Jesus Camp

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Jesus Camp follows the lives of three children attending a church camp in North Dakota. At times somewhat heartwarming (it’s hard to hate these kids) and more often shocking, it tells the story of Christian fundamentalist Becky Fischer as she prepares young troops for what she calls the army of God. The kids frighteningly roll on the floor in tears, violently speak in tongues, perform ritualistic dances with war-painted faces, and flock to lay their tiny hands on a cardboard cut-out figure of George W. Bush (perhaps the desired leader of Fischer’s theocracy).

Most criticism I’ve heard about this documentary chastise its filmmakers, saying the film is incredibly biased and unfair. I think what people fail to see is that the film never claims not to be biased. All documentaries are biased, no matter how fair they may seem. It seems people just want to suspend their knowledge of this fact and believe in the “photographic truth” of documentaries. A “true” documentary, however, would probably be the longest, most boring piece of work anyone has ever seen (though then it would be considered experimental and not documentary). Jesus Camp, on the other hand, is a compelling piece about the dangers of blind acceptance and manipulation. It never claims to be the ur-text of Christianity or a video bible of evangelism. It never even claims that all evangelists act in the ways similar to the people it represents (I use the word represent very intentionally here). In the end, I hope this documentary opens people’s eyes to two very important things: that faith can be used to manipulate children and adults alike and that documentary films can manipulate people in the very same manner. Documentaries still involve a complex relationship between text and viewer just like any other film, and this important concept cannot be ignored. If anything, people need to be even more critical of images culturally believed to be representing the truth of the world. When these points are considered and weighed, Jesus Camp can be seen as an enjoyable experience for most viewers not obsessively critical or religious.