Onward Christian campers

At the center of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s documentary “Jesus Camp” is Becky Fischer, a children’s minister in the charismatic evangelical movement. She is a large, plodding woman with a head of knife-like blond spikes—early in the movie we’re treated to a long sequence in which she meticulously tends to her head. Later, standing in front of a group of children, she demands to know how they like her hair. She hardly seems like the American equivalent of the Taliban, until she opens her mouth and openly praises them. She points out that Muslims in Palestine take children as young as 7 and put them in training camps, where they are taught to use guns and strap bombs to their chest.

Mind you, Fischer never says that evangelical children should likewise be taught to be suicide bombers, and there is no reason to think that she believes such a thing. But she’s not the only person in the movie to make parallels between her youth ministry and the sort of inculcation of the young that creates terrorists. Toward the end of the movie, Levi, a scrappy, appealing young man with searching, intelligent eyes and one of the most unfortunate rat-tailed haircuts ever captured on film, reminds the camera that some people go out and die for their God, and they don’t feel any fear. The admiration in his voice is audible, and we hear Levi’s voice frequently in the documentary; he is thinking of becoming a child preacher.

Levi is one of hundreds of children that spend their summers in a camp headed by Fischer. It is located, without any sense of irony, at Devil’s Lake, N.D., and called, without any further irony, Kids on Fire. Anyone who has spent their summers at the sort of summer camps that brochures obliquely refer to as “rustic” will be flabbergasted by Fischer’s camp—money is on obvious display here. Far from featuring ramshackle cabins and rusted boating equipment, the Devil’s Lake camp features its own go-kart track and a state-of-the-art chapel, including the sort of sound system that you would typically associate with a traveling production of a Broadway show. Early in the film, Fischer walks her employees through the chapel, praying over each piece of equipment, beseeching God not to let the devil interfere with her Powerpoint presentations. Fischer then speaks in tongues, which she often does in the film, and encourages her children to do likewise.

Fischer and the children will spend much of the documentary in this chapel. This is where she evangelizes, using teaching tools that range from insipid to terrifying. She sharply lectures that she knows many of the kids in the rooms are hypocrites, that they act one way in church and another way in school; a number of the children burst into guilty tears upon hearing this. Fischer interrupts one sermon to launch into another, a tirade against Harry Potter. “If these were Biblical times,” she barks out curtly, “Harry Potter would be killed.”

At one point, Fischer brings in a guest speaker, an amiable man in an oversized mustache, who brings with him tiny plastic models of fetuses. As he lectures them about abortion, the filmmakers cut repeatedly to images of his listeners sobbing. “No more,” one chants, pumping her fist angrily. “No more!” Collectively, earnestly, they pray that Bush will appoint a Supreme Court judge who is antipathetic to abortion. (The film was made during Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito, who, in 1985, argued that the Constitution provides no right to an abortion; During the nomination process, Alito refused to express a clear opinion about the subject, except to say that, were he asked to rule on it, he would keep an “open mind.”)

Later, Fischer leads the children, some dressed in military fatigues and wearing camouflage face paint, in chants of “This is war!” In an interview at the end of the movie, Fischer expresses suspicion about democracy—it will inherently self-destruct, she says, because it presumes everyone is equal.

It is an alternate history of America that Fischer teaches. In scenes showing Levi at home being schooled by his mother, they recite a Pledge of Allegiance to the Christian States of America—they earnestly believe that this country was founded as a Christian nation, and has somehow lost its way. Levi’s mother shows him videos made for children that mock evolution, and uses textbooks that argue that global warming doesn’t exist. Fischer warns that secular America has declared war on Christian America, although her logic is perplexing. After all, all that is being denied charismatic evangelical Christians is the opportunity to force their viewpoints onto other people. The issues on the table, after all, are abortion, prayer in school and evolution, and, in each instance, Christians have every right to make the decision that is consistent with their worldview. They need not get abortions if they choose not to, their right to privately pray in school is guaranteed by the Constitution, and they are free to teach their children that the world was created by God 6,000 years ago, if they so choose. But this is not enough, in Fischer’s world, or in the larger world of politically active charismatic evangelical Christians. As far as they are concerned, until they can deny abortions to other women, force federally mandated prayer onto everyone in schools, and teach evolution alongside Darwin in the public schools, they are oppressed.

Fischer shows no awareness of these contradictions, but, in the film, she comes across as a master of self-delusion. Fischer granted the filmmakers nearly unlimited access; certain that, even if the film were subtly slanted against her (and it is, using menacing sound cues and careful juxtapositions of dialogue to make her seem both menacing and ridiculous), the end result would nonetheless work as a recruiting tool.

Fischer’s self-deception is on fullest display at the very end of the movie, when she talks with Air America radio host Mike Papantonio. He confronts her, arguing that God gave us a discerning intelligence, and she is betraying that by forcing one viewpoint on children, without allowing them the opportunity to look at multiple ideas and come to their own conclusions. He tells her that she is creating an army of tiny Republican soldiers. At this moment, we have seen children at Fischer’s camp be led to explicitly combine their evangelism with political activism. They have even been asked to touch a cardboard standee of President Bush and pray for him to base his policy on an explicitly Christian agenda. But Fischer balks at Papantonio’s charges. She replies that she knows of no church that is explicitly teaching politics. Papantonio, stunned, does not know how to respond to this. After the interview, he sits in silence for a moment, shaking his head; Papantonio is an eloquent man, but his silence here speaks volumes. What do you say to a woman like Fischer? How do you respond to the children, and the America they’re being trained to create? ||

“Jesus Camp” is currently showing at Landmark’s Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Mpls.