Jesus Camp

[Ravi]

Official Site

http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2006/07/magnolia_eyeing.html

Release Date:  September 29, 2006 (NYC)

Synopsis:  A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America whereby Christian youth must take up the leadership of the conservative Christian movement.

JESUS CAMP, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (The Boys of Baraka), follows Levi, Rachael, Tory and a number of other young children to Pastor Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, where kids as young as 6 years-old are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God's army. The film follows these children at camp as they hone their prophetic gifts and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

Magnolia Eyeing Both Sides of the Aisle with "Jesus Camp" Doc
by Eugene Hernandez (July 26, 2006)

"Jesus Camp," the new documentary about three Missouri kids who travel to Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire" evangelical summer camp, has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures for a September theatrical release that will target both conservative Christian and liberal doc audiences alike. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's follow-up to "The Boys of Baraka" debuted at this year's Tribeca Film Festival where it won a Special Documentary Jury Prize and went on to pick up the SilverDocs Sterling Award at SilverDocs last month. Produced by A&E IndieFilms, "Jesus Camp" offers a unique window into the North Dakota camp where young kids are actively trained, in the words of an announcement, "to become dedicated soldiers in 'God's army'."

"When so many supposedly journalistic documentaries can't resist the urge to editorialize, it's refreshing to see a pair of filmmakers tackle this hot button subject with such a respect for their subject matter and the people involved," said Magnolia Pictures president Eamonn Bowles, in a statement today. "'Jesus Camp' is sure to be intensely fascinating and thought-provoking to people on all sides of this issue."

Magnolia intends to specifically court both Evangelical Pentecostals and the more traditionally liberal audiences that tend to embrace documentaries. A mid-September debut in New York City, as well as Kansas City and Colorado Springs, is in the works. In a conversation with indieWIRE today, Bowles explained that he has decided to pull the doc from next week's scheduled screening at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival so as not to taint the perception of the film in the run up to the release. Moore saw the film at the Tribeca Film Festival and praised it in a subsequent conversation with indieWIRE, but Bowles reiterated that he doesn't want to send the wrong message by showing the movie at Moore's event.

"We are not going to stack the deck. We want people to make up their own minds," Bowles said, explaining that when marketing the movie he will be true to its balanced approach and maintain an unbiased approach. "I have no problem with Michael Moore, its just that (he) is such a polarizing figure and I don't want to turn off a certain segment of the audience that is going to like the film and find it interesting."

As indieWIRE's doc columnist Jonny Leahan noted in an article about the film prior to its Tribeca fest world premiere, "The camp becomes almost a side issue here, as a much larger picture is painted in 'Jesus Camp' - one about the role of religion in American politics, specifically the fight of the Christian conservatives to win the hearts and minds of the next generation as they prepare to be the governors and senators of tomorrow. It begs the question: what, if anything, are the liberals doing to pass on their values to children in an organized and effective way?"

Magnolia's Bowles and head of acquisitions Tom Quinn, along with head of business and legal affairs Jason Janego negotiated the deal with John Sloss of Cinetic Media and Molly Thompson from A&E IndieFilms.

"[The Christian right] feel empowered right now and they gave us a lot of access - more than had we done [the film] some years earlier," explained co-director Heidi Ewing, following the film's first screening at the Tribeca Film Festival back in April. She added that while Pastor Fischer was unable to attend the Tribeca fest, she has been supportive of the project.

"I think they captured the beautiful concepts of what we represent," Fischer told indieWIRE in a subsequent interview. And when asked about a particularly inflammatory scene that involves a life-size standup photo of President George W. Bush and a large American flag in the background -- with the crowd raising their hands towards the Bush effigy in prayer -- she added, "I didn't realize how the secular world viewed what we were doing...When we took out [an] image of Bush, it turned political, but to us, it's not political - it's Biblical."

"What I think is admirable is the way ("Jesus Camp") walks the line," Bowles concluded, during today's conversation with indieWIRE. "It doesn't make up your mind for you."

ABOUT THE WRITER: Eugene Hernandez is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of indieWIRE.

[MacGuffin]

God's boot camp?
A film on kids' religious experience creates a furor, divides Christians.
Source: Los Angeles Times

"Jesus Camp," a documentary feature film that follows evangelical Christian children at a religious summer camp, won prizes and critical praise on the summer festival circuit, but it wasn't until its quiet opening in the Midwest two weeks ago that a news clip about the film hit YouTube.com, inciting a whirlwind of controversy.

Already, the movie, which opens in L.A. this week, has split the Christian community and horrified those who fear the ascendance of the religious right on the national stage. "Jesus Camp" opened Friday in New York and will open in 20 more cities nationally Oct. 6.

