregation that they will all now “talk in tongues.”



