Dying for Jesus

"Jesus Camp" is a documentary film, one of five nominees for this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It is frightening, fascinating and thought-provoking; I recommend it highly, but still with reservations. (More on those later.)

The film follows Becky Fisher, a Pentecostal youth minister who hosts a summer camp for Christian children each year in North Dakota. Becky Fisher is truly a force to be reckoned with; she is a powerful preacher, connects well with kids, and (except for some of what she says) comes off as very normal, very intelligent and completely sincere. So do the three kids the filmakers follow during the course of year (leading up to camp, at camp, and after camp on trips to Washington, D.C. and Ted Haggard's New Life Church).

Becky's goal is very clear and stated early in the film:

"Where should we be putting our focus? I'll tell you where our enemies are putting their focus: on the children." She then goes on to discuss how in the Middle East, Muslim children are going to camps where they learn to operate machine guns and strap on bomb belts: "It's no wonder that with that kind of intense training and discipline that these young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam."

Then, instead of offering how the children she ministers to are going to bring peace or counteract Islamic hate with Christian love, she instead says: "I want to see young people as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine. Because we have...excuse me, but we have the truth."

There in that one paragraph is a philosophy that can lead us into a world of even greater violence and bloodshed than the one we currently inhabit. Two opposing forces, each believing they are divinely endowed with a sacred, immutable truth. And without this truth, no person on Earth can enter into their idea of Heaven. There is no explaining, no logic, no reasoning with fanatics such as these. They WANT Armageddon, they encourage it, because they believe it is the only way the world will see that they have been right all along, that their truth was indeed THE truth.

The rest of the film only reinforces the frightening nature of fundamentalism. When you see Becky shouting "This means war! This means war!" referring to a holy Christian war against non-believers, or hear the children chanting "Righteous judges! Righteous judges!" during a sermon on the evils of abortion and the need for Christians to influence government, it will give you goosebumps. And nothing can prepare for the moment when a sweet, smart, sincere nine-year old girl talks about how being a martyr is "really cool."

The film also shows you how the children reach this place -- through intensive indoctrination that causes them to weep for the sins they have committed, or to hear that "Had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death."

Now, to my reservations. Although the filmakers did include an alternative Christian voice (Mike Papantonio of "Air America"), I think it's important to watch the film with a sense of the filmaker's point of view. Although the co-directors claim they tried to approach the subject with complete balance and fairness, I think there are several instances where their bias comes through.

Overall, though, I think "Jesus Camp" is well worth a rental.