Bloggers of all stripes have been so disgusted by the bits of the film they have seen on the Web that the film's central subject, camp founder Pastor Becky Fischer, has become a public figure, bombarded with hateful e-mails and bracing for her media appearances next week, including a scheduled appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America." The A&E Indiefilms/Magnolia Pictures film follows Rachael, now 10, Levi, now 13, and Tory, now 11, engaging and articulate children from Midwestern towns who attend Fischer's "Kids on Fire" Bible camp in Devils Lake, N.D., in 2005. The filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, take a straightforward look at their subjects.

The film's cherub-faced children cheer when asked if they'd be willing to give up their lives for Jesus, pray over a cardboard cutout of President Bush and sob as they plead for an end to abortion. One is home-schooled by a mother who teaches that "science doesn't prove anything."

'This is war!'

At one point in the film, Fischer shouts to the children, "This is war! Are you part of it or not?" She proudly compares her work to the indoctrination of young boys by extremist Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere. The film intersperses footage of Fischer and the children with clips of radio talk-show host Mike Papantonio, a liberal Methodist, excoriating conservative Christians like Fischer.

Fischer is disappointed by the way she appears in the film. "I do understand they're out to tell a story and they felt they found it with some of the political things," she said by phone from her home in Bismarck, N.D. "And they're out to show the most dramatic, exotic, extreme things they found in my ministry, and I'm not ashamed of those things, but without context, it's really difficult to defend what you're seeing on the screen."

More controversy over the film erupted last week when the Rev. Ted Haggard — whose constituency at the National Assn. of Evangelicals is 30 million strong — took a public stance against it, claiming that the film makes evangelicals look "scary." His condemnation apparently chilled the film's opening in 13 theaters in Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri on Sept. 15.

Even before its release, lurid fascination with the film's trailer bloomed on the Internet. A Sept. 17 ABC News report on the movie turned up on YouTube.com shortly after it aired, and by the next day, the segment was the website's most-viewed clip, with about 200,000 downloads in a matter of hours.

When Fischer arrived home Tuesday after a few days touring with the filmmakers, her e-mail inbox was loaded with hate mail. She spent the next two days writing lengthy explanations to the most common accusations — "How dare you brainwash those kids!" and "Are you raising up Christian terrorists or another Hitler Youth movement?" — then posted them on her website Thursday.

"I've gotten thousands of hits on my website from those people," she said. "I'm wearing sunglasses in the airports. It's really making me nervous."

Haggard — who appears in the film noting that when evangelicals vote, they determine an election — acknowledged he "hated" the film and called it "propaganda" for the far left. He said the filmmakers take the charismatic, evangelical jargon too literally and portray the children's and Fischer's "war talk" as violent and extremist, when it's just allegorical.

"It doesn't mean we're going to establish a theocracy and force people to obey what they think is God's law," he said. "None of that's clarified in the movie."

Word about the film initially spread online after the Tribeca Film Festival screening in New York in April and then again in June, after former Talking Heads lead singer David Byrne saw it at the AFI/Discovery Silver Docs Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and mentioned it on his blog.

"I kept saying to myself, 'OK, these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money) ... so both sides are pretty much equally sick," he wrote.

It garnered even more attention in early August when Michael Moore refused to honor a request by Eamonn Bowles, the head of Magnolia Pictures, to cancel the film's screening at Moore's Traverse City Film Festival to avoid alienating conservative Christian audiences.

Bowles hoped to build interest among conservative Christians for the film's opening with a word-of-mouth campaign generated by faith-based publicity firm A. Larry Ross in Carrollton, Texas. Instead, only handfuls of people turned out.

"We were getting good feedback from a lot of Christian groups interested in the film," Bowles said. After Haggard's statements, he said, "it was almost like a switch was flipped and the people who were going to support it the day before were like, 'Oh no. We're not going to support the film.' "

The New York-based Ewing and Grady said they want the film to make a broad statement about how politics and faith have become inexorably intertwined in America. Yet the conversations that have been sparked by the movie are less about the stark differences between people with different ideologies and more about the interest in bridging them. "No one's going anywhere and no one's going to change their minds," Grady said. "So some sort of compromise has to happen, or we're just going to become more and more divided."

All the controversy surrounding the film, Grady said, "speaks to the fact that this is a conversation that people are dying to have."

A political turn

Grady and Ewing, who last year won awards for their documentary "The Boys of Baraka" about a group of inner-city American kids attending a school in Africa, said everyone was enthusiastic about participating in the project. But as Fischer explained, no one, including the filmmakers, expected the film to become so overtly political. But after Sandra Day O'Connor resigned from the Supreme Court during their filming, leaving a spot open for a more conservative judge, the evangelical community galvanized around the selection of a replacement, and Fischer's children chanted, "Righteous judges!" Ultimately, though, Fischer said, "no one was more shocked or horrified when they told me that was the turn the film was making." That's because, like many evangelical Christians, Fischer doesn't see what she does as political.

