Jesus Camp

I finally sat down and watched Jesus Camp. I’d been meaning to do so for quite some time but I only just got around to it now as it was on Bio and seemed as good a time as any.

 
Would it be dramatic of me to say that this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen? Not for content, because the content is really quite amazing, but sitting through the movie is so exceedingly difficult for me. It makes me completely and utterly enraged. I hate evangelicals who do this to their children. I hate people in general who do this to their children, be they christian, jew, muslim, or any other faith. They are children. They should be allowed to be children. Instead, these poor souls are locked away in a homeschooling environment where their beliefs don’t get a proper challenging and worst of all, they don’t get interaction from other children their age. Let alone children their age who have, oh the horror of it, different opinions.

What this inevitably creates are a population of children who are completely and utterly inept at being able to cope with the real world. It sets them up for long-term stress and perhaps even mental illness due to poor coping. Crippling depression when they hit their teen years, for example. Explicitly said in the documentary by a family, was the belief that science “knows nothing.” Science knows nothing? These are the same families, who, when a member is sick, flock to the doctor for medicine to make themselves better. That’s certainly science. And it certainly knows how to make you well again.

This is another huge qualm with this sort of belief that drives me mad. They call people who aren’t completely devoted to the cause “hypocrites and liars.” Okay, so you can pick and chose which parts of science you like and are to your benefit, but you sure don’t see the hypocrisy in that? If you tell your children to go all the way, then come on, you guys, why don’t you go the whole way, too? Oh wait, that might make you more backwards than the Amish. Which, actually, is a group I give a lot of credit. Now that’s devotion to your religion, and boy, the Amish don’t bother anyone in the process! Take a page from them, you guys!

Here it comes again, but its worth mentioning again and again. While religion was in my life from a young age, I am so very, very thankful that it was not pushed on me. Eventually I came to my own decision, and while many people don’t like the decision that came to me, I’m grateful to be allowed to have had to opportunity to have it happen that way. Though I suppose in some instances religion was commonplace and overbearing. Overall however, religion does get a bit of distaste when way you hear about it is largely through the mouth of an illiterate misogynic racist, but that’s another tale for another day.

I suppose that this is a bit all over the place as I’m horrifically tired, but still. Jesus Camp certainly made me upset for the youth of certain parts of our nation. I wept for them, though they’d probably be unhappy to hear that. I just wish that I had known indoctrination like this was going on so close to home sooner than I did.