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| News Papers |
The Baltimore Sun
Camp fires
The incendiary documentary 'Jesus Camp' reflects a nation's
political and religious divide
By Jonathan Pitts
sun reporter
Originally published October 5, 2006
"Fight the good fight of faith." --1 Timothy 6:12
She mounts the stage in a theater full of kids, some as young
as 6, and holds up a cuddly, stuffed baby lion for all to see.
Becky Fischer, pastor in the Kids in Ministry evangelical church,
tells her doe-eyed listeners that sin -- when it first tempts us as
children -- can seem as sweet and harmless as the toy cub in
her hand.
"It looks kind of cute, in fact," she coos, pressing it to her
cheek. "Warm and fuzzy."
Then her tone sharpens, her eyes narrow, and Fischer -- the
charismatic central figure in the controversial new documentary
film Jesus Camp, which opens at The Charles Theatre
tomorrow -- swings the lion over her head as an Olympic athlete
might throw a hammer. "But sin is designed to destroy you," she
says, her voice rising along with the centrifugal force. "Feed
this [animal] long enough, [and] he's gonna grow in your life
until you've got yourself a tiger by the tail!"
It's not the most incendiary moment in Jesus Camp, the latest
work by co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, creators of
last year's award-winning Boys of Baraka. That distinction might
go to scenes making headlines in the press. In those, preteen
Bible campers sob, smash crockery, speak in tongues, dance in
warlike camo makeup and raise their hands in prayer toward a
life-sized cutout of President Bush -- all at the urging of
grown-ups.
But as cinema and as preaching, it's one of the more effective,
taking on bit by bit a problematic subject: the inward struggle of
Christian believers to "remain righteous before God," as
Fischer puts it. At this strange moment in American history, a
struggle against sin is as basic to one-half of the country as it is
mysterious to the other.
Say what you will about Fischer -- and viewers of Jesus Camp
have said plenty -- she has a startling knack for making the
invisible real. That's useful for a woman who, like thousands of
American preachers, is trying to revive a national faith she says
has too long been jeopardized by the secular left.
"We're in a spiritual battle," she said in a telephone interview
last week as the film was set to open nationwide. "It's the
precepts and the values of the Bible against what goes on in
this [fallen] world. We have to tell the kids the truth."
The directors' job is similar. They follow Fischer and three of
her young disciples at a summer Bible camp in North Dakota,
but their real mission is to evoke the unseen: two warring faith
systems -- one religious/conservative, the other
secular/progressive -- each as sure of itself as it is hostile
toward the other.
There's something seductive about roads. The early frames of
Jesus Camp place viewers in a moving car, scenes of rural
America -- green fields, sporadic traffic, highway billboards --
rushing past the window. The soundtrack is a talk-radio station,
an evangelist's voice audible through crackling static.
"We dare not sleep through this point of decision," he says.
"Frankly, future generations depend on us."
In last year's Boys of Baraka, Ewing and Grady traced the lives
of four city kids who left their home turf -- Baltimore and its
troubled schools -- for a chance at a better education
elsewhere (Kenya's experimental Baraka School). In Jesus
Camp, they take us to the heartland, introducing us to Missouri
children being raised in fundamentalist Christian homes.
Levi, 12, Tory, 10, and Rachael, 9, travel to Fischer's Kids On
Fire summer camp in North Dakota for further immersion in their
faith. Some of the movie's best scenes show us the kids' daily
lives, which, in many ways, are endearingly normal. Levi, with
his mullet, gazes at TV. Tory, a talented dancer, listens to
music and argues with her mom. Rachael enjoys stuffed
animals and bowling.
But Levi, already a preacher, confides he was "saved" at age 5,
when he realized there must be "more to life." Tory tells herself
to remember to dance for the glory of God, not "the flesh."
Rachael approaches a grown-up stranger to tell her "God has a
plan for you."
Good documentaries use the familiar to share the new, and
Ewing and Grady, New Yorkers, set out to give one-half of
America a good look at the other. The camp at the movie's
center "is a riveting example of a world many Americans either
do not understand or dismiss as 'fringe' and irrelevant to their
own lives," says a joint statement on their Web site.
But in the year they spent traveling to the heartland, getting to
know the kids and their families, they came to believe that the
world to which the kids and Fischer belonged -- that of
America's fundamentalist Christians -- was neither fringe nor
irrelevant.
