10 Thoughts on Jesus Camp

• Five minutes in and already I found it a tad unsettling w/ the Children’s Prayer Conference.Evangelical Christian kids are up at ‘em, hands and heads held up high like at an El Shaddai gathering. And of course the little girl was getting teary-eyed; you’d be too if you stared up at the ceiling lights w/o blinking.

• Funny-strange (not funny haha) scene: 9-year-old Rachael giving a teenager a religious pamphlet and proselytizing just after she prayed for a good bowling game. Silly girl; doesn’t she know that God’s too busy answering the prayers of professional athletes?
  
• I really prefer my Christian hiphop songs to be satirical in nature, and not used like in a Hi-5 concert. Oooh, and preacher Beck Fischer hates Harry Potter and made the kids cry. Bitch!
  
• Like any fancy camp, Kids on Fire camp has clean air, sunny skies, Go-karts, nature hikes, anti-abortion presentations and… wait, scratch that.
  
• Funny-strange (not funny haha) scene: the kids praying over a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush. Geez, how young do Republicans have to be?
• I really can’t stand seeing religion being used for political purposes. Religion alone is trouble enough.
• Already knowing Ted Haggard’s final fate, it’s great to watch his sermon, now dripping in irony.
• Granted, this documentary focuses on the more intense and hard-line Evangelicals and probably doesn’t represent the majority of born-again Christians. That’s why I’m okay w/ comparing them to the Hitler youth leaders.
• The focus is on the kids, and rightly so. These folks are walking the fine line between preaching and indoctrination. Kids should be having fun, not deciding on the fate of their immortal souls.
• Jesus Saves. Save these kids, Jesus!