Jesus Camp
“The Devil goes after the young. Those who cannot fend for themselves.”
You said it, Miss Fischer …
You kind of get the gist of where this documentary is going early on, when evangelist leader Becky Fischer asks a crowd of parents and children, “who believes God can do anything?” and we see one mother forcing the hands of her two kids – who don’t look old enough to even raise their own hands on command let alone have such an opinion – in the air.
It’s hard to write a lot on this documentary, or any like it, without spilling over into a mess of a babble on the contentious issues and one’s own opinion on it rather than focusing on the basic film-making quality, such are the touchy topics it covers.
In a nutshell, this movie shows a pretty intense “camp” – a training ground for young evangelists where I guess the highlight is Fischer talking about Harry Potter, referring to him as a warlock, and therefore he makes the baby Jesus cry.
But apparently Fischer isn’t as upset about the movie as you’d expect from the picture it paints – I read on Wikipedia, “To Fischer, the real message of Jesus Camp is to show how passionate children can be when given the right opportunities.” Right. And there are moments here where the pendulum does swing her way, you do see good things coming out of it; one girl, for example, has unbelievable strength against the obvious taunts she gets at school for her beliefs etc. But, y’know, as to the passion thing? You could get that by giving them large quantities of junk food too. It doesn’t make it good. Like a radio DJ – the only real voice in the movie that calls a spade a spade and tells her how crazy she is, since you really don’t need any voice but her own to tell you that – tells her over the phone, you can get kids to do anything, you can turn them into soldiers, anything. Now I guess the argument for Fischer in answer to that is – well, at least she’s not doing that. The worst most of these kids are ever gonna really do is annoy people. It could be worse. But it’s still incredibly sad to see kids – at times, incredibly smart kids – basically having their lives snatched away from them in the name of God.
I don’t have problems with other people’s beliefs, and I’m sure for some of these kids whatever the camp leaves them with might be much better than any other alternatives. But anything that teaches, nay forces, children so young to be so certain about something which, by its very nature, is forever uncertain – that’s what bugs me the most.
As to the film itself, it is certainly well-made, arresting, and at only 90 minutes, refreshingly short for a documentary. Like I said, really only the DJ flat-out “makes a case” either way for or against Fischer, she pretty much damns herself. There’s no narration and only a few snippets of text impart basic pieces of information about locations and names etc. There’s really not a lot of gimmickery involved. It’s what I’d call “a proper documentary”, and it’s pretty scary.