“Jesus Camp” closes doors

Anyone here seen Jesus Camp, the controversial documentary focusing on the Christian fundamentalist summer camp for kids ironically named the Kids on Fire? I haven’t, so I can’t say much about the film per se, but I certainly do have a strong opinion about the camp itself, if this article is to be trusted.

The camp featured in the controversial documentary Jesus Camp will shut down due to negative response from the film, according to camp director Becky Fischer.

The documentary spotlights Kids on Fire, a charismatic summer camp where evangelical children are recruited to "God's army." The children who attend the camp are shown shaking and sobbing over abortion and praying over a cardboard cutout of President Bush.

The camp takes place at a rented facility in Devil's Lake, N.D., but Fischer said the owners of the campground asked her not to return after vandals caused $1,500 in damage in October.

Fischer told CT she would have made the decision to shut the camp regardless, because she is worried about people who would attend simply to disrupt the camp. Since the film's release, she has been bombarded with e-mails and phone calls.

"Christians go after me because of doctrinal issues, whereas the world is going after me because they think I'm another Adolf Hitler," she said. "They're accusing me of raising a Christian jihad."

I may not know much about the camp or how this indoctrination is carried out, but any camp wherein children are actually shaking with tears over abortion and pray over images of Bush is a camp that needs to be shut down, instantly. I disagree with labeling their activities as a “Christian jihad”, if only because the term “jihad” is, by definition, a term for Muslims and Islamics and not Christians, but any camp engaged in such extreme levels of brainwashing are psychologically conditioning these children into becoming small soldiers for a holy war. I don’t usually (if ever) use this sort of rhetoric, as it is all-too-often used by the right in ridiculous hyperbole – “They’re mounting an army against us!” – but frankly, there is no other way to describe the terrifying nature of the activities perpetrated in this camp, and others like it.

These children are being cultivated into the next wave of fundies, and the way all this is done sickens me. I do decry that the reason for which the camp is closing is due to risks of disruptions and vandalism – seriously, that’s just juvenile behavior and it never serves to prove a point – but this camp does need to disappear, and so do any other institutions of indoctrination like it.

I found this quote from Fischer to be both interesting and revealing, though not in a good way:

"We have the idea that indoctrination is like the Chinese shoving bamboo up your fingernails or dropping a drop of water on your head until you say, 'Okay, Buddha is god,'" Fischer said. "Indoctrination is nothing more than teaching someone else a set of ideas."

You see, this is where things can get scary. People like this don’t even realize what it is they’re doing, if Fischer actually meant what she said. No, indoctrination is not teaching others a set of ideas. That, is education. Indoctrination, is imposing a set of ideas upon someone with the intent of teaching them that theirs is the only mindframe that counts, the only right way to live. That, is indoctrination, and that, is brainwashing.

(via Blag Hag)
Technorati tags: Jesus Camp · Becky Fischer · Christianity · Christians · fundies · summer camp · evangelicalism