(Date Posted:04/27/2007 08:38:51)
Sorry, just saw this.
I LOOOOVE Jesus Camp! I wrote a review of it in my livejournal; I'll copy and paste it here.
This documentary looks at children who attend a Pentecostal camp in North Dakota, and the woman who runs it. She wants to create "kids as willing to die for the gospel as [Muslim suicide bombers]". The kids they profile are a 13 year old boy who wants to become a preacher, a 12 year old dancer who's concerned that she dances for the flesh and not for God, and a 10 year old girl who evangelizes people on the street and in the bowling alley every chance she gets, complete with Jack Chick tracts (this really creeped me out, and reminded me very strongly of some kids I knew in HS). The documentary also briefly touches on the relationship that megachurches have with Pres. Bush, by way of the 13 year old's visit to Ted Haggard's church. If any of you watch the Daily Show, you probably saw the infamous clip of Haggard (who was recently outed as having an affair with a male prostitute) leaning into the camera and saying, "I know what you did last night. Pay me $2,000 and I won't tell your wife." That clip is from this movie, during a sermon condemning homosexuality...at least he tried it before condemning it. The film is even-handed, and you never seen an interviewer or a director. You simply see the daily life of these kids, and learn how the more fundamentalist elements of Christianity are taught to children. It's fascinating, and I think that even the people I grew up with would find some of these parents extreme.
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"There are three topics which are taboo as far as Americans are concerned...[and one is] the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life and dies in his sleep at the age of 106."
- Vladimir Nabokov, introduction to Lolita
"Perhaps we should focus on the positive aspect of video games. For example, children can pick up real world experience in the event that the earth is taken over by monsters and the only thing that can save humanity is magical swords, rocks, and...playing cards."
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