Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer:
Jesus Camp, a new documentary, opens in New York City this Friday. I’ve assigned a review of the film for The Revealer, but in the meantime, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. Jesus Camp turns out to be perhaps the best work of journalism — or art — dealing with contemporary Christian conservatism. It’s a film of bleak beauty, to borrow a phrase from the great photographer Danny Lyon, and like Lyon’s work, Jesus Camp is both unsentimental and heartbreaking, harrowing and absurd at the same time. It’s a movie about the Christian Right and that movement’s political ambitions, but it’s also a story about kids and what they believe and how they absorb the beliefs of the adults around them. Jesus Camp transcends its moment even as it reports on it with precision. This is a film of scriptural intensity; see it if you can.
Texas Republican Christian Conservative World Magazine:
What’s startling is that moviegoers, including the evangelicals the film purports to portray, may agree with him. If Jesus Camp doesn’t scare thinking Christians, it will at least sadden them.
Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (The Boys of Baraka) chose a narrow slice of Christian fundamentalism—a Midwest pastor named Becky Fischer and her North Dakota summer camp, “Kids on Fire”—as emblems of Christian revival and the overplayed “Take Back America for Christ!” movement.
Christianity Today covers the uproar in Christian sub-divisions about Jesus Camp, and acknowledges good reviews by US ‘Christian’ film critics and acknowledges the also positive reviews it is receiving by ‘mainstream critics.’
Q&A with pentecostal camp director Becky Fischer
Ethics Daily, background and review
Blog Rodent - A Pentecostal leader’s 6 thousand word piece
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Thanks for the post. This may spur me to see the movie. I wasn’t sure at first if it was a legitimate portrait of a slice of Christianity or a general slam toward the faith.
I’m heading down to the US next month and checked to see if it’s playing anywhere I’m going to be. Unfortunately not.
Let me know what you think.:^)
I saw the movie Thursday night in Olathe, Kansas after attending the first day of continuing education at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.
I thought the movie was an accurate portrayal of the most extreme segement of fundamentalism. The way the children were used and manipulated was awful. The hatred and meanness of this religious segment is pretty obvious.
My big concern is that the movie does not adequately distinguish this group from conservative, even very conservative Christians. The folks in the movie don’t reflect a God of love or mercy. Their is overuse of “the enemy” depicted in the film with inadequate reflection on our own sins.
Since I am not Pentecostal, I’ll withhold judgment as to whether or not some things seemed bizarre to me simply because I’m unfamiliar with them.
I think it is worth seeing. I expect it will come out on video eventually.
Probably. It’s currently on limited release in the US.
In the meantime I found a Pentecostal former seminarian who wasn’t happy with it, and notes the differences of various denominational branchs.
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=34&idsub=127&id=5748&t=Jesus Camp ranting and raving
BD,
Again, I think the movie perpetuated a stereotype about fundamentalists and even failed to draw a distinction between evangelicals and extreme fundamentalists. The people represented in the film represent probably less than 1-2% of all Christians.
The film was correct to show that Christians can lapse into extremism.
Still, it’s worth seeing.