Jesus Camp Review

I was finally able to see the documentary "Jesus Camp" that I had previously posted a trailer to and I have to say it was both sickening and reassuring. I say sickening because I think extremism troubles everyone. The things that were said by some of the kids in this movie and the adults that were teaching them were so far out that I can't imagine anyone not thinking, "Wow, I didn't know these people existed." Things such as, "Harry Potter is a warlock and if he were real he'd go straight to hell!" I just wanted to sit this minister lady down and calmly explain to her that Harry Potter is FICTIONAL (do you know what fiction is little girl? That means he only exists in your imagination. BOO!) and that warlocks are no more real than ghosts, goblins, demons or Satan's bogeymen. It's just madness and I can't help but think that the majority of it comes from sheer boredom. The evangelicals in this movie are so angry and so frustrated with the world and what I really want to know is why they think the world is supposed to be a good place. No one ever said it was. There are parts that are. There are parts that aren't. It's just life. Does that mean don't stand up for what you believe in? No. Does it mean tempering what you believe in with facts and evidence based on modern information? Yes, I think it does.

I say that the movie was reassuring because since this movie was produced much of what these radical evangelicals want moderates and liberals to be afraid of is that they have control of the white house, the congress, and the supreme court and we know this isn't the case anymore. Had I watched this a couple of years ago I may have been a little freaked out. "Could people like this that sit around in their small towns brewing over how horrible the world is really have the discipline to take over powerful parts of our government?" And a few years ago I would have had to look at the situation and say, "Yeah, they're doing it right now." Fortunately, most people (arguably all people) know what is too much and recognize when something that in moderation might be considered beneficial, even inspirational, has gone too far and needs to be cut down to size. I think we've seen this with the delusional decisions Bush has made during his time as president and if anything I think he has given a lot of radical, ugly people a platform to show the country how dangerous religious minds can be when unbalanced by logic, moderation and an open-minded education. The polarization in America has to stop. It can't continue. Liberals cannot divorce themselves from conservatives and visa versa. We're stuck with each other. And anyone who has dealt with group dynamics will tell you that what comes as a result is no more divinely inspired than it is controlled by logic and planning. It's just a dynamic. If our two parties were greens and democrats the country would be decidedly more liberal. If they were moderates and republicans, more conservative, but it's not about right and wrong--not to me. It's simply what has come about by throwing several different groups together in a system where they can't trump each other without risking backlash. Conservatives have been trying to trump liberals for the last thirty years. Now it's going the other way. So let's not get melodramatic about it. Sure it's good to learn about who is hanging out on the fringes of your society, but to watch a film like "Jesus Camp" and come away thinking anything other than here is a group of people who are taking a peaceful philosophy and turning it into an angry political tool is being extreme in a reverse fashion. Hollywood loves to jab at middle America because it doesn't understand why people in this country would choose to live such slow, simplistic lives, and middle America loves to jab back because Hollywood seems so whimsical and petty that they can't grasp why these people don't take life more seriously. I've seen the good and bad of both sides in my travels and I have to say we're all more or less the same when you get outside the little boxes we put each other into. Be a human being. Use your brain. You're not one or the other. You don't have to fit in a category to be normal.