• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Photo

Photo

“Jesus Camp”

Director Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

Magnolia Pictures

For today’s documentaries, two characteristics just keep popping up: cuteness and catastrophe.

In “March of the Penguins,” huggable birds speed-waddle from ravenous seals. “Born Into Brothels” featured bright-eyed kids with prostitute moms. And even “Grizzly Man” took the typically cuddly bedtime friend and warped it into a bloody man-eater.

Viewers will also find this recipe in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Jesus Camp” as the filmmakers follow three kids into a summer camp for evangelical Christian children that couples a deep love for Jesus with a militant mentality to win back the U.S. from the spiritually wayward. It’s a world where go-kart races meet with fiery anti-abortion sermons and playful ghost stories become as familiar as cries from children tearfully pleading for God’s forgiveness.

But while the film has the chance to dig deeply into an elusive facet of American religion, its loose focus leaves the audience with a frayed view of the film’s subject.

“Jesus Camp” splits its time between two discussions: an exploration of the lives of evangelical Christian children and a look at how Christian fundamentalism is edging its way back into American politics. The dual take leaves the film so stretched out that it can’t say much about either.

The study of the children is the most engaging. The homeschool sessions rejecting evolution and the closets full of Jesus-ware leave the audience to figure out if the parents are indoctrinating their children or if they are rightfully protecting them from a nation of broken morals.

Pastor-to-be Levi, precocious-but-awkward Rachael and dance-obsessed Tory serve as guides into the camp. Once we move past Tory’s role as an anti-abortion speaker during a sermon, however, she gets dropped from the film since she can no longer contribute to any political discussion. Her disappearance helps emphasize other features the film is missing that would make for a more interesting story , such as a look into how people face peers who disagree with them.

The political argument also lacks strong support. Pastors and religious pundits both speak of the growing power of an extreme religious right in the government, but there is never solid evidence of this involvement. A small group of followers singing hymns in the capital and worried proclamations by a radio host do not compare to finding statistics on what actual policies this voting bloc has would have determined.

“Jesus Camp” ultimately traps itself in another recent documentary trend that has been around since the success of “Farenheit 9/11”: the political expose. But instead of turning up anything worth discussing, the film has little sense of what it is trying to say in the first place.