creepiest. movie. ever.

I went to a free preview screening of Jesus Camp a few weeks ago* and was pretty much horrified by the whole thing. Highlights include:
-The parent forcibly raising her kids’ hands when the pastor asked who there believed God could do anything
-Working kids up into sobbing, quivering wrecks multiple times in the course of the camp
-The aside about how Harry Potter would have been killed for being a warlock in the Old Testament, as if that were a good thing
-The homeschooling mother’s confident assertion that since the Earth has only warmed up by 0.06 of a degree, global warming is obviously not a problem and that Creationism is clearly the only possible explanation for the world
-The children’s minister’s delighted comment, on watching footage of the kids at camp, that liberals watching this would be shaking in their boots at seeing how passionate they were and wondering what they’ll be like when they grow up (I know I was wondering that, but more in terms of worrying about their need for therapy, rather than fearing them)
-Her opinion that Christianity’s credibility has been greatly improved by George Bush (I think that was the funniest moment in the film)
-The person encouraging the kids to speak in tongues to a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Bush
-The national leader who, after asking the 11-ish-year-old preacher if people liked hearing him preach because of his content or because he was a kid, told him that he should rely on his cute kid schtick for now and when he was 30 he might have good content. (The kid actually seemed pretty comparable to the adult preachers).
-All the references to Jesus’ blood, and war
-The 10-year-olds who thought it was so cool that people could be willing to die for God (dying for Allah, on the other hand...)

Mostly though, it was the kids crying that got to me. How can the parents (who were mostly present for this) think it’s good for them to get so upset about the devil being out to get them? Or the possibility that they might be a phony and go to hell because they swore with their friends? Or telling them that 1/3 of their friends aren’t there because they were aborted?

Of course, it was also pretty creepy the way the film used the kids for its own purposes. I wonder what they and their parents were told about the film so that they'd agree to be in it. The editorializing was mostly confined to judicious editing so maybe, if they were sufficiently delusional, it would be possible for the evangelicals to watch it and be glad that their message was being broadcast to a wider audience...

It reminded me of a story the priest told in mass one day, about when the traveling “how my body works” van came to the grade one class at the attached primary school. The instructor, trying to teach the kids about internal organs, asked if anyone could think of anything that was inside their bodies and the kids answered “Jesus”, “God”, “the Holy Spirit” etc. The priest (and most of the parishioners) thought this was just wonderful. I don’t remember if he had a further point, though, because I was too horrified that it was supposed to be so great that the kids had already been so well indoctrinated.

I felt for the poor kid who admitted how hard it was sometimes to believe in God. I went through a couple of phases of trying to convince myself to believe what I was being taught in religion classes and at church, but it obviously never worked. I can’t imagine how awful I would’ve felt if I were constantly being told I was being led astray by the devil and would be going to hell for not believing. Luckily, the Catholic church (where I was at least) had given up on the idea of hell for the most part when I was growing up. I just felt guilty for disappointing my mother, mainly.



*This was written then, but my laptop battery died and I forgot about it until now.