Jesus Camp

[Shiranui117]

I haven't seen the entire film, merely excerpts of it, but from what little I've seen, I saw the camp leaders and counselors ordering the kids around. During one of their "praying and repenting sessions", I saw adults putting their hands on the kid's heads from behind, urging them to pray and repent. Kids were falling to the floor sobbing because the adults were telling them to. It seemed like a lot of what was going on there was forcing those kids to manufacture spiritual experiences because they were under pressure and expectation. The question that kept popping into my mind watching the entire thing was "Where is the choice?" I saw kids during interviews parroting things about how they were the new generation of soldiers for Christ, and how "we need to rise up and run with that idea". I saw them going up to complete strangers in a bowling alley and telling people that God is thinking about them and wants to love on them. Sure, some of that could be believable. But it also sounds exactly like they have been trained to speak that way, like they've been taught what to say in what situation. Again, where was the kids' choice in any of that? Did they have any option to opt out or not participate in certain activities? Did anyone tell them that it was okay if they didn't feel a certain way?

 

[Windwalker]

Interesting! We should talk about that because I have been arriving at the same conclusion over the past two to three years.

Definitely, I would enjoy that discussion. Because I have some background with folks "close enough" to this particular manifestation fundamentalism (and there are many), I have tried to be as generous as I could be, considering they are not foreign "others" to me, and I am able to relate to them as people. I've tried to find the value in it, since it had been part of my own growth process moving beyond them. I tried to see it as a stage of growth, such as teaching the "rules" to young people as external laws you have to conform to, which at a later stage of maturity start to become internalized, and the 'rules' are more dynamic creation from a mature person. I tried to see them as just being really, really into the whole "law", the external rules that must be obeyed at all costs, the legalistic interpretation of religions. But after many years of energy spent trying to get a positive high-level understanding of it as a valid form of a stage of religious growth, I recently came to the conclusion it's not a stage, but instead like a cancer to the body.

Here's why I see it as disease. Something that is functional and healthy, such as a stage of growth, is necessary in order for the person to move to the next stage of development. A child cannot bypass the stages of childhood development and be expected to be operating as mature adult without first learning the earlier principles sufficiently enough in order to build upon them as they move to the next level of maturity. If someone is pushed too fast beyond the natural rate of development, you may end up instead with someone instead needing to go through some form of regression therapy to get back in touch with parts that got missed or skipped in their development, so the later stages of maturity have proper foundations. All things in its time, built upon the stage that came before it. This is a description of healthy, normal development.

But when it comes to fundamentalism something unhealthy occurs. It takes what is within the given stage of development of the person and turns it back in on itself, working against further growth. It poisons the individual with fear, not to protect the individual from harm, but rather to feed itself as a system. It is born out of fear, and serves itself, not the individual. It is a cancer eating the body to keep itself alive. Say for example someone is at the stage where they need external rules from an external authority to tell them the difference between "right and wrong". They need to conform to some external authority to tell them what to do. This is what God is symbolically at the stage of traditional religion. Nothing wrong with that. It's normal and healthy. But fundamentalism is reactionary. It sees the next stage of development as a mortal threat to itself and takes all the tools at hand and turns them against the person to shackle them in fear. "The devil wants nothing more than to get you to doubt the truths from God and walk away from here, ending up drunk and dead in the gutter somewhere!".

A normal growth pattern would be to learn the essentials, then move beyond grade level 2 training, into the 3rd, then the 4th, and on up into being a college graduate, or Ph.D, or beyond. But fundamentalism wishes to inhibit growth to keep you "safe" at the 3rd grade level. It makes the lessons of 3rd grade to be the Absolute Truth, and calls anything but itself and its own way of thinking as evil, as "heretics", and so forth. It is anything other than about promoting healthy and normal growth. It is about creating a cage to crawl into out of fear of what lays beyond the world of the familiar to them. They distrust themselves so pathologically that they are willing remain locked into the stage of external authorities telling them what to do, and at some point, if they don't grow beyond that into any form of self-realization, the body begins to eat itself. It becomes stunted and distorted.

I think of it like the poor child in that movie I can't recall the name of where his parents were so worried about him getting sick, they kept him in a room with the curtains closed and all the windows and doors shut so disease wouldn't get to him. Some young innocent child who lived in the real world became friends with him and ran over to open the dark curtains and open the window. As she did, the frightened child screamed out, "No! No! Shut those! Hurry! The spores, the spores! They'll make me sick!!". That's what fundamentalism is. A prison that prevents normal, healthy, natural exposure to the world in which we grow beyond these "essentials" into normal healthy adults. I hear the fundamentalist quote the Bible like the kid in the movie crying "No! The spores, the spores!", "No! No! We cannot trust what is inside us at all! The Bible says, 'The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?'", quoting it as if it is an injunction to not going outdoors and breath in the natural air where the spores may get to us, locking ourselves instead into a room of fear of life. That's a pathological response to normal fear and caution.