Disparate views
As many as one in four Americans -- upward of 80 million -- call
themselves evangelical Christians. The group's factions hold
disparate beliefs, but all have faith in the primacy of the Bible
and a conviction that only those "born again" in Christ will attain
salvation. Most are wary of a "secular" world that has
succeeded, in their view, in legalizing abortion and banning
school prayer, two of the "sins of our nation," in one preacher's
words.
Fischer, with her spiky hair, heavy-set build and bottomless
zeal, is a formidable agent. She rattles off stats. "A credible
researcher says that 70 percent of young people raised in
Christian churches leave the church when they become teens
and young adults and never return," she says. "That is a crisis."
In the film, she's unapologetic for "indoctrinating" kids in
Christianity. "Excuse me," she says, "but we have the truth."
The most talked-about images in Jesus Camp show Fischer
leading chants, calling for "war," using imagery of Christ's blood
and washing children's "sins" away with bottled water. Levi,
prompted by his home schooling, laughs off both evolution and
global warming. A sobbing Tory and Rachael cry out for
"righteous judges" who will overturn abortion laws. Kids are
"usable" for Christianity, Fischer says.
Blogs and Internet message boards of all stripes are bristling
with commentary. Secular humanists accuse her of child abuse;
evangelicals say, for the most part, that the film shows her out
of context. Fischer sees the portrayal as essentially fair. "Is [the
movie] representative of who I am and everything I do?" she
asks. "No. In an 84-minute film there isn't time to explain
everything. But it's an accurate view of my ministry."
What really struck the filmmakers, though, was a growing sense
that the beliefs Fischer passed along were part of a larger
movement, one that added up to major political power.
When you put [these people] all together," says Mike
Papantonio, a left-leaning Christian DJ and prominent voice of
dissent in the film, "they start taking control in small slices. ...
They form a powerful voting bloc. And George Bush and Karl
Rove owe them big, big time."
On July 1 of last year, Ewing and Grady were well along in their
work on Jesus Camp when Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor announced her retirement. Many saw it as President
Bush's chance to fill the seat with someone likelier to rule in
favor of his own belief -- shared by evangelicals -- that abortion
is wrong.
Then the co-directors heard prominent preachers like Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ted Haggard, head of the
Colorado-based National Association of Evangelicals, rallying
their troops. Their voices appear in Jesus Camp, exhorting
followers to mobilize and engage in the political process. "That
was when we realized what influence conservative Christians
really exert," Grady says.
Fischer originally allowed herself to be filmed on the
assumption the film's focus was American children and faith.
When Ewing and Grady told her it would address politics, she
was chagrined, but after lengthy discussions reluctantly agreed
to the switch.
"This is our world as seen through the girls' secular lens," she
says of the filmmakers. "They had no grid, if you will, for this
before. It's honestly what they perceive."
Evangelicals like Haggard are less forgiving. In an interview with
the magazine Christianity Today, he derided the film as "liberal
propaganda." The film "manipulates facts like a Michael Moore
film and works the camera like The Blair Witch Project," he
says, making evangelicals look "scary." His remarks hurt
box-office numbers in the Midwest, where distributor Magnolia
Pictures expected to fare better last month.
Time of divisiveness
Understandably, news outlets hyping the film have played up
the "warlike" images. But war symbolism, common among
evangelicals, is figurative, alluding only to the unseen conflict
between good and evil.
"We're told to turn the other cheek," Fischer says, "and to lay
our lives down for our brother," adding that "our war is not
against people." In more than 220 hours of footage, the
filmmakers find just one brief scene in which a child makes that
distinction. By then, viewers might feel Fischer is promoting
what she insists she is not -- a violent "Christian jihad."
When she got home from a recent promotional tour, Fischer
found her e-mail inbox crammed with hate messages, most of it
accusing her of brainwashing or child abuse. Ewing is thrilled
that Jesus Camp is triggering conversations about the nature of
faith, the state of politics, even the ethics of child-rearing.
Grady sees criticism rolling in from the right and the left, each
side wanting the film more explicitly to attack the other.
"I don't think the two sides are talking to each other at all,"
Grady says. "I do think that deeply conservative Christian
people have ... prejudices against people they see as secular
and liberal, and vice versa. There has got to be a dialogue."
At a time of divisiveness in America, it may be too much to ask
that two filmmakers invent a language in which both sides can
communicate. But cinematically speaking, Ewing and Grady
have a tiger by the tail. Jesus Camp, like Fischer, brings many
viewers to their feet, offends others, and proves just about
impossible not to watch.
