Jesus Camp

Last night I watched the documentary "Jesus Camp." As I process it, I find myself very angry. The problem is, I don't know what I'm angry about. On the one hand, I felt very much attacked by the filmmakers. The movie had a clear agenda against the Evangelical right. While it cleverly steered clear of any over-the-top sensationalism (a la Michael Moore), this just made it all the more effective as scenes of children babbling in tongues and dancing in grease paint flashed across the screen, clearly aimed at leaving political liberals terrified in their seats.

However, at the same time, I cannot defend the brand of "Christianity" being peddled at the camp which was at the heart of the film. I think the leaders may very well be genuine Christians, but nonetheless what they were peddling was loveless, Christless moralism. A few scenes stick out to me. A little girl handing out Chick tracts to teenagers at a bowling alley and then running back to her father for approval. Another girl, ten years old, already explaining how "Christian" music was the only thing people should listen to. A boy insisting on his prophetic preaching gift as he echoed grown-up religious catchphrases into a microphone. The flagrant violations of Paul's proscriptions for the uses of spiritual gifts. The equally constant refrain that "God needs your generation. You will do great things for Him. Don't be like your parents, get on fire for Jesus." A ten-year-old explaining that there are spiritually dead churches that "sit the whole time, sing three hymns and listen to someone talk for an hour" and that "Jesus doesn't visit these churches. He like churches where people jump up and down and clap and yell." A week-long camp where the gospel is never once mentioned except as the "thing you tell your friends," where children pray before a cardboard cutout of George Bush, where they're taught to speak in tongues, where scripture is at best paraphrased occasionally and at worst completely absent, and where Jesus gets mentioned less that abortion.

Wow, that's more of a list than I thought it would be. Needless to say, I'm a little sore. In many ways, what's hard for me in reflecting on the film is in recognizing that the authors are never in dialogue with the actual message of Christianity. Instead they're taking aim at a variety of things I can hardly condone myself, even though I'm certainly a theological conservative and, theologically, even a charismatic (meaning only that I don't believe things like tongues and prophecy have ceased). Perhaps someday I'll cull more thoughts about what it is, precisely, that drives what I'm reacting so viscerally to. Regardless, however, the movie at least got me thinking and gave me a good taste of the Christendom most of the world is in conversation with.