Jesus Camp - Cinepinion

JESUS CAMP
Directed by: Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady
Internet Movie Database Entry for full details

GRADE: B+ (3.0/4)

2006.

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war! Of course the secular liberal establishment won’t allow children to actually take up arms, so while their daddies are off attending to America’s Holy Wars, they’re home with mommy training for the equally important culture wars. As Ashley, a young girl who is the co-focus of the film, puts it, “we’re being trained to be warriors, but in a much funner way,” which asks the question, are there no grammar books for home schoolers?

Ewing and Grady document several months in the lives of Ashley and an older boy named Levi, both the children of dyed in the wool Evangelical Christians, from their homes to a Christian-themed sleepaway camp, and then on a cross-country excursion with stops in Colorado Springs—Evangelical capital of the USA—and Washington D.C., for a quaint Right to Life mini-rally. Though the filmmakers treat their subjects respectfully, even lovingly at times, when it comes to this brand of Evangelists and their practice of conditioning children they’re clearly, tendentiously opposed. While the Christians do get the better part of the screen time, by offering the audience the absurdity they spew simply serves to disparage their arguments, which teaches the audience a valuable lesson: one needn't argue with a fundamentalist to get them to lose face. Just let them speak.

Pastor Becky, the central clergy figure in the film, intones that her models for getting the kids to Christ are the radical Islamic schools in Palestine, almost as good a role model for kids as Hollywood celebrities. When a Holy Joe gets a wildly raucous response to his question of whether or not the children are ready to give their lives not to Jesus but for him, it’s clear these fundamentalists’ model for indoctrination is not merely radical Islam but radical Islamism. The children usually sound as though they are merely parroting their parents and preachers when they espouse reverent polemics on Christ, America, and their relation to one another to the point that it’s made perfectly clear what all of this is, especially when a preacher asks, “who thinks God can do anything?” and a mother physically raises her two children’s hands for them. This is brainwashing.

But you can't blame the kids, regardless of their youth and impressionability. For example, Levi professes that he was “saved” at the age of five, at a time at which he felt that nothing was fun. Well, if I were from Mullettown, Missouri, I’d want to go to Jesus Camp, too—they have rock music, dancing, and clapping. (When megapastor Ted Haggard, the discredited and disgraced male prostitute solicitor and illegal substance procurer, shows up in the film for an extended cameo, you get a good idea of just how fun Evangelical Christianity can be.) The only other choice seems to be the film's sole countervoice to the radical Christians, radio host Mike Papantonio. Well whoop de doo. If I could only choose between Air America and Fundamentalism, I’d take the latter, too. At least they go bowling.

Using interesting shot composition, ironic counterpoint, and pointed sincerity, Ewing and Grady produce an alluring glimpse into an American subculture quickly, and frighteningly, losing its prefix. As a deeper look into Borat’s America, there are some real hilarious moments, such as when Pastor Becky, a lardaceous old bag who has the nerve to call mainstream Christians “fat", prays for the PowerPoint presentations to have the strength to project, or when she bitterly howls, “if it were the Old Testament, Harry Potter would be put to death!” Mostly, however, the movie’s just creepy, and it’s hard not to let it rile you up. (Just when I thought, “at least they’re not speaking in tongues,” they actually started to!) Boys goofing around before bed are chastised because their horseplay isn’t holy, and at one point the kids are brought to devastating tears from the shame of having sinned. Oh, Mr. Bunker, not only is girls not girls and men not men no more, kids ain’t even kids! -- Henry Stewart

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