Camp fires
The incendiary documentary 'Jesus Camp' reflects a nation's
political and religious divide
By Jonathan Pitts
sun reporter
Originally published October 5, 2006
"Fight the good fight of faith." --1 Timothy 6:12
She mounts the stage in a theater full of kids, some as young
as 6, and holds up a cuddly, stuffed baby lion for all to see.
Becky Fischer, pastor in the Kids in Ministry evangelical church,
tells her doe-eyed listeners that sin -- when it first tempts us as
children -- can seem as sweet and harmless as the toy cub in
her hand.
"It looks kind of cute, in fact," she coos, pressing it to her
cheek. "Warm and fuzzy."
Then her tone sharpens, her eyes narrow, and Fischer -- the
charismatic central figure in the controversial new documentary
film Jesus Camp, which opens at The Charles Theatre
tomorrow -- swings the lion over her head as an Olympic athlete
might throw a hammer. "But sin is designed to destroy you," she
says, her voice rising along with the centrifugal force. "Feed
this [animal] long enough, [and] he's gonna grow in your life
until you've got yourself a tiger by the tail!"
It's not the most incendiary moment in Jesus Camp, the latest
work by co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, creators of
last year's award-winning Boys of Baraka. That distinction might
go to scenes making headlines in the press. In those, preteen
Bible campers sob, smash crockery, speak in tongues, dance in
warlike camo makeup and raise their hands in prayer toward a
life-sized cutout of President Bush -- all at the urging of
grown-ups.
But as cinema and as preaching, it's one of the more effective,
taking on bit by bit a problematic subject: the inward struggle of
Christian believers to "remain righteous before God," as
Fischer puts it. At this strange moment in American history, a
struggle against sin is as basic to one-half of the country as it is
mysterious to the other.
Say what you will about Fischer -- and viewers of Jesus Camp
have said plenty -- she has a startling knack for making the
invisible real. That's useful for a woman who, like thousands of
American preachers, is trying to revive a national faith she says
has too long been jeopardized by the secular left.
"We're in a spiritual battle," she said in a telephone interview
last week as the film was set to open nationwide. "It's the
precepts and the values of the Bible against what goes on in
this [fallen] world. We have to tell the kids the truth."
The directors' job is similar. They follow Fischer and three of
her young disciples at a summer Bible camp in North Dakota,
but their real mission is to evoke the unseen: two warring faith
systems -- one religious/conservative, the other
secular/progressive -- each as sure of itself as it is hostile
toward the other.
There's something seductive about roads. The early frames of
Jesus Camp place viewers in a moving car, scenes of rural
America -- green fields, sporadic traffic, highway billboards --
rushing past the window. The soundtrack is a talk-radio station,
an evangelist's voice audible through crackling static.
"We dare not sleep through this point of decision," he says.
"Frankly, future generations depend on us."
In last year's Boys of Baraka, Ewing and Grady traced the lives
of four city kids who left their home turf -- Baltimore and its
troubled schools -- for a chance at a better education
elsewhere (Kenya's experimental Baraka School). In Jesus
Camp, they take us to the heartland, introducing us to Missouri
children being raised in fundamentalist Christian homes.
Levi, 12, Tory, 10, and Rachael, 9, travel to Fischer's Kids On
Fire summer camp in North Dakota for further immersion in their
faith. Some of the movie's best scenes show us the kids' daily
lives, which, in many ways, are endearingly normal. Levi, with
his mullet, gazes at TV. Tory, a talented dancer, listens to
music and argues with her mom. Rachael enjoys stuffed
animals and bowling.
But Levi, already a preacher, confides he was "saved" at age 5,
when he realized there must be "more to life." Tory tells herself
to remember to dance for the glory of God, not "the flesh."
Rachael approaches a grown-up stranger to tell her "God has a
plan for you."
Good documentaries use the familiar to share the new, and
Ewing and Grady, New Yorkers, set out to give one-half of
America a good look at the other. The camp at the movie's
center "is a riveting example of a world many Americans either
do not understand or dismiss as 'fringe' and irrelevant to their
own lives," says a joint statement on their Web site.
But in the year they spent traveling to the heartland, getting to
know the kids and their families, they came to believe that the
world to which the kids and Fischer belonged -- that of
America's fundamentalist Christians -- was neither fringe nor
irrelevant.
Disparate views
As many as one in four Americans -- upward of 80 million -- call
themselves evangelical Christians. The group's factions hold
disparate beliefs, but all have faith in the primacy of the Bible
and a conviction that only those "born again" in Christ will attain
salvation. Most are wary of a "secular" world that has
succeeded, in their view, in legalizing abortion and banning
school prayer, two of the "sins of our nation," in one preacher's
words.
