I really prefer to focus on this image of Jesus 
Some of the Jesus camp kids were taken to Washington, DC by their parents and youth pastors to support the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court. Here is a girl with the red tape the adults put on her mouth. The spiritual manipulation of children is abuse.
Yesterday, latest our Netflix movie arrived in the mail. I was pleased to find that it was the Academy Award Nominated movie, Jesus Camp. I had been wanting to see it for a long time, missed it when it came through town and it's been on our Netflix list for a long time.
The movie examines the evangelical belief that a revival is underway in America that requires young Christian evangelicals to prepare for leadership roles in advocating the causes of the evangelical faith. The film follows a group of evangelical kids who attend children's revival meetings and then meet up during the summer at a camp in North Dakota (leased from the Assemblies of God) where they are taught to become fervent and dedicated soldiers in God’s army. Becky Fischer is the drill sergeant youth evangelist who leads these children revivals and the camp. She is fervent in her belief that it's up to evangelical children to win America for Christ. Plastic babies are taped to the palms of their hands and they raise their hands to heaven and cry, dance and pray for abortion to end and pray for the gift of tongues. Theyare taught to walk up to strangers and witness to others. In one scene, one of the girls walked up to a group of elderly African American men sitting on park benches and asked them, "If you died today, would you go to heaven?" One man said, yes. The girls walked away and one said, "they're muslims."
The kids are taught that theirs is a unique generation—perhaps the last on earth Christ comes to rapture his church, and that just as Muslim children learn starting at age 5 to carry and use automatic weapons so that they can die for Islam, Christian kids must learn to fight for Jesus in order to save souls and take back America for God—and be willing to for their cause.
With tears streaming down their faces, hands raised to heaven, the kids make guttural sounds with their tongues, hoping that God will give them the gift of tongues. These kids are brainwashed from a young age. They are not allowed to learn in the traditional way of how American children learn things. There is no discussion of two sides of a subject and allowed to reach their own decision. Instead they are taught how to witness to their teachers how evolution is evil and doesn't support the teachings of the Bible. The cannot assume that the 7 days that the Bible says the earth was created could have been a different time frame than the 24 hour day in our current calendar. These kids are taught that seven days is seven days period and everybody else is wrong, that everyone else is turning their back on Jesus if they do not believe as they do.
The movie went on and followed some of the kids when they went back home after camp.
The movie includes scenes of Ted Haggard, the evangelical leader accused of utilizing the services of a gay escort as well as drug use.
In one scene, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady visit Haggard's 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. He tells the vast audience, "We don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It's written in the Bible."
Then Haggard looks into the camera and says kiddingly: "I think I know what you did last night," drawing laughs from the crowd. "If you send me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife."
Becky, the drill sergeant/child evangelist was asked by one of the producers if she thought that America should be a democracy or not with separation of church and state. She said something to the effect that Jesus is coming soon and so it doesn't matter if America is a democracy or not. What is more important Becky believes, is that America turns to Jesus and embraces the teachings of the evangelical movement even if all other religious expression in America by outlawed.
What disturbs me most about the film is the emotional manipulation, indoctrination, and outright brainwashing of children. I found it repulsive and enraging. The kids in the movie are about 95% white, and follow the indoctrination on cue. They can mouth all the right jargon, church sayings and scripture verses like robots, or to put it more bluntly, chillingly like Hitler youth camp recruits. Jesus Camp is nothing less than childhood spiritual terrorism. It also left me personally and eternally grateful that as a child growing up in fundamentalism, I wasn’t subjected to anything worse in the context of religious services than the occasional scary and loud revival. Thank goodness, when I was growing up, evangelicals were kind and respectful people.
Times they are a changing and these kids are going to grow up with continue indoctrination into this newer brand of evangelical politics by their parents . These are parents who are committed to raising their children in the manipulative and gestapo manner that would make Hitler smile.
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