Pastor Defends Extreme Bible Camps
Becky Fischer Says Children Should Have Passion for God
September 27, 2006
—
- Pastor Becky
Fischer runs Kids on Fire, the Devil's Lake, N.D., Bible camp
featured in the film "Jesus Camp."
On Sept. 27, she discussed the controversy surrounding extreme evangelical Christian camps with "Good Morning America's" Chris Cuomo and Diane Sawyer.
Q: Can talking about dying
for God and feeling so fervent about religion be good for kids?
A: You have to understand the Christian community and what's
going on, as far as the insider language, if you will. What you
see as far as the emotion, for one thing, is fairly typical in
charismatic communities. You also see, it's not so much their
emotions on the issues, although you do see that, but what we're
looking at is children who are passionate about their faith.
Q: Most people think
teaching religion should be about teaching love. Seeing these
children get so distraught about God, are they getting a
different message?
A: They are passionate about this. They're passionate about
things like drugs and divorce in our nation, and all the evils.
Children are very cognizant of those things. They're much
smarter than we give them credit for. So that was that whole
service right there. We were talking about all the evils, if you
will, of just society that touches their lives.
Q: There is a moment in
"Jesus Camp" where the children are passionately weeping and
praying to a cutout of President Bush. Would you do this for
President Clinton?
A: Absolutely. Here was what you don't see, the teaching we give
the children. You have to understand, the Bible tells us to pray
for those who are in authority over us, to pray for all of those
in government, whether good leaders or bad leaders, so that we
might live in peace. When that Scripture was written, the
leaders of the day were killing and persecuting the Christians
and that's when it was spoken. You pray for those people anyway.
Q: Do you think this camp is
teaching children to be tolerant and think for themselves?
A: This is such a fascinating thing. People think kids are going
to grow up in some kind of ideological vacuum and then when
they're 12 years old we can present them with these heavy ideas
and they can make a choice. That's ludicrous. They are bombarded
on every side from TV to the music they listen to, to the books
they read -- all types of ideas from witchcraft to
evolution to morality. To say we shouldn't say anything to them
because they can't understand it?
Q: Are camps like yours just
merging politics and religion?
A: I can't even speak to that because until I saw myself through
the eyes of secular people, I didn't even see it as political. I
saw it as biblical. Even things like praying for abortion, to
us, of course, it's a political issue. But the Bible constantly
talks about the shedding of innocent blood and about how God
abhors that. We're teaching children to value life based on the
word of God. So merging church and politics obviously happens.
As a Christian, I can't divorce my feelings in the voting poll.
If I truly believe what I believe on Sunday, I can't leave that,
check it at the door, and now go vote.