The Bible, she said, instructs people to "pray for those in authority over us and in government positions so we can live a peaceful life." And Fischer said she's "dumbfounded" that people would find her anti-abortion lessons disturbing when she sees them as a way to teach children to value human life.

Despite her reservations about the film, Fischer said she's still helping to promote it and considers Ewing and Grady friends. She's also grateful for the national attention the movie and its controversy have granted her. "I couldn't have paid for this kind of advertising," she said.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/jesuscamp/

[pete]

I just came back from it.  I had the same thought watching this as I did while watching the trailer: instead of comparing the bible camp kids to the palestinians, why couldn't they compare the palestinian kids to the bible camp kids?  it's not that difficult to portray evangelicals as wackos, that's just one less demographic to understand, but it's much harder to humanize the indotrinated muslim kids, which the film made quite a few references to, by both the evangelicals and the air america guy, as real people with real beliefs.  the fat jokes, like the ones in the spurlock movie, kinda betray the harmlessness of it all.  people should just watch Herzog's "God's Angry Man" for a more profound portrait of a religious nut.  this is good TV stuff, which is probably the original intented format, and to stae at it on the big screen it just felt kinda cheap.  the stuff with the kids were real fascinating, and obviously something more than "political-religious brainwashing" went on there, but the film never let go of the evangelical framework or statistics. 

[MacGuffin]

Attention Prompts 'Jesus Camp' to Leave Devil's Lake

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - A woman whose summer camp for children near Devil's Lake, N.D., was featured in a documentary called "Jesus Camp," says all the attention led to her decision not to continue camps there.

"I have a responsibility to keep the children safe," the Rev. Becky Fischer said.

Fischer said the camp, which is owned by the Assemblies of God and rents to a number of groups, was vandalized after the release of the movie about her Kids on Fire camp. The Assemblies of God church also was vandalized, she said.

The camp's windows were broken and it had about $1,500 worth of damage. Police figure the church was vandalized the same night, said the Rev. Winston Titus, the camp administrator.

Critics have accused Fischer of brainwashing. She has said she wants to encourage young people to be committed Christians.

Titus said his staff has had calls from both sides - some threatening a boycott if the camp continues renting to Fischer's group, and others threatening a boycott if it does not.

"Right now, we just want it to be over," Titus said. "Any publicity just stirs things up."

Fischer has asked that Magnolia Pictures not release the Jesus Camp movie in the Bismarck area because she worries about the risk of other incidents there.

She said the movie is scheduled at the Fargo Theater on Nov. 17, and will be out on DVD in a couple of months.

[pete]

see, the evangelicals aren't so scary--they do meth and gays just like the rest of us!

Evangelical leader says he bought meth

By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writer

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The Rev. Ted Haggard admitted Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fueled trysts with Haggard.

On Friday, Haggard said that he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel, and that he bought meth for himself from the man.

But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones. And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.

Jones, 49, denied selling meth to Haggard. "Never," he told MSNBC. Haggard "met someone else that I had hooked him up with to buy it."

Jones also scoffed at the idea that a hotel would have sent Haggard to him.

"No concierge in Denver would have referred me," he said. He said he had advertised himself as an escort only in gay publications or on gay Web sites.

Jones did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on Friday.

In addition to resigning his post at the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Haggard stepped aside as leader of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending a church investigation. In a TV interview this week, he said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

In Denver, where Jones said his encounters with Haggard took place, police Detective Virginia Quinones said she was checking into whether the alleged drug deal was under investigation.

Jones claims Haggard paid him for sex nearly every month for three years until August. He said Haggard identified himself as "Art." Jones said that he learned who Haggard really was when he saw the evangelical leader on television.

Jones said he went public with the allegations because Haggard has supported a measure on Tuesday's ballot that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Jones said he was also angry that Haggard in public condemned gay sex.

Haggard, who had been president since 2003 of the NAE, has participated in conservative Christian leaders' conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied members of Congress last year on        U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said Friday that Haggard had visited the White House once or twice and participated in some of the conference calls. He declined to comment further, calling the matter a personal issue for Haggard.

Corwin Smidt, a political scientist at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., and director of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics there, said that Haggard's role with the association gave him some political clout, but that the group's focus is more on religion than political activism.

"It isn't necessarily that all evangelicals are paying close attention to what he's saying and doing, but he is an important leader," Smidt said.

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, an influential conservative Christian ministry based in Colorado Springs, said he was "heartsick" over the allegations. He described Haggard as his close friend and colleague.

Aaron Stern, another pastor at New Life, told Associated Press Television News on Friday that Haggard is a man of integrity and that church members don't know whether to believe the allegations.

Stern said he has been telling church members seeking his advice: "People do things we don't expect them to do, but in the midst of all of that our God is faithful, our God is strong."

