The youngest foot soldiers for the Lord are shown in their native environment in this documentary. Becky Fischer is a children's pastor who runs "Kids on Fire," a summer camp for evangelical Christian children in North Dakota. Fischer believes in the political and moral importance of a Christian presence in America, and uses her camp to reinforce the religious training most of her charges are already receiving at home (the majority of the campers are home-schooled by their parents). Using video
games, animated videos, and group activities to help put her message across, Fischer encourages the kids to pray for George W. Bush and his Supreme Court appointees while urging them to help "take back America for Christ." For the most part, the children seem reasonably ordinary beyond the fact they pray with uncommon fervor and sometimes speak in tongues. Along with Fischer and her cohorts, Jesus Camp features interviews with Ted Haggard, an evangelist and advisor to George W. Bush, and Mike Papantonio, a Christian talk-show host who believes the right-wing slant of many Christian evangelists is taking the church into a dangerous direction. Jesus Camp was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who previously made the acclaimed The Boys of Baraka. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
No matter your religious or political affiliation (or lack thereof), this supremely even-handed documentary from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady is cinematic dynamite.
Perhaps indoctrination is in the eye of the beholder. But one thing is certain: All Christians aren't the same. I'm one, and I found this film to be saddening, not heartening.
I spent a lot of years studying the teachings of Jesus in Catholic grammar school, and I think Jesus would be appalled by what goes on in the these camps.
Flawed editing and intrusive and irritating commentary hardly detract from the shock value of this disturbing documentary. Compulsory viewing for anyone in the least bit concerned about religious extremism.
This gripping shock-doc looks inside the Kids on Fire evangelical summer camp in North Dakota, where training starts young for a "new army of God" to "take back America for Christ".
This unabashedly liberal documentary tries to redress the balance by giving the rest of America a wake up call: not all scary fundamentalists come strapped with explosives.
Filmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady don't bother with a polemical voiceover a la Michael Moore but skilfully stitch together the comments of the evangelicals themselves. It doesn't make for a pretty picture.
Having gone through 20+ years of Evangelical indoctrination, I found this film scarily accurate and disturbing. Much of that disturbing aura derived from the film's presentation, in how its subject matter is presented nearly commentary-free and how what commentary it presents is mostly rather subtle. That said, it's
not an easy watch.
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