 

[Revoltingest]

Jesus Camp is so memorable because it has one of my
all time favorite quotes about the absurdity of certainty.....
"....excuse me, but we have the truth!"

 

[Windwalker]

It is a disease, a spiritual disease called heresy

Heresy is not a spiritual disease. Heresy is a theological disagreement. Calling each other heretics is the disease.

, but the film does not portray fundamental, biblical Christianity.

Yes, it absolutely does portray fundamentalism, and they base all of it on their fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

You seem to have some confusion over this.

No confusion at all. These are fundamentalists.

Were you raised in this kind of Charismatic atmosphere?

No. I was not raised in one of these churches.

 

[Iti oj]

I viewed it with an impartial mindset more analogous to that of a cultural anthropologist: I am an observer here of a foreign culture, and aim to understand it rather than get all judgmental about it. They have their way of life, other people have their ways of life. The end.

Been way too long since I saw it, though. I can't recall if it was an agenda-spin documentary. It probably was. And unfortunately I'm well aware that it is easy to spin things to paint them in a negative light when one composes a news article or documentary. The same things have been done to various Pagan religions, and it can be difficult to see past those distortions to be an impartial observer of a different culture.

The problem is we are not separate and beliefs are not insular. I'm not an outside observer.

 

[Windwalker]

Also, the Bible does not teach that the way to transform society is for Christians to seize control of secular political entities. Fischer’s most troubling message, however, is that children must “take back America for God” ...'

"Jesus Camp is an eye-opening film that documents the beliefs of a segment of Pentecostalism and how those beliefs impact society. If nothing else, the film underscores the dangers of Charismatic excess and the importance of sound biblical theology (2 Timothy 1:13)."

excerpts from: http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Camp.html

This is a misrepresentation of this "Take back America for God" message as being a biblical distortion brought about by Pentecostal theology. In fact, the entire current incarnation of this God in American politics is the brainchild of the "Moral Majority" and the "Christian Right", back in the 1980s spearheaded by those like the Baptist Minister Jerry Falwell and championed by those like Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame, who is not part of the Pentecostal movement.

These are "Biblical Christians", whose "sound" interpretation of the Bible leads them to believe that God in politics is the way to go. What you see in the Jesus Camp movie, is simply an extension of this Christian view spearheaded by these non-Pentecostal, non-Charismatic preachers from the fundamentalists camps of uber-rightwing American Christianity. These views of cultural wars and getting a "Born again" Christian into office belong to fundamentalists in general, manipulated by the likes of Karl Rove courting their vote to get the GOP into the White House. They all are drawn out of the same fundamentalist stew, and manipulated by the political machine.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Poor kids.

Maybe a level of contrast will develop from all of the experiences. A number of kids could very well grow up and reflect and recognise lunacy for what it is.

 

[ThirtyThree]

"The Most Hated Family in America" was great also.

 

[Twilight Hue]

"The Most Hated Family in America" was great also.

It does put a person on the map.

 

[Father Heathen]

I was presented with a black-and-white dichotomy to choose from, and said my response was characterized by neither. I saw both beauty and ugliness, as I do with pretty much everything.

I never said nor suggested any such thing. Frankly, the entire point of being an impartial observer is to avoid precisely this kind of moralizing and judging what is and isn't acceptable. One simply observes what is, without labeling it as abuse, as bad, or good, or whatever.

What is the point of observing if you're not going to process, analyze, or form any sort of conclusion? Why shouldn't empathy and ethics be important?

 

[Imaginary_Friends]

is a documentary (once up for an Academy Award) available on Netfix disc or Instant Viewing that will either make you get down on your knees and thank the lord or make you cringe in disgust. Other than pointing out a few particulars, there's no commentary of any kind, leaving you free to make of it what you will..

Skwim, Have you seen Street Fighter Church edition?

 

[InChrist]

This is a misrepresentation of this "Take back America for God" message as being a biblical distortion brought about by Pentecostal theology. In fact, the entire current incarnation of this God in American politics is the brainchild of the "Moral Majority" and the "Christian Right", back in the 1980s spearheaded by those like the Baptist Minister Jerry Falwell and championed by those like Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame, who is not part of the Pentecostal movement.

These are "Biblical Christians", whose "sound" interpretation of the Bible leads them to believe that God in politics is the way to go. What you see in the Jesus Camp movie, is simply an extension of this Christian view spearheaded by these non-Pentecostal, non-Charismatic preachers from the fundamentalists camps of uber-rightwing American Christianity. These views of cultural wars and getting a "Born again" Christian into office belong to fundamentalists in general, manipulated by the likes of Karl Rove courting their vote to get the GOP into the White House. They all are drawn out of the same fundamentalist stew, and manipulated by the political machine.

