Thursday, November 30, 2006

Jesus Camp

I went to see this documentary last night. It's about the movement among evangelical conservative Christians to indoctrinate their children.

Watching it here in the Bay Area, I was surrounded by my liberal cohort and felt safe. But what was absolutely shocking about the audience reaction was that so many thought this was funny. This is absolutely not funny. It is no more funny than white supremists bringing their children to KKK rallies and teaching them to hate anyone who does not have a similar ethnicity to theirs.

I'm a witch. As a witch, I think about religious power and energy in a particular way. They are teaching these children to be open to ecstatic experiences and to learn to direct prayer and power in a very focused way.

I am a therapist. They are isolating these children from experiences which would broaden their understanding of the modern world, and holding up their leaders as somehow incredibly important. I felt such pain watching as one of the children got to be introduced to Rev. Haggard. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal that child may have experienced in the last month...and how the only response to make sense of it was probably that satan could get to anyone.

It was absolutely haunting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hiya Spins, glad you had a great holiday!

Fortunately Jesus Camp got shut down.

(And yeah, the people running the camp are awful, but they're also worthy of ridicule. Maybe if more people see how ridiculous they are, their power will start to fade.)

Hope you have a great weekend in store!
xo shinything

Aravis said...

This is the sort of thing that I simply cannot watch. I get so angry! It just isn't worth it to me to put myself through it.