Film “Jesus Camp” focuses on evangelical youth

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Becky Fischer, who runs an evangelical
summer camp where children as young as six are encouraged to
“take back America for Christ,” says indoctrinating children is
not only right but essential.

Fischer is the central character in “Jesus Camp,” a
documentary about Pentecostal evangelical Christians, some of
whom send their children to summer camps where they pray,
“speak in tongues” and are encouraged to campaign against
abortion.

“Extreme liberals, they have to look at this and start
shaking in their boots,” Fischer says in the film, which was
showing at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

With no voice-over or commentary, the movie follows Fischer
at events for children in North Dakota and Missouri.

In one scene a cardboard President George W. Bush is
brought on stage at an assembly so attendees can pray that he
make America “one nation under God.” In another a preacher
shows plastic models of tiny fetuses and leads a prayer saying:
“God end abortion, and send revival to America.”

Heidi Ewing, who directed the film with Rachel Grady, said
the aim was to be balanced and show a slice of U.S. culture
unfamiliar to many in America and abroad. Ewing said they
wanted to include a critical voice to question Fischer but had
deliberately chosen a Christian — radio host Mike Papantonio
– to be that voice of dissent.

Among the children featured in the film is Levi, now aged
13, who explains how he was “saved” by Christ at the age of 5.

Another child, Rachael, now 10, dreams of being a
missionary. She is seen practicing by approaching strangers in
a bowling alley or on a street to tell them that God is
thinking about them.

“The reason you go for kids is because whatever they learn
by the time they’re 7 or 8 or 9 years old is pretty well there
for the rest of their lives,” Fischer says on a radio show in
which she is challenged by Papantonio, a practicing Methodist
who is also a director of liberal Air America radio.

“As I understood, your question to me was ‘Do you feel it’s
right for the fundamentalists to indoctrinate their children
with their own beliefs?’ I guess fundamentally, yes I do,
because every other religion is indoctrinating their kids. I
would like to see more churches indoctrinating,” she says.

Papantonio responds: “You can tell a child anything … you
can make a child into a soldier that carries an AK47.”

Fischer says: “You could call it brainwashing, but I am
radical and passionate in teaching children about their
responsibility as Christians, as God-fearing people, as
Americans.”

Ewing said there were some 80 million to 100 million
evangelical Christians in the United States. “Most of those in
our movie are Pentecostal and I believe there are about 30
million,” she said. “They are by no means marginalized.”

Pentecostalists are known for “speaking in tongues,” in
which they believe the Holy Spirit speaks through them. There
are several scenes of children caught up in rapture, moved to
tears or with their bodies convulsing.

“We would go from our lives in lower Manhattan and get on a
plane and in a few hours we were in an absolutely parallel
America,” Ewing said, describing the making of the film.

Grady, who said that as a Jewish woman raised on the East
Coast she knew very little about Evangelicals before making the
film, said “Jesus Camp” had proved eye-opening for largely
liberal New York audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Another pastor featured in “Jesus Camp,” Ted Haggard, head
of the National Association of Evangelicals, says in the movie
children are fueling a boom in his churches that would continue
to have a profound effect on U.S. politics.

“There’s a new church like this every two days,” he said.
“It’s got enough growth to essentially sway every election. If
the Evangelicals vote, they determine the election.”