Bigotry Camp

Tonight, I finally watched the acclaimed documentary – Jesus Camp –  at a screening by a friend’s RSO. The film follows three Evangelical Christian kids as they go through Bible camp in North Dakota, all the while denouncing scientific evidence for global warming, praising George W Bush as a holy man doing the work of God, and sentencing Harry Potter to death (because he’s a warlock, or should we say heretic).

Religious extremism in any form can yield devastating consequences – that is a generally known fact, but what makes Jesus Camp particularly heartbreaking is its exposing of religious indoctrination on so many bright, innocent kids. A child’s mind is a tabula rasa – it is a clean slate, and what gives any adult the right to impose such extreme beliefs on their children without any room for questioning? The kids in Jesus Camp are clearly intelligent, eloquent, and capable thinkers, and that’s precisely why my heart sinks watching them rattle off half-paraphrased adults sermons about sin. Of course, we are all shaped by the beliefs of our families – and religion in most parts of the world is as much cultural as it is spiritual, but when religious devotion is achieved by coercing children into psychological breakdowns, there is clearly something wrong. These people belong not in the 21st century, but in 1984.

I won’t deny that spiritualism is important to me – in the presence of nature’s wonder an majesty I often feel a sense of other-worldliness that rises not from the head, but from the heart. In that sense, I am finally beginning to understand the religious devotion of others and the positive effects of it all. However, Jesus Camp, and such examples of ruthless extremity, serve as an excellent reminder of why I am, and always will be, a skeptic.