Jesus Camp ~or~ Jesus Camp

So, I just finished watching Jesus Camp (imdb) which was an all-in-all fairly well-made documentary. Having grown up in the charismatic Christian circle, I definitely saw some artifacts from my childhood (though that's certainly not to say that my experience was like that of the children in this film). My only really big complaint against the movie is it's implicit assertion that most evangelicals are fundamentalist pentecostal evangelicals, which simply is not the case. This also carries into their portrait of evangelical Christians as somehow fully united or connected; obvious to anyone who reads this who's familiar with the evangelical Church, there are few things less united. Anywho, here are the straight notes from my steno while I was watching the movie (and if the bulleted list seems daunting, skip to the paragraph after it, cause that's where the best story of all is):

• Christianity really tends towards abject dualism (a quote from the movie goes something along the lines of 'Either you love Jesus or you hate him,' for example). This is terribly foreign to the world, and maybe not the way we ought to look at life. Worth considering, at least, possibly....
  
• The people showcased in this movie, and many Christians in general, seem to have warped Christianity from a spiritual movement into a political one. While I won't argue that our spirituality should not influence our political viewpoints, that doesn't seem to me to be the case here. For example, one of the home-school assignments (and I'm not saying anything about homeschooling; in fact, most of my favorite people in the world were homeschooled for most or all of their education) was analyzing the "logical fallacies" of scientists who argue for global warming. While analysis like this is good for any person's education, the question was obviously phrased with an intended answer ("Scientists believe that trends in recent summer heat point to a large-scale global warming. What's wrong with this thinking?") Additionally, the climax of the camp spiritual experience (at least, as edited by the filmmakers) was an anti-abortion rally. Lame. I mean, if that's the best we have to offer the world...
• We as Christians really reward obscure metaphorical language rather than just saying something straight out.
• There's a really ugly us-vs-them mentality on both sides of the Christian spectrum that gets really lame. (cf Jim Wallis over at "God's Politics," and most other evangelical leaders for a view from the "right")
• They just showed some sequences from New Life in Colorado Springs. Pretty trippy to see people that I recognize in a documentary...
• This "one-third of our generation was aborted stat," does anybody know where this came from? It really sounds crazy high to me, but I've heard it a lot in evangelical youth talk, mostly.

The highlight of the movie, though, for me was definitely one sequence where a pastor was affixing tape to kids mouths for a pro-life protest. (something like this) Anyway, the guy asks the kids their name before he slaps the tape on. The first kid says his name is Gideon. So the pastor tapes his mouth and says, "Gideon, maybe the Lord will have you lead the few to overcome the oppression of the many." He pats him on the back and sends him away. The next kid comes up; his name's Joseph. As pastor's taping his mouth, he says, "Who knows? Maybe God will have you to be head over the government someday, you dreamer of dreams." Pats him on the back, sends him away. The third kid comes up, and she's a little girl. So he asks her her name. She says, "Allison." As he's putting the tape on her mouth, he says, "Well, Allison, you look real nice with this tape on your mouth."

And I laughed.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.