Jesus Camp

Ben and I saw a preview for Jesus Camp, which looks like one of those movies that sets out to reveal a strange but powerful American sub-culture...opening our sheltered eyes to what the "other side" of American society/politics looks like. The thing is, lately I've been obsessed with non-fiction. If I have a free moment, out comes a book about science or words or medicine or naturalism or less happy things (like Jonathon Kozol's books about inner-city miseducation or Fauziya Kassindja's Do They Hear You When You Cry). This obsession has been slowly overtaking my movie preferences as well. I loved Spellbound, Wordplay, An Inconvenient Truth, the movie about the dead grizzly bear guy, and Super Size Me...I'm a pretty easy mark as far as documentaries go. The point is, that as easy a mark as I am, I was conflicted about the preview for Jesus Camp. But I guess first you should go to jesuscampthemovie.com, if you can, and watch the preview so we're on the same page. My discomfort was caused by my familiarity with the kinds of messages the adults were feeding to children in bible camp. Here are some of the things the adults said,
"There are two kinds of people in the world...those who love Jesus and those who don't."
"How many of you would like to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?"
"Are you a part of it or not?"
"I want to see young people...as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those places because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth."
"How long have you been a Christian?"

These quotes are extreme, but they sound familiar to me. Well, except the one about Pakistan. That one is clearly a reaction to things that have happened since 2001. I hate that these things sound familiar. They conjure up feelings of extreme guilt that I still feel to some extent. It's weird right, because my Mom was about the least pressuring mom a girl could have about Christianity, but I still have these feelings. They are left over from not fitting in as a child at East Side Grace Brethren or at Jersey Baptist and feeling like a bad, bad kid because of it. I tried really, really hard at Jersey, too. Still, I felt like a bad, bad kid.

The only (really Christian) place I really fit in was at Faith Ranch, which I just LOVED. It might, just might, have had something to do with the fact that every bit of fellowship was squeezed in between camping, horseback riding, and singing (which I was good at and so not a social outcast). Even at Faith Ranch, though, I have some difficult memories. The worst was from my last summer there, when I was thirteen or fourteen. I was going on a week long camping trip with a few other girls, and before we left I told on one of the girls for smoking. The assistant director came up to me later and commended me for doing what I was supposed to and for what "couldn't have been an easy decision." It was a damned easy decision, because I had been raised to do exactly what I did. I knew that smoking was bad and had never been friends with kids who smoked. What could have been easier? I didn't do what I did out of goodness.

As an adult, I still feel like the bad, bad, kid. I feel it around Christians (and especially around my family) constantly. I cannot enunciate an absolute to you. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in absolutes, or in an absolute power. It also doesn't mean that I don't strive to be a follower of Christ. I don't hate or look down on people who believe in saints, in transubstantiation, in consubstantiation, in miracles, in speaking in tongues (although I find this difficult to relate to), but I do look down on people who look down on, or hate, others. I also have a BIG problem understanding most of what Paul says. But I firmly believe that that's my fault. I don't understand much of what Plato says, either.

Back to the preview. On the website there's an interview with Victoria, the cute little ten-year-old blonde Christian heavy metal enthusiast dances for God and doesn't care about Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears (thank God for that at least!). She says, "When I dance I really have to be sure that that's God because people will notice when I'm just dancing for the flesh."

So my question is, why would parents and other adults hound kids about giving up their lives for Christ or the perils of "dancing for the flesh"? I have never (and certainly not when I was ten) understood the battle lines Christians draw between themselves and others, and I will never understand or condone teaching that to children. I want feedback from those of you with kids who do church stuff with your kids. How do you feel about pledging allegiance to the Christian flag (something we did in Sunday school when I was little) or drawing lines between Christian and non-Christian children?
It seems like there ought to a way of addressing children which will teach them what they need to learn in order to grow into spiritual (and in this case, Christian) men and women, without burdening their little (potentially very joyful) souls with worries about dancing for the flesh or not saying the Christian pledge appropriately or not being on the right side of the Christian/non-Christian divide.

I guess all I'm saying is this: Christian adults, think twice before you put a piece of red duct tape with LIFE written on it over your little kid's mouth at a rally. She probably doesn't get it, which means it's doing more harm than good. Two more things: First, I don't at all blame my parents for the guilt I feel. Second, I apologize for the length and poor organization of this post. It's something I'm working on.