JESUS camp and the student for freethought

ci-jesus_camp

tonight i watched the movie “JESUS camp” for at least the third time. the uwsp “students for freethought” showed it at the dreyfus university center’s theater. i wanted to see how they would respond to the documentary.

if you have never seen “JESUS camp” i would recommend watching it. it is an interesting look at a far right fundamentalist approach to evangelical CHRISTianity and its indoctrination of its children. if you are a follower of JESUS CHRIST and you have watched “JESUS camp” but never watched it with a group of non-evangelicals then i would highly recommend going to tomorrow night’s re-showing of the film.

i enjoyed hearing the “students forfreethought” responses concerning the documentary and most particularly their thoughts concerning some of the language used by the main character of the documentary. the children’s minister who is the main subject of the film uses some pretty extreme military language in describing faith. since i am a part of the evangelical world i understand the metaphorical nature of this language. those outside the evangelical world don’t filter this talk through the same filter that evangelicals do and therefore often find the language a little scary. i can’t always say i disagree with such fears.  i think it is really important for those of us who claim to follow CHRIST to know how our language may be interpreted or misinterpreted by those outside of the church culture. therefore, if you’ve never watched the movie before or have never watched it with people unfamiliar with the evangelical culture i would highly recommend that you go to uwsp’s dreyfus university center theater at 7 p.m. tomorrow and then stay for the discussion afterward. listen to what they say and consider why they may be saying it. do they have reason to be scared? have we communicated things that we never really meant to communicate?

SIDE NOTE – i talked to some members of the “student for freethought” group concerning the possibility of them doing something like this with tapestry. they were all for it. therefore we are going to discuss the possibility of doing a showing together next year with a little more formal debate afterward. i think it will be fun.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.