Review – Jesus Camp

These folks might seem shocking and scary to people in the big city, but those of us who grew up around this kind of thing soon realize that the film-makers have actually latched onto some of the tamer members of the radical Christian right. Quick indicator: anyone who will listen to Christian rock and rap (without believing that the rhythms are putting demons in their bodies) isn’t truly part of the hard-core fanatical wing of the Republican Party’s power base. Does it really come as a documentary-worthy surprise that some Pentecostals teach their kids to speak in tongues and embrace creationism? To the extent that such people are dangerous at all, it isn’t their hatred of Harry Potter that makes them menaces to rational civilization. Ask these kids and their parents what they think about their gay, Catholic and Jewish neighbors (their love-hate relationship with Jewish people is especially interesting, yet completely absent from this picture). Ask them what they’d do if they ever actually got control of society. Then you’ll get a much better picture of the true challenge their ilk poses. This documentary does a little with these thorny issues, but for the most part it takes a hee-hee-look-at-the-rubes approach to the home lives of suburban, Midwestern, conservative Christians. If you think this is interesting, you need to get in your car, drive until you’re at least a hundred miles away from any body of water you can’t see across, and just spend a little time getting to know the strange, new world known as “the rest of the country.” Mildly amusing