Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68967 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-01-23
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 84 minutes

Customer Reviews

Sad, scary, but brilliant
What makes Jesus Camp such a great documentary, is the fact that there is no specific for or against stance from the makers. It follows a series of events, some interviews, but there's no critical questioning of what happens. The fact that this "screams" anti-jesus camp (and religion for that matter) is all a result of what is portrayed. Betty Fischer comes off as a total fundamentalist, who manipulates and uses children for her cause to create a christian world (though I doubt that Jesus would be particularly happy with her approach). It is an eye opener with regard to the way children are exposed to religion. Small chrildren lying on the floor shaking it what is supposed to be a trance led on by faith, though it looks more like acting on the part of the child, trying to be part of the group (and probably believes they are experiencing something religious as well). Betty Fischer and her collegues seem to blame anything negative on the devil, resulting in one scene in a blessing of the projector (so it will not malfunction during the jesus camp presentation). Though rather comical, it is still incredibly sad, especially when we see her later on chanting "this means war", and "are you in or are you out" (or something to that effect. Can't remember exactly right off the bat).

It is a strong message to the world that religion is something that should be personal, and not forced on children before they can make up their minds on their own. I continue to be shocked by the need to believe in something other than oneself, and can only recommend people to take the time to read Richard Dawkins, as well as do a search online on him. His documentary "the root of all evil" should be mandatory in all schools.

Watch Jesus Camp. You'll be angry afterwards, but it's important to see how religious groups and people (and I don't mean everyone of course, but some) abuse children in the name of jesus and god.

Indoctrinating the kids
As the closing credits roll we hear Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." The lyric goes something like, "I got a friend in Jesus...He's going to set me up with the spirit in the sky...when I die...I'm going to go to the place that's the best."

A similar point-blank irony suffuses this engaging documentary by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Norman Greenbaum had his tongue firmly in cheek, of course, but Becky Fischer and her fellow molders of children are serious. She believes in indoctrinating the children and she says so. She points out that in Muslim lands the children are similarly indoctrinated, and even more so. It is a war. The word "war" is used repeatedly at Jesus Camp which was located (ironically, I guess) in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. It's a war that must be won, and implicitly the war is against liberals and mainstream American culture, but explicitly against science, especially biological evolution, and against other faiths. Becky pretends to apologize before telling us that Christianity has The Truth and therefore should triumph over other religions, creeds and cultures. She believes that. There can be no question about the sincerity of her beliefs.

What struck me most powerfully is what was REALLY being taught at Jesus Camp. That is, methods of indoctrination. Behind all the rhetoric about Jesus and being saved was the political agenda for the fundamentalist movement. Part Nazi rally, part revival meeting, part Brainwashing 101, what really came across were all the persuasive techniques that Becky Fischer, Ted Haggard and the others had perfected. Suffer the little children indeed. Get 'em while they're young, Becky tells us. The impressions made and beliefs instilled in children before the age of, say eight, will last a lifetime, she tells us.

She says she loves America. We see out of a car window the endless sameness of asphalt roads, telephone poles and electric wires, KFC restaurants and car dealerships that form the main streets of most any American town. I doubt that she loves the America of the Museum of Modern Art or the America of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or the redwoods or the Grand Canyon. Becky says that she loves America, and then she says she prays to get away from this awful world--or words to that effect.

I find it tough to find credence in people who devote their lives to manipulating the emotions of children in an effort to create a new generation of opportunists (or zombies) to mindlessly champion the slogans of their political and social agenda. How sad it was to see young Levi O'Brien--bright, talented and impressionable beyond his years--being molded into a future TV evangelist. He will learn the clever deceit practiced not by people like Becky Fischer, who as I said, is a true believer, but more like Ted Haggard himself or any number of moneyed evangelical personalities who preach one thing in public and in their private lives do something else. He will learn the same techniques that Becky and Ted have learned, techniques of rhetoric and persuasion, of indoctrination and the manipulation of emotions. He will learn what leads to success in evangelical land, that truth comes from religious authority and political and economic power, and that anyone who thinks differently is an enemy.

Becky Fischer thinks liberal America will be worried after seeing this documentary. Her ability to mold children into her brand of Christianity should scare us, she thinks. But revivalist America comes and goes with the passing of time. We've seen it all before. What is different today is that evangelicals were able to elect somebody like George W. Bush and to control the Congress and cow the media. I think America has seen where that leads, to the weakening and embarrassment of America; and I am betting that America has learned its lesson and that the politicians who would do the work of the faith-based, ignorance-based, head-in-the-sand, evangelical movement will lose out to more enlightened leadership. After all, unlike Becky, most of us and our children must live in this world without the fantasy of imminent rapture, and therefore must work toward making the world a better place for all of us.

Pity the children
Jesus Camp is a riveting but bleak film.

Most eight year olds are not aware of, nor concerned with, government, politics, ideology or theology. That's not to say they're incapable of giving such issues their interest, nor that their development is likely to be impaired by encountering and thinking about them. As this film so clearly demonstrates, it's how you teach that makes the difference.

Jesus Camp has an obvious point of view that isn't sympathetic to the Evangelicals it portrays. Perhaps when the filmmakers began this project they didn't have any particular bias towards apocalyptic Biblical literalists. I don't really know, but I can image how neutrality could be easily subverted after meeting some of the people in this film and observing their lives and their "teaching" methods. It's difficult to feel any sympathy for people of any faith who as a result of ideological motivation see people as things, pawns in a supernatural game, rather than as individuals to be cared for and loved. It's even more difficult to deal with the enmity that arises on seeing parents and "teachers" using intense emotional appeals and peer pressure as methods of ideological indoctrination, creating in the minds of a children a world of "us" and "them," the kind of world that doesn't normally exist for children until after puberty.

Watch this film and despair the generation of lost children produced by this 21st century generation of know-nothing parents. I hope the filmmakers do a follow up in 10 or 20 years so that we can all see what becomes of these experiments in Evangelical indoctrination.

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