Scott Springmann - Jesus Camp

I expected to watch this movie and get really angry at the people being interviewed in it. The movie is a documentary about several children who go to a summer camp that is put on by a conservative Pentecostal children’s minister. At this camp these children are taught about the Bible and sin and evil, but they also are indoctrinated with the political views of the people teaching. We see people teaching that Harry Potter is evil, we see people talking about how global warming isn’t a huge deal, and then we see them teaching the children about how abortion is wrong. Later in the movie they bring the kids to Washington D.C. to protest abortion. They almost worship George Bush, and spend a lot of time praying that he will appoint “righteous judges” to the Supreme Court that will overturn abortion. There is a scene of them praying and repeating the words “righteous judges” over and over. As the movie continues, we see a few of the kids from the camp who profess Jesus and claim to believe a lot of things, but you can tell that they are just repeating what they have been told over and over. As we saw more and more into the kids’ lives, we could just see that they wanted to be normal kids. In the end the anger I felt towards the ultra-conservative people was outweighed by how much I felt sorry for the kids. I would love to see where these kids end up in the future.