Fischer, with her spiky hair, heavy-set build and bottomless
zeal, is a formidable agent. She rattles off stats. "A credible
researcher says that 70 percent of young people raised in
Christian churches leave the church when they become teens
and young adults and never return," she says. "That is a crisis."
In the film, she's unapologetic for "indoctrinating" kids in
Christianity. "Excuse me," she says, "but we have the truth."
The most talked-about images in Jesus Camp show Fischer
leading chants, calling for "war," using imagery of Christ's blood
and washing children's "sins" away with bottled water. Levi,
prompted by his home schooling, laughs off both evolution and
global warming. A sobbing Tory and Rachael cry out for
"righteous judges" who will overturn abortion laws. Kids are
"usable" for Christianity, Fischer says.
Blogs and Internet message boards of all stripes are bristling
with commentary. Secular humanists accuse her of child abuse;
evangelicals say, for the most part, that the film shows her out
of context. Fischer sees the portrayal as essentially fair. "Is [the
movie] representative of who I am and everything I do?" she
asks. "No. In an 84-minute film there isn't time to explain
everything. But it's an accurate view of my ministry."
What really struck the filmmakers, though, was a growing sense
that the beliefs Fischer passed along were part of a larger
movement, one that added up to major political power.
When you put [these people] all together," says Mike
Papantonio, a left-leaning Christian DJ and prominent voice of
dissent in the film, "they start taking control in small slices. ...
They form a powerful voting bloc. And George Bush and Karl
Rove owe them big, big time."
On July 1 of last year, Ewing and Grady were well along in their
work on Jesus Camp when Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor announced her retirement. Many saw it as President
Bush's chance to fill the seat with someone likelier to rule in
favor of his own belief -- shared by evangelicals -- that abortion
is wrong.
Then the co-directors heard prominent preachers like Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ted Haggard, head of the
Colorado-based National Association of Evangelicals, rallying
their troops. Their voices appear in Jesus Camp, exhorting
followers to mobilize and engage in the political process. "That
was when we realized what influence conservative Christians
really exert," Grady says.
Fischer originally allowed herself to be filmed on the
assumption the film's focus was American children and faith.
When Ewing and Grady told her it would address politics, she
was chagrined, but after lengthy discussions reluctantly agreed
to the switch.
"This is our world as seen through the girls' secular lens," she
says of the filmmakers. "They had no grid, if you will, for this
before. It's honestly what they perceive."
Evangelicals like Haggard are less forgiving. In an interview with
the magazine Christianity Today, he derided the film as "liberal
propaganda." The film "manipulates facts like a Michael Moore
film and works the camera like The Blair Witch Project," he
says, making evangelicals look "scary." His remarks hurt
box-office numbers in the Midwest, where distributor Magnolia
Pictures expected to fare better last month.
Time of divisiveness
Understandably, news outlets hyping the film have played up
the "warlike" images. But war symbolism, common among
evangelicals, is figurative, alluding only to the unseen conflict
between good and evil.
"We're told to turn the other cheek," Fischer says, "and to lay
our lives down for our brother," adding that "our war is not
against people." In more than 220 hours of footage, the
filmmakers find just one brief scene in which a child makes that
distinction. By then, viewers might feel Fischer is promoting
what she insists she is not -- a violent "Christian jihad."
When she got home from a recent promotional tour, Fischer
found her e-mail inbox crammed with hate messages, most of it
accusing her of brainwashing or child abuse. Ewing is thrilled
that Jesus Camp is triggering conversations about the nature of
faith, the state of politics, even the ethics of child-rearing.
Grady sees criticism rolling in from the right and the left, each
side wanting the film more explicitly to attack the other.
"I don't think the two sides are talking to each other at all,"
Grady says. "I do think that deeply conservative Christian
people have ... prejudices against people they see as secular
and liberal, and vice versa. There has got to be a dialogue."
At a time of divisiveness in America, it may be too much to ask
that two filmmakers invent a language in which both sides can
communicate. But cinematically speaking, Ewing and Grady
have a tiger by the tail. Jesus Camp, like Fischer, brings many
viewers to their feet, offends others, and proves just about
impossible not to watch.
| There are several 100 news papers and Internet news stories so it is imposable to have the all here on Jesus Camp. |
 |  |  |
| Kids in Ministry. Becky's Web Site |