Jesus Camp

You know what? I've been sitting here for about twenty minutes trying to figure out the best way to start this entry - write a sentence, erase, write another sentence, revise, erase. You get the picture. And it finally occurred to me that I'm still so shocked and amazed and appalled by what I saw that I am unable to rally the brain cells to draft up a coherent thought on the movie. Jesus Camp. You must see it. Immediately.

I know some evangelicals. And yes, they can be a little fervent when it comes to their beliefs. But I never got a picture of what the most ardent believers were like until watching this flick. The documentary follows four main people - Becky Fischer, who owns and operates Kids in Ministry International; Levi, a young boy sporting a rat-tail of epic proportions who already preaches and has aspirations of becoming a pastor; Rachael, a young girl who shares her love of Jesus with everyone and makes claims God only enjoys going to charismatic churches; and Tory, who enjoys Christian heave metal music because it is righteous, not of the flesh.

I'm not going to bore you with my rundown of the details. I couldn't do it justice anyway. But seriously, you must go and rent this movie. The opening Lord of the Flies-type dance is a little crazy but things settle down once the kids make their way to Becky's "Kids on Fire" summer camp. From Harry Potter to abortion to Ted Haggard to creationism to the earth being a mere 6000 years old, this documentary captures the provocative and the alarming.

My final thoughts:

1. Clearly, we need to outlaw home-schooling.
2. Bush is born-again (i.e., evangelical).
3. Indoctrinating your children, even about Christ, is still a form of brain-washing.
4. A .6 degrees Celsius near-surface atmospheric temperature rise in 50 years is significant.
5. We need to vote for Hillary Clinton.
6. Little children chanting "Righteous judges! Righteous judges!" as they hold little plastic aborted fetuses is WRONG. (And yes, the all-caps is meant to denote me shouting at you.)
7. The Ted Haggard in this film is the same Ted Haggard who met with a gay prostitute for a "massage" and bought meth and is the same Ted Haggard who met weekly with our current Commander-in-Chief.
8. Science is theories and facts. Faith is faith. Let us not forget that a scientific theory is not just a guess.