Tongues of Fire
'Jesus Camp' Illuminates the Political and Religious Education
of Evangelical Christian Children
By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006
One of the most moving
documentaries to arrive in Washington theaters this year was
"The Boys of Baraka," an intimate account of several African
American middle-school students who left their inner-city
Baltimore neighborhood to spend a life-changing year at a
boarding school in rural Kenya.
"Baraka" co-directors Heidi
Ewing and Rachel Grady have once again turned their lens on
young people. This time, though, even if their subjects are
geographically closer to home, culturally they are worlds away.
In "Jesus Camp," Ewing and Grady enter the lives of America's
evangelical Christians and the churches, revival meetings,
antiabortion demonstrations and summer camps where they educate
their children. With extraordinary access to a community that is
largely unknown to outsiders, the filmmakers have once again
created a candid and compelling portrait of young people forging
their identities at the physical and psychic extremes.
"Jesus
Camp" opens with an unsettling sequence, during which young
Christians -- dressed in camouflage and with their faces painted
brown and green -- enact a warlike ritual dedicating themselves
to fighting for God. Soon after, we meet the film's stars:
12-year-old Levi, who wears his hair cut short except for a
rat's tail, declares he was saved when he was 5 "because I
wanted more out of life," and now aims to be a preacher;
Rachael, 9, who longs to be an evangelist and is practicing
spreading the Word at her local bowling alley; and Tory, 10, who
loves to dance but shamefully admits that sometimes she doesn't
dance only for Jesus, but also "for the flesh." And we also meet
Becky Fischer, the outgoing, charismatic leader of a youth
ministry in the kids' home state of Missouri, who serves as a
counselor at a summer camp called Kids on Fire in (wait for it)
Devil's Lake, N.D.
Bookended with news reports
about the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor and the announcement of the nomination of Samuel Alito
to take her place, "Jesus Camp" takes as its subject the most
colorful arm of Christianity, that of charismatic
Pentecostalism. Although firm numbers are difficult to nail
down, research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
indicates that Pentecostalism may account for between 15 and 20
percent of evangelicals, who number around 52 million adults in
this country, and who in recent years have emerged as a powerful
political force.
"Jesus Camp" is composed of
images of kids being radicalized spiritually and politically
that will be heartening or chilling depending on the viewer.
There are moments sure to set secular humanists' teeth on edge:
when Tory's mother, who educates her kids at home, dismisses
global warming and declares once and for all that creationism
provides "the only possible answer to all the questions"; or
when Becky excoriates Harry Potter to nervous-looking youngsters
("Warlocks are enemies of God!"). And it's hard not to feel a
little frightened watching Becky and her fellow leaders goad
their young charges into speaking in tongues, or joining in
chants like "This means war!" and smashing coffee cups that
symbolize secularized government.
But those who find "Jesus Camp"
frightening, Grady says, may be missing an important lesson. The
evangelicals are "not doing anything illegal," Grady explained
recently in a phone interview. "In fact, they're embracing and
utilizing democracy to its fullest potential. There's no office
too small, no political position that's insignificant [to them].
If I were to say I was scared of these people, then I'm scared
of the very tenets of our political system."
Indeed, according to Ewing, the
families and activists in the film "don't consider themselves as
political. To them, they're just living a moral upright life in
an organized way, and to us that looks political. . . . They
think it's their duty to encourage the culture to live the same,
and that means engaging civically."
Still, when a congregation
gathers before a life-size cutout of George W. Bush to pray for
an antiabortion Supreme Court justice, it's clear this is a
movement that feels it has a friend in the White House. Ewing
believes that confidence explains why this evangelical community
gave Grady and her such close access. "I have a feeling that
under [Bill] Clinton this would not have been possible," she
says. "With what's gone on in the last few years, they feel
they're winning the culture war, they feel the majority of the
country agrees with their values and how they're raising their
children, they find popular culture vile, and they're kind of
like, 'Bring it on, come on in.' "
Grady, who grew up in
Washington and Takoma Park and attended the reform Washington
Hebrew Congregation, and Ewing, a Catholic, say that Fischer
gave explicit instructions to the children and their families
not to proselytize the filmmakers. "Although honestly, Rachel
has been getting Jews for Jesus stuff for the past six months,"
Ewing notes wryly.
The filmmakers say that the
subjects of "Jesus Camp" have seen the film and liked it, while
audiences in New York, where the movie opened a week ago, have
been alternately amused and appalled. (National Association of
Evangelicals President Ted Haggard has released a statement on
the organization's Web site saying, "This movie manipulates
facts like a Michael Moore film and works the camera like 'The
Blair Witch Project.' " He may be dismayed that his constituency
is represented by what some regard as an eccentric fringe, or he
may be unhappy with his big scene, in which he takes young Levi
aside and advises him to "use the cute kid thing until you're 30
and by then you'll have content.")
For Grady, the experience of
making "Jesus Camp" has taught her that the political rhetoric
about Two Americas is distressingly true. "Heidi and I travel
all over the world for our work and go to all kinds of exotic
communities and societies and cultures, and then, just 2 1/2
hours away, there's a parallel world going on that we didn't
know about because of our own ignorance," she says.
"The country may be big, and
there might be a lot of us," she concludes, "but we have to
break through a little. Because we're so polarized right now,
we're paralyzed."
Jesus Camp (85 minutes,
at Landmark's E Street) is rated PG-13 for some discussions of
mature subject matter.
© 2006 The Washington Post
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