Jesus Camp (2006) an Oscar nominee for best documentary (An Inconvenient Truth won) was shown on A&E tonight.
It will be re-broadcast tomorrow, December 31, 2007 at 2 pm on A&E.

Jesus Camp was  nominated for a Chicago Film Critics Association Award, Online Film Critics Award, Satellite Award; and won the SilverDocs Grand Jury Award.

Now that I’ve finally seen Jesus Camp, the buzz this project generated makes complete sense. 
It is a compelling documentary and worth seeing. 
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are planning a five year followup on the children and adults featured in the documentary.

So what has happened since this film came out? 

- Levi was 12, Victoria (Tory) was 10 and Rachael was 9 when the film was made. Levi’s father is a minister of a fundamentalist pentecostal church, Rock of Ages Worship Center in Missouri. Rachael’s father is the assistant minister of that church. Tory, a member of the children’s dance team at Christ Triumphant Church, has seen her US army father go  back to Iraq for another tour of duty.

- the campground was closed to ‘Kids on Fire’ because of over a thousand dollars worth of vandalism. Becky Fischer:

The denominational leaders of the campground we rented voted to not have me return because of the vandalism, which was accompanied by much hate mail, angry phone calls and emails. They were getting hit negatively from all sides.

- Ted Haggard, senior pastor of Colorado Springs New Life Church resigned after former male prostitute Mike Jones came forward with details about Haggard’s alternate lifestyle.
In September 2007 Haggard resurfaced in a bizarre fund raising scheme and exaggerations about his live in Phoenix, the lack of input from his ‘overseers’ and his plans for his education.

- Haggard was the only participant to criticize the documentary.

Former president of the National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard is shown in the film speaking to New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

“We don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity,” Haggard tells the congregation. “It’s written in the Bible.”

Haggard then looks at the camera and says jokingly: “I think I know what you did last night.” The crowd laughs. “If you send me a thousand dollars, I won’t tell your wife,” He later says, smiling, “If you use any of this, I’ll sue you.”

After its release, Haggard publicly denounced the documentary, saying that the film poorly misrepresents Evangelicalism.

“You can expect to learn as much about the Catholic Church from Nacho Libre as you can learn about evangelicalism from Jesus Camp,” Haggard stated on his Web site before the posting was taken down. “This movie manipulates facts like a Michael Moore film and works the camera like The Blair Witch Project. It’s one more ‘documentary’ that seems to miss the point intentionally.”

- Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady responded to Haggard and held open Q & A sessions  across the US.

- Beckie Fischer, the dominionist/Latter Rain/Third Wave children’s minister has gone on to bigger and better things. Within the first five minutes she is seen pushing product and the Kids on Fire camp. Top of the website is an ad. She stands behind the film, her ministry and does not believe dominionism has a political agenda.

“When [the movie] took the political twist, no one was more shocked than I was, because what we were doing wasn’t political,” Fischer said. “To me, it was good Christianity.” Christianity Today

She also did an interview with Jews on First. She discusses the film, her various beliefs and motivations and her plans to write books.

Becky Fischer - wiki
Jesus Camp - wiki
Jesus Camp - official site