I watched the movie Jesus Camp earlier today. I’ve had an interest in the religious right for a while, so it didn’t shock me as much as it was probably meant to. It didn’t need to try to shock me, however. There were no voice overs or interviews to guide the people to their craziness, just a group of people being filmed. There may have been some bias in the editing of scenes to make evangelicals as fanatical as possible, but some of the things the they said make me doubt it was necessary.
My purpose in writing about the movie isn’t to rant about it, but instead to discuss (read: shamelessly promote) Camp Quest, the camp that I volunteer at every year. While watching the movie I couldn’t help comparing their camp, and even their movement, to mine.
Becky Fischer, the “main character” of Jesus Camp, makes it clear that she wants to get Christianity into kids early so that there’s a better chance that it will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Strategically this is a great idea. What frightens me is that they are telling their kids that they should want to lay down their lives for Jesus and that Muslims teach their kids to become bombs.
In comparison we have Camp Quest doesn’t actually do much in the way of teaching absolute truth. While we may not append every statement with ” as far as we know”, most if not all of our counsellors will gladly say that they are not completely sure of any of the things that we teach them. We teach them the value of careful and critical thought with a heavy dose of skepticism of everything. It seems to me that our desire to teach kids and then tell them to decide for themselves shows more conviction than evangelicals in our ability to obtain the truth, even if we don’t have conviction in what we currently know is the truth.
This hits at a tough intellectual chewing point in the freethought/humanist/atheist/agnostic/skeptic movement: why exist when you have nothing to push. The reason is because the movement is at it’s core defensive. Defending congress’ duty not to make laws respecting an establishment of religion, defending against the lingering paranormal and the pseudo-scientific claims by promoting the skepticism and critical thinking that should be taught more completely in public schools, and defending the integrity of people who say that they can be ethical without belief in a higher power.
Such a movement almost doesn’t exists in more progressive countries (such as some in Europe) because it doesn’t need to. This is not because everybody is forced to be atheist (you know, like in China, where that is so not working). It’s because everybody is a lot more laid back and reasonable. Ironic considering the first amendment was a pretty progressive thing at the time.
