Last Friday I gave myself the day to play around and relax a little, having had a fairly rigorous week in school. I went and sat in a coffee shop with a magazine for an hour, got a massage at the Massage Arts School and saw the movie Jesus Camp.
The movie left me shaken and I spent the rest of the day trying to walk off the feelings of sadness and fear that would not let go. It was more disturbing than any horror movie I’ve ever seen. It is a documentary made by the film division of the A&E channel, about a movement of evangelical Christianity and their intentions to convert and indoctrinate their children into a particular belief system. They are trying to make these kids into soldiers in God’s army and I find it scary.
There was footage of prayer meetings, where the pastor essentially tells 6 and 7 and 8 year olds that they are bad and that the only way to be good, to be loved, to be righteous is to accept these beliefs. The children would be weeping, tears streaming down their faces, as the hiccupped into the microphone how terribly sorry they are and that they will try to be better. It killed me to watch.
I realize that as a Unitarian Universalist, my cred as a Christian is shaky at best. It’s a designation I don’t even always feel is appropriate to my set of beliefs. But I am a believer in love, justice and peace, concepts that I think are inherent to Christianity. I didn’t see any of those things in this movie. It scares me to see that people are teaching children a Christian belief system that is completely devoid of compassion or mutual respect. It doesn’t seem to bode well for the world.
Children’s Boot Camp for the Culture Wars [NYT]