When I first heard of Jesus Camp I was excited to see what would come of it. I was hoping for a fair and balanced view of what Christians are doing in terms of helping kids. As I read more about it, I started to get worried that it was actually an attack piece going after a fairly small segment of evangelical / charismatic Christians and their political views.
What I got was some of both.
Lauren and I’s general reaction to the movie was moments of “Wow! that is a really cool kid” or “That lady is really good at working with kids” intermixed with “Eh, I don’t know how I feel about that…it is a little weird, but in context I can see it being OK” and some moments of “Oh no! are they really going to….Damn, they did” and “I can’t believe that they said that!”
The movie follows three kids around mainly, and these kids are really interesting and articulate. They are passionate about following Jesus, and one of the 12 year olds actually is allowed to preach at a kids event, and he sounds pretty good. I was really impressed by these kids boldness, their gifting (one girl displayed some impressive prophetic gifting was had a 30ish year old woman crying while praying for her), and their commitment. One girl actually went up to a random woman in a bowling alley and told her something that she thought God had prophetically said about her. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to do that for a while. So I was pretty impressed with some of those things.
What really concerns me is the level of indoctrination that goes on, and the level of political tie-ins that this church had with their kids program. In my opinion, at the age of 10 to 13, a child / adolescent has better things to worry about than what judges are being nominated to the supreme court.
One thing that I’m not certain about, but I’ve been thinking of a lot since seeing the movie, is how much these children were crying in the movie. I’m all about being moved by the Holy Spirit to the point of tears, but my one question I had to ask, is how much crying should a 12 year old be involved in when contemplating their sins, or the deaths of aborted babies? Why do they need to hear this constant war-fare language used when talking about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, instead of a heavy language of love and compassion?
I would love for my children to some day have this level of boldness and be able to articulate their thoughts and feelings about Jesus as well as these kids do.
I do not want to tell them what to think the way some of the parents and adults do in this movie. Instead I would encourage them in how to think, or how to contemplate things.
But, I have to wonder, is the articulation of thoughts and feelings in this movie more of a regurgitation than actually thought-out articulation? And I wonder what it will be like when I start to raise my own children.
Movie is worth watching, but it is important to note (especially if you don’t have very much experience with charismatics and more main-line evangelical churches) that this church / camp is not typical. I’ve been to more church camps then you can shake a stick at, and I’ve cried and felt a lot of powerful moves of God at them. But I’ve never once prayed over a card-board cut-out of a public official, nor have I seen anything remotely like that at any church I’ve every attended.
Also, I should note that there are several veins of charismatic styles. If that one seems particularly weird or ‘drummed up’ you should note that there are many other people who call themselves charismatics (me included) that prefer much more laid back atmospheres in most cases. And there are some non-charismatic evangelicals who would not call these people evangelicals (I would disagree with them).
So, on the whole, and interesting movie. Sometimes heart-warming and very cool, other times very disturbing, and a lot of in-between stuff that will probably make you think a little about what should and should-not be said to kids about religion and politics.