Of course, you are welcome to your perspective and conclusions concerning what you call biblical Christianity, but while I can't know for certain any person's spiritual standing with the Lord, I don't think Jerry Falwell or James Dobson have championed biblical Christianity very accurately. The Bible does not instruct believers to reform or save this world through politics, a cultural war, etc.

"Why am I making an issue of this? Because the world and, sadly, much of the church are caught up in a temporal delusion: clinging to this earth rather than hoping for heaven. It's part of Satan's strategy to deceive the world into building his kingdom. For thousands of years, he has seduced both professing and true Christians into joining his labor force, with the goal of establishing his own religion, which will be headed by his puppet ruler, the Antichrist. As the intensity of his program increases in these last days, particularly in Christendom, the leaven of this apostasy has been deposited in all theological camps: charismatics, Calvinists, conservatives, liberals, Pentecostals, Baptists, left-leaning Christians, supporters of the Emerging Church Movement, promoters of the "social gospel," et al.


In its simplest form, it is an attitude of disdaining what Paul admonishes us to do in Colossians:3:2: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." Although even those who truly know and love Jesus may struggle sometimes with keeping their affections on Him, there are others who profess Christ and claim to follow His Word yet who continue in their attempts to set up His kingdom here on earth prior to His return. That unbiblical objective, sometimes referred to as Dominion Theology and Kingdom-Dominionism, has taken many forms throughout church history."
https://www.thebereancall.org/content/temporal-delusion-part-1

 

[Skwim]

Skwim, Have you seen Street Fighter Church edition?

I hadn't seen it before, but I've seen similar videos of Hinn.

 

[Windwalker]

Of course, you are welcome to your perspective and conclusions concerning what you call biblical Christianity, but while I can't know for certain any person's spiritual standing with the Lord, I don't think Jerry Falwell or James Dobson have championed biblical Christianity very accurately. The Bible does not instruct believers to reform or save this world through politics, a cultural war, etc.

Surprisingly we find ourselves in agreement. But I will repeat what I have many times, they see themselves as "Biblical Christians" just as much as you do. They quote verses left and right to support themselves, as you do. And views about dominionism is not what binds all fundamentalists into the same camp. It is their approach to "We have the truth and the rest of you are deceived by Satan," that is. It is the fact they see themselves as the "True Believers", and the denialism of science and reason to support literalistic, absolutistic beliefs is. It the black and white absolutistic thinking that is a hallmark of fundamentalism, not their views on politics.

"Why am I making an issue of this? Because the world and, sadly, much of the church are caught up in a temporal delusion: clinging to this earth rather than hoping for heaven.

What is interesting about this person's perspective here is that he absolutizes the injunction to "set your mind on things above" to literally eschew the world. In reality, if he were to truly understand the truth of what his own words point to, it's actually very Buddhist thought. Clinging creates suffering.

It's part of Satan's strategy to deceive the world into building his kingdom. For thousands of years, he has seduced both professing and true Christians into joining his labor force, with the goal of establishing his own religion, which will be headed by his puppet ruler, the Antichrist.

This is just mythological symbolism to express his fears of what he sees as "the enemy" which is any and all things which do not align with his own chosen beliefs. This is part of the fundamentalist sickness I speak of, where it is all fear-based, preying upon the vulnerable to make them afraid of their own shadow, demonizing the dark, scary world out there just waiting to pounce upon you and take you to hell if you stray from this true path they have set you upon, in their particular version of "Biblical Christianity". Preying upon the vulnerable, exploiting them through fear is in fact another signature hallmark of the disease of fundamentalism.

As the intensity of his program increases in these last days, particularly in Christendom, the leaven of this apostasy has been deposited in all theological camps: charismatics, Calvinists, conservatives, liberals, Pentecostals, Baptists, left-leaning Christians, supporters of the Emerging Church Movement, promoters of the "social gospel," et al.

Another hallmark of fundamentalism is this Us versus Them mentality. There is a solid example of this right here in his lumping pretty much all of Protestant Christianity into the "other" camp, the "Them", the "Not us" category. This too is psychologically and spiritually unhealthy. Isolationism, exclusivism, etc are hallmarks of cultic practices. They create this sense of belonging, this sense of "unity" amongst it followers by getting them to view themselves as part of the "ingroup", part of the "saved", the "true believers", while all others are "outgroup", lost and being deceived by or in a position of vulnerability to Satan, and so forth.

