Fundamentalist Camp Trains God's Little Army

By Evan Derkacz, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2006.

They have billions in media holdings, the ear of the president, and the ability to make or break a Republican candidacy. To Becky Fischer, however, former manager of a custom sign business and current children's minister, evangelicals are in danger of losing the next generation. Unimpressed by the fact that 43 percent of America's 100 million evangelicals accepted Christ before the age of 13, Fischer set out to ensure that a new generation of Americans are instilled with a "Christian worldview." "If we wait until they are teens," she remarks, "we have waited too late!"

You've probably seen the ads on the internet of an all-American girl, eyes skyward, the spitting image of a beatific Medieval icon painting. Against the backdrop of the Samuel Alito hearings, "Jesus Camp" follows 11-year-old Tory and a pack of young campers at Kids On Fire Summer Camp, which is the basic training for "God's army." Fischer is Kids On Fire's drill sergeant, and her mission is to empower kids to heal "this ... sick old world." Fischer's zeal is infectious, her belief unshakable, and her will strong. It's not difficult to see why the filmmakers were delighted to find her.

The kids, some of whom are jarringly precocious ("Because I just wanted more of life," one says), are respectful and supportive of one another, attentive to their elders and as humorously oblivious about the secular world as most AlterNet readers are about the evangelical reality. A clip over the closing credits features a young girl who approaches a pair of elderly gentlemen in folding chairs to ask if they know where they're going when they die. After they confidently assert that they're going to heaven, the girl wanders away, uttering offhand to her companion that she thought they might be Muslims.

The age of the kids (some as young as 6 years old) combined with Fischer's bellicose language (she openly refers to their mission as "war"), will undoubtedly make some, as filmmaker Heidi Ewing says below, "pretty uncomfortable." In that sense, "Jesus Camp" doubles as a perfectly entertaining horror flick for secular progressives -- or anyone outside the evangelical community, for that matter. But to leave it at that would be wildly off the mark and just as parochial as the triumphalist evangelicals depicted.

I've argued in PEEK that, just as progressives urge fearful conservatives to probe the phenomenon of terrorism, so must secular progressives probe the activist evangelical mindset. On the other hand, it's natural for a nonevangelical to be utterly turned off by some of the politically charged elements of the film, most of which are aired without counterpoint.

My response to Jesus Camp is similar to the nagging feeling that followed Errol Morris' brilliant Fog of War. That film, you'll recall, was essentially a conversation with Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara. The 86-year-old McNamara comes off looking like a contrite old man, consumed by self-deception, peppered with startling statements like, "We were behaving as war criminals."

My desire for a ferocious counterargument and an overarching condemnation left me feeling nervous about whether the proper gravity had been afforded the subject. Likewise, although "Jesus Camp" includes a few clips from Air America's liberal Christian host, Mike Papantonio, the rhetoric of Becky Fischer, Ted Haggard and the rest of the film's cast of characters simply sits on screen; take it or leave it.

In the final tally, access has its price, and art should not be polemical. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady sought to make art and received access in exchange. That access ironically provides opponents with a great deal of insight into this political powerhouse, should they choose to approach it with courage and the desire to see the community's humanity. As they say below, "If people have a problem with what they're doing then they should take a page out of the playbook and start to get involved themselves." Amen.

In most cases, Ewing and Grady, who are close friends as well as co-directors, spoke as any couple would. Which is to say, over each other and finishing each other's sentences. When it was important to separate their responses, I did so (as in the case with their backgrounds). Otherwise, the answers can be seen as a coming from "the directors." -- Ed.

Derkacz: So what inspired you to make "Jesus Camp"? Why now?

Heidi and I were looking for a story about children and faith, and we were inspired by a child from our last film, the "Boys of Baraka," Devon, who was a Baptist preacher, a 12-year-old. He really provoked us to start thinking about where faith comes from: Why is one kid more devout than another? Where does that come from? How does that happen?

Evan Derkacz is AlterNet's associate editor and writer of PEEK, the blog of blogs.

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