I watched Jesus Camp this week. It's a documentary primarily about three children who attend an Evangelical Christian summer camp in Devils Lake, North Dakota.
The movie had me torn in two from beginning to end. While not as overtly hostile and patronizing to its subject like a Michael Moore film, one has a pretty good idea of what was behind some of the editorial decisions. On the other hand, these families seemed so genuine in their faith. They were making no excuses or bluffs about where they were coming from.
It's easy and fashionable these days to demonize the Christian right in a way that would not be acceptable if the subject matter became homosexuals, stressed-out single parents, inner-city blacks or conservative Jews. From this premise, I suspect that Oscar may go home with the directors tomorrow night.
In my opinion, you'll get a much more even-handed treatment of the movement out of Alexandra Pelosi's Friends of God, which was recently released by HBO films. Just as she did in Journeys with George, the daughter of Madame Speaker has such a clever "gee whiz" way of introducing us to this segment of our society that I can't walk away from the screen.
3 comments:
The Christian right becomes the target of ridicule and confrontation as it is a political movement hiding behind the cross of Jesus.
I agree with much of your opinions of the movie, as I also believe the creators were slightly disingenious with the documentary aspect of the film.
Once you get over that point though you still see a bunch of people not only exploiting their kids to further their political cause, but they do it in the name of my gracious savior.
I also think that there is backlash against evengelical christians and their political movement because many of them claim to have claimed that they have the exclusive interpretation of Christian teachings.
Plus, we should all be pretty alarmed when people are trying to teach their kids to be more fanatical than fanatical muslims.
One thing that has botherd me for quite some time is the movement of American culture away from consumerism (et. al) has been lead by a group of people so obsessed with protecting their privlidged social status that the actual spirituality has taken a back seat.
my guess is that 'belief' is normally distributed in the population.
as with any distribution, avoid the extremes.
-jim
I'm not much of a gambler, so I don't quite get it, but these folks seem to be packing a whole lot of chips on the table assuming that their god is the real one.
Entertaining flick either way.
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