Jones took a lie-detector test Friday, and his answers to questions about whether he had sexual contact with Haggard "indicated deception," said John Kresnick, who administered the test free at the request of a Denver radio station.

Jones told reporters afterward: "I am confused why I failed that, other than the fact that I'm totally exhausted."

___

Associated Press writers Robert Weller and Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.

[A Matter Of Chance]

This movie was freaky, but I agree with what Pete said. Has anyone seen Hell House?

[Stefen]

Jesus has a pretty good sense of humor.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

I had heard the movie was really even handed, and I guess it was in the sense that the radio DJ who was christian but was offended by evangelicals still had a level head.  This movie is hardly an attack on christianity but moreover a grim reflection of evangelicals and the effects of subliminal extremism.  Watching this reminded me of the effects that Wonder Showzen had in the sense that kids will say the darndest things, but in this case, these kids were completely conditioned and brainwashed.  Like Pete said, I'm sure there was more at work than brainwashing, but it shows that the heavy handed teachings given to these children puts them in a mindset that has surpassed their love for Jesus and their desire to do anything for him.

Rant about subject matter aside, this was a very well assembled documentary.  The footage was shocking and I was always wondering how they were going to top it next (which they always did successfully).  Like when the little girl in the bowling alley approaches that teeanager and just stumbles through this sort of prayer she said for her and how God loves her, etc., the girl just thank her for it and the little girl went back to one of the teachers, telling him all about the particular nervous tactics that she used and how she felt she almost had her.

I always knew evangelicals were weird, but this movie is a severely candid approach.

As for the DVD, the deleted scenes were pretty great but did move a little slowly for the film so it's not an instance where you wonder why it was dropped but can enjoy that it's there.  I haven't checked the commentary yet, but otherwise I highly recommend this film.

[hedwig]

the radio guy was the WORST PART of the whole thing. including him doesn't make the movie 'even handed', it was hitting us over the head with an obvious and easy perspective on an issue ripe for complex investigation.. the molding, distortion, and development of a child's mind. that was when the movie was most interesting, when it abandoned any political implications and let the children speak for themselves. they were AMAZING. if they'd ditched the radio guy, maybe even some of the crazy evangelical stuff and focused entirely on the children it might've been a much more revealing look at this tragic situation. still, i was pretty affected by it.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

The radio guy wasn't the worst part at all.  He wasn't the most powerful blow of the film, but he kept it from being an attack on Christianity and separated the two sides more evenly.

[pete]

no way--the radio guy was just a decoy, like when the republicans brought that angry democrat for the 2004 convention, the "even they are calling themselves out" approach is an old hat.
I don't wanna defend the right wing of this country here, 'cause they're certainly not worth it, but I still think that the last thing we need is a documentary that exoticizes them.  I don't believe that's what makes them dangerous--I believe the contrary--that the megachurches of this here land are not radical enough in their teachings, thereby breeding a bunch of complacent and apathetic middle class people who are unknowingly oppressing the working class, just as the middle class always have done.  The movie doesn't really explain why indoctrinated evangelical children are dangerous, or at least any more dangerous than any other type of indoctrinated children, aside from voting George W without much critical thinking.  it's not intelligent enough to connect this demographic to a bigger picture, as a part of a larger social problem that we're all responsible for--the lack of education and diversity in our country, the deminishing value of human lives in our globalized world, the easy, quick fix that religions, no matter how radical, can offer people when the values of their lives and others are marginalized by people who appear to be on their side.  That's the brainy side of it that the film does not touch at all, except for the usually umbrella "they worship the W" approach.
On the brawny side--the filmmakers were also unwilling to involve themselves in this spirituality that they very quickly dismissed as baby killing.  nevermind that there are adults too, who experience this type of euphoria, nevermind that the church depicted in the film is actually charismatic, a branch of Christianty even most of the evangelicals consider bizarre.  As I've said before, Herzog's documentaries on the spiritual people that he himself considered mad treated his subjects with much more dignity and curiosity.  This film seemed to have come into the subject with a superficial open mind, which was abandoned at the first mention of George W. Bush.  In the end, it either only entertained the people unfamiliar with the evangelicals, or only served as fuels for the liberal bias media argument, neverminding the country (and the world) being much bigger than that.

[Pubrick]

also

this reminded me of the effects that Wonder Showzen had in the sense that kids will say the darndest things,

that was all scripted.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

After rewatching it now to review pete's and hedwig's points, I do kind of see the radio guy as a pointless voice of reason.  The audience is well aware these people are crazy and should probably know enough Christians on their own to differentiate the insane ones from the less fundamental ones.

this reminded me of the effects that Wonder Showzen had in the sense that kids will say the darndest things,

that was all scripted.

I'm aware of that, I'm just saying that in inflection and tone, they seemed sincere enough to make it much more unsettling.