Jesus Camp
by Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
List Price:
Our Price: $12.22
You Save: $7.76 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $6.24 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Becky Fischer, Lou Engle, Mike Papantonio, Ted HaggardDirector: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
Brand: Magnolia Pictures
Cinematographer: Jenna Rosher
Cinematographer: Mira Chang
Producer: Heidi Ewing
Producer: Rachel Grady
Editor: Enat Sidi
Producer: Jacquelyn Shulman
Producer: Jannat Gargi
Producer: Laura Bell
Producer: Molly Thompson
Producer: Nancy Dubuc
Producer: Ryan Harrington
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-01-23
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: 10062
Studio: Magnolia
Product features:
- Jesus Camp, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, directors of the critically acclaimed The Boys Of Baraka, follows Levi, Rachael, and Tory 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
DVD Reviews of Jesus Camp
DVD Review: Must be seen to understand a segment of the American population
Summary: 5 Stars
We live in the Golden Age of the movie documentary. While mainstream fictional movies have for a decade been in an ongoing creative and qualitative slump (in fact, if you want great fictional visual narrative, television far surpasses film both in excellence and in intelligence), we have witnessed an explosion in high quality movie documentaries. Part of the reason is certainly technological. Until relatively recently documentary filmmakers were forced to work either with extremely expensive film cameras or low quality video cameras. With the advent of compact high-quality digital cameras, however, any documentarian can product extremely good looking footage that looks great even when blown up to the size of a movie theater screen. The field no longer belongs exclusively to geniuses like Errol Morris but to anyone with a good idea and a camera.
I give this five stars and it deserves this, but I want to stress that this film really is a very limited glimpse into contemporary evangelicalism. The people in this film are not merely evangelicals, but Pentecostals. They actually are quite different from most evangelicals and especially, for instance, Southern Baptists. How? First, Pentecostalism is very much based in emotionalism and feeling and far less in Biblical teachings. This is apparent from watching JESUS CAMP. If one is a student of the Bible one will be stunned at how little the Bible is mentioned by the people in the film and what a small role it plays in their religious experience. In fact, at one point a young girl mocks what she imagines to be the worship experience in a mainstream church, where they sing three hymns and listen to a sermon. But in many of those churches what one hears in the sermon is a careful exegesis of passages of Scripture. Few or no Southern Baptist churches feature the emotionalism found by the kids in JESUS CAMP. This is important to keep in mind since Southern Baptists absolutely dominate the Religious Right in America.
The second thing I want to mention is that the film does not show the way that evangelicalism has begun to fragment in the United States. There are at least three major issues evangelicals are currently splitting over nationally, with promise of many more. First and so far foremost, the environment. Many evangelicals simply cannot accept the absurdity that global warming is not taking place and is not caused by human activity. Even some major figures within the upper echelon of the Religious Right power structure are fragmenting on this issue. Pat Robertson himself has announced that he now believes both that global warming is real and humans cause it. As the mountain of evidence pointing to the reality of global warming is building into a mountain range, more and more evangelicals are accepting the obvious. And with many passages in the Bible speaking of the need to be faithful stewards of the earth and not its exploiters, the pro-environment segment of the evangelical movement is apt to gain more and more traction. Second, although the Religious Right has a near obsession with abortion, the brute fact is that the Bible does not address the issue directly a single time (despite the fact that there were abortive procedures practiced at the time, as John M. Riddle has documented in his excellent book EVE'S HERBS: A HISTORY OF CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION IN THE WEST). On the other hand, the Bible in general and the New Testament especially speaks incessantly about caring for the poor. Because much of the Religious Right embraces an obsession with the acquisition of material goods, which clashes strongly with everything we see in the New Testament, this has engenders a reaction from many evangelical leaders who feel that Christians are called to both eschew wanton consumerism and to help care for those who lack the basic physical necessities. Thirdly, evangelicals are splitting, like most of the rest of American already has, over Iraq and George Bush. If in this film Bush is presented as an object of almost religious adoration, many evangelicals have come to see Iraq as a hideous mistake and many others are troubled by the way Republican political policies have favored the wealthy at the expense of both the middle classes and the poor.
Nonetheless, this is a vivid portrait of Pentecostal evangelicalism in the United States. As stated in the film evangelicals make up 25% of the electorate. I do not know what percentage Pentecostals make up of evangelicals, but I would be surprised if it was as much as a third. It is probably much less. Most evangelicals most assuredly do not speak in tongues. Still, they do share many beliefs with many other evangelicals, such as the ahistorical belief that America was founded as a Christian nation and that somehow Jesus has been removed from American life (whereas in fact at the time of the ratification of the constitution the Founders intentionally began the preamble with no mention of God but instead stated that the nation was founded by "We, the People"--also, hundreds of Christians and ministers denounced the "Godless" constitution at the time of ratification and afterward for nearly two centuries, until evangelicals beginning in the 1980s began formulating the myth of the founding of the United States as a Christian nation, an idea that would have shocked all the Founders, but in particular the primary architect of the Constitution, the avid supporter of Church-state separation, James Madison). Most evangelicals are also avidly anti-abortion, though most are unaware that for almost a decade after Roe v. Wade virtually no evangelicals leaders made any public statements about. In fact, evangelical icon W. A. Criswell actually praised the decision shortly after it was announced, stating that it was simply common sense for a woman to have control of her body (for those who do not know Criswell, one of the members of the evangelical pantheon, he was Billy Graham's pastor). As Randall Balmer has shown in his marvelous book THY KINGDOM COME, the Religious Right only began to campaign against abortion after the revocation of the tax-exempt status of some religious organizations, a fact that many leaders of the Religious Right are acutely aware (but which fact they certainly do not want to advertise). And like many evangelicals Pentecostals are suspicious of evolution and science. So while the film sloughs over some of the truly significant differences between the various kinds of evangelicals, there are a number of themes that run through all. My only complaint with the film is that you have to already have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about evangelicalism to make these distinctions.