You can see this mentality clearly on parade in the Jesus Camp movie, and it is being expressed here in what this person is saying as well. Once again, it's not about the beliefs themselves, which doctrines they hold to be true, but the manner in which they hold and use them which defines fundamentalism. And this "true believer" is no different than Jerry Falwell in that regard.

In its simplest form, it is an attitude of disdaining what Paul admonishes us to do in Colossians:3:2: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." Although even those who truly know and love Jesus may struggle sometimes with keeping their affections on Him, there are others who profess Christ and claim to follow His Word yet who continue in their attempts to set up His kingdom here on earth prior to His return.

I want to point one thing out first in particular that caught my eye. Notice how he subtly defines those who believe as he does as, "those who truly know and love Jesus"? You see? "If you think as I do, you truly love the Lord, unlike others who end up thinking differently that I do". I know this trick very well. I do not believe the person saying it is even consciously aware of it, but it exposes his mentality that lays as foundation to his attitudes, his words, and his actions towards others. It is the fundamentalist attitude of ingroup versus outgroup, true followers versus the deceived, strong versus weak, and so forth.

Now, though I agree with Paul's injunction, the interpretation of it I hold ends up not saying we should hate the world, that we should view it as evil and fallen and seek escape into our own personal salvation. I don't believe that is a very mature understanding at all. I understand it as Jesus himself instructed others, "Love God with all you heart, mind, soul, and strength [seek first the kingdom of God], and Love others as yourself [see God in the world, in others, and be Love in the world]". I don't see the view that we should see the world and evil and lost, to be feared and run away from to be really getting what is being taught as a spiritual principle by Jesus, or by Paul.

I find these ways of describing this as an attitude and action, as an injunction to find God in our own hearts, and in so doing we can love others in this freedom of spiritual life, in this realization of "God's Kingdom" which dwells within us. Don't seek to create your own kingdom built around yourself and your own desires. Rather, seek Love, for the sake of Love, and become Love in the world. That's what I hear. It's about "life more abundant" in the world, not escaping the world through fear.

That unbiblical objective, sometimes referred to as Dominion Theology and Kingdom-Dominionism, has taken many forms throughout church history."
https://www.thebereancall.org/content/temporal-delusion-part-1

I do agree it misses the point. But then are you so sure you get the point yourself?

 

[ThirtyThree]

It is more like the above...

 

[Deidre]

Having grown up being ''indoctrinated'' into Christianity, it probably was one of the reasons that I deconverted as an adult. I've returned to it, but it's my own faith, now. As opposed to blindly following what I was taught to follow. That said, definitely think it is 'wrong' for want of a better word, to indoctrinate kids into any particular faith belief. I think you can teach them 'about' religions, and spirituality...but not until they are teenagers, do I feel kids are able to really make decisions that are their own. (and not just going along with their parents) I'm not saying that a 'camp' such as this is inherently bad, but it definitely isn't allowing kids to be open minded. Indoctrination strips people of that. Just how I see it, anyways.

 

[Baladas]

I've seen it before. Like Windwalker, I experienced severe anxiety.
It just hit too close to home...I was upset and sad for the children too, but it was very personal for me.

 

[Quintessence]

What is the point of observing if you're not going to process, analyze, or form any sort of conclusion? Why shouldn't empathy and ethics be important?

So you think being an impartial observer equates to not doing any of that? Odd. Makes one wonder how the sciences ever get done, then...

 

[InChrist]

[QUOTE="Windwalker, post: 4613641, member: 41917

I find these ways of describing this as an attitude and action, as an injunction to find God in our own hearts, and in so doing we can love others in this freedom of spiritual life, in this realization of "God's Kingdom" which dwells within us. Don't seek to create your own kingdom built around yourself and your own desires. Rather, seek Love, for the sake of Love, and become Love in the world. That's what I hear. It's about "life more abundant" in the world, not escaping the world through fear.


[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your responses to my previous post. I don't have the time to respond fully right now and besides I really don't feel like arguing over various points. There are some major differences in how we view spirituality and the scriptures. I'm sure on that we are in complete agreement! Nevertheless, despite such differences I have (almost) always appreciated you sharing your thoughts because I can see that they are heartfelt and you are genuinely sincere. I do appreciate the words you expressed above about what you hear concerning the kingdom of God, life more abundant, and loving others in this world. While I believe the scriptures do indicate the literal coming and eternal kingdom of God, I also believe the injunction to live out and demonstrate God's love in this present world without fear because His perfect love casts out all fear...

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. 1 John 4:17-19

Disagreements or not, I think your thoughts are valuable . Thank you.

 

[Father Heathen]

So you think being an impartial observer equates to not doing any of that?

Um no, I do not, which is why I questioned you when you said it did.