Jesus Camp

The other night I was looking up some documentaries on the internet to try and find something new and interesting to watch to spice up my Friday night as I was sitting at home. Even though I don't really have any sort of opinion or practice any sort of religion, as I took AP Human Geography my freshman year and we had a whole unit on different religions around the world from different groups of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and many more. I saw one specific documentary that caught my eye called Jesus Camp, a film that follows a week long Angelical Christian church camp and what goes on within their time there. It starts off following a specific group of kids that are almost all homeschooled and how their life differs from the normal, public school going kid. One of the most interesting parts of the entire film is a mother having a talk with not even middle school age child about how ridiculous evolutionism is and how there really is no other answer to the creation of this Earth other than God himself and the idea of creationism. Being in public school my entire life ever since middle school science we have learned the idea of humans evolving from similar creatures, not the idea that God created our entire beings with one swift move of divinity. Things get even crazier once they actually get to the camp itself. They have some very extreme beliefs as they talk about how the devil is around us at every moment and how if Harry Potter was a real person, he should be sentenced to death by the hand of god as all forms of warlock and wizardry are forms of the devil. I think possibly the most ridiculous part of this entire camp is at one prayer they end up getting on the topic of George W. Bush, an Angelical Christian himself, also president at the time of this being made. They have a cardboard cutout of the man himself and they are practically praying to him as if he were the second coming of Jesus or something even though he is so well known for his mistakes while in office and putting the United States into its most recent war. With this film exposing the ridiculous practices of this church and basically making a joke out of the camp, it would be shut down and not return the year after the documentary premiered. (413)