The scenes that filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady shot are frequently chilling. It is obvious that these poor children are being brainwashed and indoctrinated in a manner that is no different than what happens with Islamic extremists. It is frightening that many of them acknowledge this and do not seem troubled by it. It breaks your heart viewing the film because these seem like really, really nice kids. I kept having to fight the sense that what is being done to the poor kids is a form of child abuse. One scene in particular bugged me. A really sweet girl walked up to a beautiful blonde girl in a bowling alley with a gospel tract and gave it to her with the words, "Jesus told me to give this to you." Of course Jesus did no such thing (in fact, history is replete with thousands of horrors that various people inflicted on others because they claimed God had told them to). I was raised in the culture. I understand the pressures that are placed on children to "witness" for Christ and to "share their testimony." As a child I was conscious of how desperately uncomfortable I was with going up to a total stranger and "telling them about Christ," but didn't possess the insight to realize the amount of self-righteousness required to approach someone of whom you know nothing and presume that they lack what you have to give them. So when watching this poor girl, I couldn't help but think of the horrible things that are parents are doing to her.
Unlike some reviewers I did not find Ted Haggard creepy. Knowing now what we do about him it is all too easy to impart a creepiness that we feel simply had to be there. I remember something the Catholic devotional writer Henri Nouwen said to me once (for two years Henri hired me to edit, type, and proofread his manuscripts, and also to clean up his English prose--English was his second language and his first drafts often contained infelicities of expression). The church, he said, is the most sinful place in the world because that is because it is filled with people who acknowledge that they are sinners. I agree that Ted Haggard's are ironical given his constant attacks on homosexuality, but my own feeling is that most people are afflicted by a host of internal inconsistencies. In seeing Ted Haggard I was instead struck by how funny and likable he was. He was witty, friendly, and personable. And yes, in light of his subsequent downfall (the revelations of his involvement with a gay prostitute and drug use and its apparent confirmation when he resigned from his church broke shortly before the 2006 midterm election and the last in a long string of Republican scandals was viewed as a factor in the Democratic victories) a complete hypocrite. But I suppose he is no worse than most of us.
The lone voice of reason in the film is the trial lawyer and radio journalist Mike Papantonio, who is shown during a broadcast of the "Ring of Fire" radio show on Air America, which he cohosts with Robert J. Kennedy Jr. What I like about Papantonio is that he clearly is as devout as any of the people in the film, but the faith he finds in the New Testament is so completely at odds with those found in the summer camp featured so prominently in the film. I was so glad he was included in the documentary, if for no other reason than to show that there are Christians who haven't lost their wits.
This film really is essential viewing, but as I pointed out above, it is not representative of evangelicalism as a whole. If one truly wants a balanced view of evangelicalism in America I would recommend two books to supplement this film. One is Randall Balmer's MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY: A JOURNEY IN THE SUBCULTURE IN AMERICA, which is published by Oxford University Press and was the basis for a PBS documentary. This will provide a far more comprehensive portrait of contemporary evangelicalism. I also strongly recommend Rev. Gregory Boyd's THE MYTH OF A CHRISTIAN NATION. You will find no Christian writer more devout than Boyd and no one who is more careful in the analysis of Scripture. But as a Bible-believing Christian Boyd comes to very different conclusions than the people found in JESUS CAMP. But I do not believe that anyone who has actually read the Bible will find their positions closer to the actual content of the Bible and New Testament than Boyd's. Non-Christians will be impressed that it is possible to combine deep religious devotion with extreme intelligence, resulting in positions that are both Christian and intelligent.
Description of Jesus Camp
JESUS CAMP - DVD MovieBestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Hoop Dreams (The Criterion Collection)Fine-line; Release date: 2005-05-10; DVD
Best price: $13.73
Price in other shops:
GaslandNew Video; Release date: 2010-12-14; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Food, Inc.Magnolia Films; Release date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $6.08
Price in other shops:
Bowling for ColumbineMGM; Release date: 2003-08-19; DVD
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Capturing the FriedmansJARECKI,ANDREW; Release date: 2004-01-27; DVD
Best price: $1.78
Price in other shops:
The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamaraSony; Release date: 2004-05-11; DVD
Best price: $8.77
Price in other shops:
Grizzly ManLions Gate; Release date: 2005-12-26; DVD
Best price: $6.78
Price in other shops:
Deliver Us from EvilLions Gate; Release date: 2007-05-08; Published: 2007-05-01; DVD
Best price: $1.79
Price in other shops:
The King of Kong: A Fistful of QuartersNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2008-01-29; DVD
Best price: $2.88
Price in other shops:
ReligulousLIONS GATE HOME ENT.; Release date: 2009-02-17; DVD
Best price: $7.28
Price in other shops: