Product Details

• Actors: Mike Papantonio, Lou Engle, Becky Fischer, Ted Haggard
• Directors: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady
• Producers: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Jacquelyn Shulman, Jannat Gargi, Laura Bell
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Subtitles: Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Magnolia
• DVD Release Date: January 23, 2007
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (275 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000KLQUV2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,773 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Jesus Camp" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The feverish spectacle of a summer camp for evangelical Christian kids is the focus of Jesus Camp, a fascinating if sometimes alarming documentary. (Shortly after its release, the movie gained a new notoriety when Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who appears near the end of the film, resigned his post amid a male prostitute's allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct.) For most of the film, we follow a charismatic teacher, Becky Fischer, as she trains young soldiers in "God's Army" at a camp in North Dakota. Some of the kids emerge as likable and bright, and eager to continue their work as pint-sized preachers; elsewhere, the visions of children speaking in tongues and falling to the floor in ecstasy are more troubling. Even more arresting is the vision of a generation of children home-schooled to believe that the Bible is science, or Fischer's certainty that America's flawed system of democracy will someday be replaced by a theocracy. (In one scene, a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush is presented to the children, who react by laying their hands on the figure as though in a religious procession.) Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady maintain neutrality about all this, maybe too much so (they throw in some interviews with radio host Mike Papantonio to provide a liberal-Christian viewpoint) and one would like to know more about the grown-ups presented here. Power broker Haggard is the creepiest person in the film, an insincere smooth talker whose advice to one of the young would-be campgoers comes across as entirely cynical. Time will tell whether the film's Christian soldiers will be marching onward. --Robert Horton

Product Description

Controversial documentary about kids attending a theological summer camp. The filmmakers step back from the fray and let the subjects words speak for themselves. Some reviewers have held this up as an example of the religious far right brainwashing kids, calling it the scariest horror film of the year. Solid reviews and continued press should generate interest in seeing this film upon release.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

222 of 248 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual Abuse December 27, 2006

By Justin M. Porter

Format:DVD

As a former home schooled spirit filled church raised child I was appalled at this movie. The main reason why is because I saw a good bit of my childhood in it. I was a product of brainwashing and spiritual abuse through "camps" like this. Frankly this movie was scarier than any horror movie I have ever seen. I think every Christian should see this movie so they can get a perspective on what it looks like from the outside in. For heavens sake, Ted Haggard was in this movie talking about the secret things people do in their lives right before he was exposed as a closeted homosexual. I hope this documentary opens the eyes of all christian parents about the importance of balance in a childs life and allowing them to make some of the decisions about their christianity on their own and not throwing them to the spiritual wolves like this. I am 30 years old and STILL recovering. I love the Lord with all of my heart and he is so much cooler than the God portrayed in this movie.

55 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary, Deeply Disturbing Look at American Evangelicalism February 17, 2007

By Steve Koss VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

Midway through this remarkably disturbing documentary film, Jesus Camp founder and director Becky Fischer is shown in what is presumably her own home, studying with the intensity of a college football coach preparing for his team's next game a taped version of one of the children's prayer meetings she leads. Mouth open in thrilled amazement, head shaking gently in approving self-awe, she blurts out the most unintentionally revealing line in this movie: "They [children] are so usable in Christianity." In practically the same breath, she allows that "extreme liberals" must be "shaking in their boots" to see such intense belief in children, that the evangelical Christian indoctrination of children is morally more justified than the same actions among Muslims, Jews, and Palestinians because, "Excuse me, we have the truth," and that the same "we" must "stand up and take back the land [America]."

