Jesus Camp

Holy crap. Brett and I just watched the movie Jesus Camp, and now I'm SAVED. It was an amazing experience. Amazingly...CREEPY. It was about evangelical (specifically pentecostal) Christians, and focuses mainly on their creepy kids and the creepy militant, conservative Christian extremist rhetoric they've been indoctrinated with.

We have a few friends who are Christian, and I don't have a problem with them loving Jesus or believing in the bible. But they are NOTHING like the freaks in this movie. At least, I hope they're not. They're not freaky in front of us, anyway.

These people had me transfixed - we watched the whole documentary straight through, then all the deleted scenes, and then the commentary. Brett usually doesn't like to watch special features, but even HE paid attention to a lot of it. Here's a tasty quote from one of the sermons given at Jesus Camp (to an audience of children):

"Warlocks are enemies of God, and I don't care what kind of hero they are, had it been in the old testament, Harry Potter would've been put to DEATH!"

Then the same preacher lady goes on to talk about how some of the children there at camp are phonies because when they go to school they "talk dirty just like all the other kids." They don't want any PHONIES at THEIR camp, so she makes them wash their hands with the water from her friggin Aquafina and repent. The next few shots are of a woman screaming some sort of wordless chant into a microphone as children sob and fall to the ground, minds heavy with the guilt of all their horrible pre-adolescent sins.

They also teach the children how to speak in tongues, proselytize, laugh at science, and pray at the feet of a cardboard G W Bush cutout. Pray. At the feet. Of a cardboard. G W Bush. Cutout. Because he's like, doing God's work, so he needs their prayers.

I highly recommend this film to anyone interested in hating middle America just a little bit more, or to anyone who needs a fresh injection of motivation towards liberalism. I myself needed neither the extra hate nor the extra liberal motivation, but after seeing Jesus Camp, my cup runneth over with both.

Praise be to the Catholics who made this film.

Amen.