Michael Sragow, reviewing it in The (Baltimore) Sun, says the movie, on the good side, shows children who are "immersed in something larger than their immediate appetites. Their dedication and energy could be positive qualities." On the bad side
... their certitude will horrify anyone outside this insular world [of evangelical-fundamentalist Christianity]. Parents home-school them with creationist curricula. Pastors inculcate them with the belief that their brand of Christianity should inform all public debate. So they march right into a closed system of thought and practice that's even more appalling in children than in adults ... .
In the current issue of TIME, columnist Andrew Sullivan's "When Not Seeing Is Believing" takes aim at "the utter certainty of those who say they have seen the face of God or have surrendered themselves to his power or have achieved the complete spiritual repose promised by the Books of all three [great monotheisms]: the Torah [of Judaism], the Gospels [of Christianity], the Koran [of Islam]."
Fundamentalists of any religion are acolytes of certitude.
In Jesus Camp, "the Rev. Becky Fischer, who runs the Kids on Fire summer camp ... [is of the] view that Christians should imbue their young with the same zealotry that turns young Islamists toward jihad. She doesn't see zealotry as the problem. But she's a serious, committed woman with the intensity and verve of a true believer. If she devoted herself to a secular cause like conservation, she'd win a cascade of puff pieces and softball talk-show spots."
According to TIME's Sullivan, "Complete calm comes from complete certainty. In today's unnerving, globalizing, sometimes terrifying world, such religious certainty is a balm more in demand than ever." Yet Sullivan, who is a liberal Catholic, favors "the much derided moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews and humble Christians [who relish] something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith [says Sullivan], and to say it is, is the great lie of our time."
So, wow, what a cultural divide we have going in America and the world: fundamentalism vs. the rest of us. Still, it must hastily be added that the fundamentalism on view in Jesus Camp and in Sullivan's article is something of a caricature that does not represent all evangelicals or all religious conservatives. For instance, I don't agree with Sullivan that the conservatism of the new pope, Benedict XVI, patterns with the rest of the caricature. Not that I fully understand where Benedict is coming from, but he does not seem to me to represent the same resistance to reason and insistence on inerrant scriptural revelation of the true fundamentalist. There is nothing more adverse to Sullivan's hopes for moderation and rational dialogue than arbitrarily lumping the sheep in with the goats.
Plus, it would seem to me that the real meaning of Jesus to us is squarely anti-divisionist. Jesus confronted the Pharisees and others in his own society who blamed "unclean" Jews — the poor, the sick, the "demon-possessed" or mentally ill, those too uneducated to know and observe the Law — for the demise of the independent nation of Israel at Rome's hands. Jesus stood for not marginalizing anyone except possibly those so lacking in true spiritual sense that ostracism was their main stock in trade. His message was firmly one of spiritual and political solidarity. Anyone who, out of their own fear and loathing, claimed that associating with those not just like them was drawing God's ire upon the entire nation did not pass muster with Jesus.
Today's acolytes of certitude conquer their own fear and loathing with zeal and fervor and then blessedly lose sight of their original fear. Their critics, whether liberals in the same faith traditions or freethinkers, conquer their fears by castigating the conservatives, usually in print. High-tech stonings, those; remember when Jesus interceded on behalf of a harlot who was being stoned to death by the conservatives of his time? Liberals are sometimes no better.
Nobody really seems to have any idea how we can come together, barring having the other side regain its senses. What we need is fewer verbal brickbats coming in the form, basically, of here's-the-truth monologues. What we need is more true dialogue.
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