Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
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 gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for Christ." The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future. System Requirements:Run Time: 84 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: PG- 13 UPC: 876964000628 Manufacturer No: 10062

Amazon.com:
The feverish spectacle of a summer camp for evangelical Christian kids is the focus of Jesus Camp, a fascinating if sometimes alarming documentary. (Shortly after its release, the movie gained a new notoriety when Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who appears near the end of the film, resigned his post amid a male prostitute's allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct.) For most of the film, we follow a charismatic teacher, Becky Fischer, as she trains young soldiers in "God's Army" at a camp in North Dakota. Some of the kids emerge as likable and bright, and eager to continue their work as pint-sized preachers; elsewhere, the visions of children speaking in tongues and falling to the floor in ecstasy are more troubling. Even more arresting is the vision of a generation of children home-schooled to believe that the Bible is science, or Fischer's certainty that America's flawed system of democracy will someday be replaced by a theocracy. (In one scene, a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush is presented to the children, who react by laying their hands on the figure as though in a religious procession.) Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady maintain neutrality about all this, maybe too much so (they throw in some interviews with radio host Mike Papantonio to provide a liberal-Christian viewpoint) and one would like to know more about the grown-ups presented here. Power broker Haggard is the creepiest person in the film, an insincere smooth talker whose advice to one of the young would-be campgoers comes across as entirely cynical. Time will tell whether the film's Christian soldiers will be marching onward. --Robert Horton

Rating : - Mostly bigoted exploitation with moments of sympathy
This is a documentary is a candid glimpse of the fevered minds of--not of the evangelical right, but the secular left. This documentary is essentially a scaremongering warning of a future Christian theocracy that those crazy Christian yokels are cooking up in their creepy bible camps: all by indoctrinating poor impressionable kids.

The film makers do their best to portray these Christians as alien, scary, and backwards. They pick a kid with a mullet to be the star and spend sufficient time showing the creationist beliefs of the main subjects to make sure we all understand we're dealing with rubes and hillbillies. They like to have videos of the Christians talking about "war" and "battle." Never mind the fact that these Christians are obviously talking about war and battle in a metaphorical sense. They also spend a great deal of time editorializing (through clips of a radio host hostile to the Christians portrayed) about political involvement of Christians, and lamenting the "mixing of church and politics". Evidently, it is somehow anti-democratic for people's political decisions to be guided by their religion. Evidently political involvement guided by self-interest, atheism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and hostility to religion are all ok, but political involvement guided by religion is dangerous.

Now if these crazy Christians were actually preparing their kids for battle, or if they really were striving to overthrow democracy in America, this might be a noteworthy film, instead of just an exploitative, even bigoted portrayal of some eccentric, but well-meaning Christians.

It is to the children's credit that their humanity and goodness shine through the film makers' attempt to use them to scare Americans and make a name in documentary film making. It is this touching humanity that made me want to give the documentary a higher rating than one star.