“Scariest Movie of the Year*”…?

Some of you may have heard about the controversy surrounding the movie “Jesus Camp”�which has been nominated for an Oscar under the Best Documentary Feature film.

Richard Schickel of TIME magazine has called it�”well-made and very disturbing” and notes that: “What is recorded in Jesus Camp is an hysterical anti-educational effort � an attempt not to open young minds to the possibilities of the world, but to close them down, to breed a generation of fanatics. You witness weeping, wailing, even talking in tongues, you witness ministers whipping up passionate frenzies, both agonized and ecstatic, in 9- and 10-year-olds who cannot possibly understand the emotions they are venting or reasonably control them. You also see in these children the beginnings of dangerous paranoia…”

Jessica Reaves of The Chicago Tribune notes in her review that “There are so many things to fear, which is perhaps why Christian extremism (as portrayed here) looks and sounds so much like any other kind of religious fanaticism. “I want to see these kids laying down their lives for the Gospel in the same way fundamentalist Muslims do,” Fischer explains. Muslims are referred to as “the enemy,” or used as a pretext for teaching really young children that entire segments of the world’s population are doomed to hell. According to the film, 43 percent of evangelicals accept Christ as their savior before the age of 13.”

She also mentions that ” What Ewing and Grady have accomplished here is remarkable–capturing the visceral humanity, desire and unflagging political will of a religious movement.”

David Edelstein writing in the New York Magazine calls the movie “a frightening, infuriating, yet profoundly compassionate documentary about the indoctrination of children by the Evangelical right.”

The summer camp depicted in the movie is run by by Becky Fischer and her ministry, Kids in Ministry International.

Kids in Ministry’s�top team includes�”Christine Soude from India” who “teaches in Bible schools, churches, conducts seminars and conferences for children’s ministers, as well as effectively leads children into the things of the Spirit.” Christine also “oversees the translation of the KIMI resource materials in Hindi. She is raising up a team of children’s ministers to work with her in India.”

Worrying�

* from the article by Tess Stimson writing in the Daily Mail (London, Jan 26 ’07)

For more info on the movie, read this Wikipedia entry (Image courtesy: Wikipedia)