Jesus Camp

I'm in Fort Wayne, eating some DeBrand chocolate, sipping some mint green tea, and relaxing. I decided to pop in Jesus Camp, a 2006 documentary about Evangelical (Pentecostal, actually) child-raising. Now, it seems like recently a slew of new media has come out to take on the Christian right. The book Why the Christian Right is Wrong, the documentary With God On Our Side, and a number of other books, movies, and scholarly articles are analyzing the rise of the Moral Majority, the Christian Right, or whatever you want to call it, whether in passing or as the main focus of the work. Some are insightful, some are vitriolic, some are scholarly, some are, well, not scholarly. As a religion major, I'll take what I can get. I can usually find some sort of silver lining to even the most banal treatments of a religious topic. Taking shots at extreme Christianity is about as ubiquitous as Starbucks and as cheap as Raman noodles these days, but even then I can salvage some good, add it to my ever-growing bank of religious knowledge, and move on.

I'll go ahead and say that Jesus Camp is no exception, although it suffers from the fact that I'm getting sick of the subject. The reason I'm writing, though, is because I have a special connection to this particular angle on the matter. Let's review some facts about me and my background:

- I was born into a Christian family; my Mom was raised Catholic and became a Charismatic mostly-Evangelical, while my Dad has remained Presbyterian most of his life.
- I fall into Jesus Camp's statistics neatly: I first "accepted Jesus into my heart" when I was about 5 years old. Do I think it was a genuine conversion? Honestly, yes. Do I have some sort of empirical justification for this? Not really, but do you have some sort of empirical justification for any belief or behavior held at the age of 5? I didn't think so. However, theologically, I don't really believe in a single conversion moment per se. I don't want to get too technical here, though, so I'll just say that I first converted to some form of Christianity - whether socialized or not - at 5, only to adhere to a more personal form of the faith in high school.
- I attended Christian school from kindergarten through third grade.
- I went to, yes, a Jesus Camp when I was eight years old.
- I experienced all those crazy things you see in Jesus Camp: speaking in tongues, falling down, crying uncontrollably, etc. I earnestly believed in all of it...for a period of time.
- During 11th grade, I entered a second phase of my faith, culminating in a dramatic experience around the time of my grandfather's death.
- In college, I ventured over to the Presbyterians, flirting with Greek Orthodoxy and some other things along the way.
- I study Christian history like it's my job. It sort of is for these four years in college.

Now let's review some other facts about myself:

- I like gay people. Imagine that.
- I don't think George W. Bush is a saint.
- I love The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
- I love NPR, The Nation, and all kinds of other semi-liberal to liberal media.
- I love the Civic Media Center in Gainesville.
- I love America.
- I hate a great deal of things about America.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I am not, by any means, making this a saccharin, bleeding-heart post to say, "Hey! I turned out okay! Those creepy Christians didn't get to me, I'm a liberal!"

No. Not at all - I shy away from a label of "liberal" or "conservative," though we all know I'm no Sean Hannity. But I am writing to say that I simultaneously believe in liberal political causes, conservative political causes, the absolute sovereignty of God, the infallibility of Scripture, the need to love everyone (yes, even gay people - sorry Turlington preachers!), and a number of other seemingly contradictory things. But hey, don't we all? Who tows the party line in every facet of their lives? And don't we live this way regardless of or even because of how we grew up?

What's my point? Well, for starters, it's that movies like Jesus Camp are a tremendous oversimplification. Turning footage of a Pentecostal church camp in South Dakota into an ominous statement about the future of our children is not exactly five-star work. I could do the same thing with a McDonald's around the corner (oh wait, that's been done too).

Clarity: I do think that Evangelical children's ministry and education contributes to a so-called "army of Republicans," but it'll take a while to convince me that it has a role any greater than rampant materialism, socioeconomic disparity, or, of course, the fact that Republican parents often raise Republican children.

Wait a second, can't we make the same argument about liberal parents? About public education? About secular humanism? About YMCA Day Camp!? For goodness sake, any time you teach children something, you indoctrinate them! Aren't we making value judgments here? Now who's intolerant?

On a more specific level, the film is a huge oversimplification of the sociological elements of religious indoctrination. Which comes first: political leanings, socioeconomic status, or religious belief? If you can answer that in less than six pages and a bibliography (and that's being pretty generous), you're oversimplifying. Jesus Camp focuses on the latter without any mention of the other components of moral or religious development.

Come on, folks, let's get real. If there's anything I've learned from my liberal arts education, it's that life is complicated. History is complicated, religion is complicated, and, for crying out loud, the moral and intellectual development of society is complicated.

All of this reminds me of Dr. Sommerville's book The Decline of the Secular University (shameless plug), as well as some of Dr. Richard Horner's work. What is the centering text here? What frames what? Why is it that democracy can frame religion but not the other way around?

My suggestion: read Sommerville and the classic Habits of the Heart.

Okay, the last thing I'll do is criticize the subject of Jesus Camp - Evangelical Christianity as represented in the film. What's my main criticism? There's absolutely no mention of grace, which is probably the defining characteristic of Christian doctrine in the history of religion. But that's for another post.

My next criticism? Politics, of course. But you already knew that.

Peace,
Sam