Jesus Camp (2006)

Jesus Camp is a documentary about the "Kids On Fire School of Ministry," a charismatic Christian summer camp located just outside Devils Lake, North Dakota and run by Becky Fischer and her ministry, Kids in Ministry International. The film focuses on three children who attended the camp in the summer of 2005: Levi, who has ambitions of being a pastor, has already preached several sermons at his father's church, Rock of Ages Church in St. Robert, Missouri. He is homeschooled (as are many of the campers), and learns physical science from a book that attempts to reconcile the creationist account with scientific principles, occasionally by dismissing science altogether. He preaches a sermon at the camp in which he declares that his generation is key to Jesus's coming back. Rachael, who also attends Levi's church (her father is assistant pastor), is seen praying over a bowling ball early in the film, and frequently passes Christian tracts to people she meets. She doesn't think very highly of non-charismatic churches (or "dead churches," as she calls them), feeling they aren't "churches that God likes to go to." Tory is a member of the children's praise dance team at Christ Triumphant Church. She frequently dances to Christian heavy metal music, and feels uncomfortable about "dancing for the flesh." She also doesn't think very highly of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan or hilarity ensuing. The film cuts between footage of the camp and a children's prayer conference held just prior to the camp at Christ Triumphant Church, a large charismatic church in Lee's Summit, Missouri; a suburb of Kansas City.


Trivia: Jesus Camp was screened at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival against the wishes of the distribution company, Magnolia Pictures. Magnolia had pulled Jesus Camp from the festival earlier in the summer after it purchased rights to the film, in a decision apparently inspired by Moore's association with the film festival, with Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles saying "I don't want the perception out in the public that this is an agenda-laden film."

This nothing like I expected, well, okay it was mostly what I expected. What I didn't expect was the political side of it. Some of the adults in this used words like child soldier and warrior and pretty much said that the only way to fight Islam is with the children. Let me give you a quote from Becky Fischer, the leader of the summer camp and youth minister: "It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and disciplining, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!" This truly scared me. Never should the words child and soldier ever by said together. It's really hard to write a review of this because I am not the most religious person and I am definitely not political so I am going to go ahead and stop now. It is an interesting watch for sure.

And now for a preview of next Saturday. I am starting my new movie project. First it was Best Picture Oscar Winners, then The Top 250, Bond Revisted and The Alphabet Project. And thanks to Emily, now I am going to tackle Sundance. More specifically, the Grand Jury Prize Winners Starting with 1985. The reason I picked this is that I looked at the list and I had not seen any of them, which intrigued me. Now I have to tell you now that not all of them are available on DVD (3 or 4 are not) so I won't be able to see them all but I will see all that I can get. So tune in next week.