Although JESUS CAMP spends about half its time at Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire summer camp in (ironically) Devil's Lake, ND, it could perhaps be more aptly titled JESUS WORLD or KIDS FOR JESUS. Co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady center their documentary on three young children, all apparently ten years old or younger: Levi, Tory, and Rachael. These three children are followed from church prayer meetings to their homes (where they recite Christianized pledges of allegiance and are schooled by their mothers in creationism and the fallacies of global warming), and later to a Ted Haggard evangelical convention in Colorado Springs and a pro-life demonstration (complete with red duct tape inscribed LIFE fastened over their mouths) in Washington, D.C. Ewing and Grady remain strictly outside observers these events, offering neither voice-over or commentary. Rather, they offer a softened Christian response through extended excerpts from Mike Papantonio's syndicated radio talk show, Ring of Fire, as response to Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire.

In his classic 1963 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Dr. Robert J. Lifton identified eight conditions of thought reform as he observed them in Communist China:
1. Milieu control - control of human communication through environmental control and limiting all forms of communication with the outside world.
2. Mystical manipulation - the group has a higher purpose, experiences are attributed to spiritual causes, control through planned spontaneity.
3. The demand for purity - absolute purity can be achieved, failures must be confessed and/or punished.
4. The cult of confession - public confessions, minimized privacy, verbalizing all interior fears and anxieties.
5. Aura of sacred science - the cult's rules and regulations are absolute, their dogma is absolutely scientific and morally true.
6. Loading the language - black-and-white thinking, good words and evil words, relentlessly judging.
7. Doctrine over person - the individual is insignificant, the group is all; personal experience and judgment are irrelevant, subordinated to the doctrine.
8. Dispensed existence - an elitist worldview and a sharp division between those who are chosen or saved and those who are lost.

Intentionally or otherwise, directors Ewing and Brady demonstrate all eight of these conditions in JESUS CAMP's treatment of Tory, Levi, Rachael, and their camper peers. They leave little room for doubt that we are witnessing brainwashing pure and simple, cult formation into an intolerant religious radicalism that brooks no questioning and sees all others as enemies. Becky Fischer talks about enemies, and Ted Haggard declares "It's massive warfare every day."

JESUS CAMP will leave you alternately shaking your head and cringing over the brainwashing these impressionable young children are receiving. Ewing and Grady's film is an extraordinarily powerful depiction of innocent young minds being manipulated by adults in the name of a blind religious fervor. The process recalls by comparison other such movements, past and present: radical Islamic fundamentalism, the Taliban, China's Red Guard, North Korea, the Hitler Youth. Dante would have reserved a special circle in his Inferno for adults who rob children of their innocence and opportunity to learn, consider alternatives, and choose for themselves. Thankfully, the directors have inserted a few moments that lighten the overall atmosphere: Rachael's attempt at bowling alley proselytizing, kids praying over a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, and Ted Haggard's hysterically ironic admonitions in full-face close-up that "I think I know what you did last night; if you send me $[...], I won't tell your wife" and "You need to repent."

Ewing and Grady save their best for last. DON'T TURN OFF YOUR DVD THE MOMENT THE CREDITS START TO ROLL or you'll miss out on the film's best moments when Rachael and Levi reach out to three elderly black men sitting in a shaded park. Rachael's simple response to one old man's confident assurance that he will go to heaven when he dies is priceless and neatly illustrates everything that is wrong about radical evangelicalism. Plopped contentedly in her living room armchair, Becky Fischer sums it all up in an earlier part of the movie. Remarking on the trance-like religious intensity of her charges, she ponders admiringly, "What are these kids going to be like when they grow up?" What indeed?

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I lived this,I believed this,I taught this...yes it is out there..and yes it is to be feared September 20, 2007

By All Red

Format:DVD

I weigh in on "Jesus Camp" for one reason alone;25 years ago I lived this, I believed it, I taught it and now am soooooo far removed from it that I can clearly see all of this hatred and brain-washing for what it is.I myself was taught to believe what Becky Fisher et al propose as Christianity.I was a needy teenager and the "fright factor" of not being everything that God wanted was enormous on an impressionable brain.I was a Missionary and I did what I was taught.I did not question,and I did not think for myself.When I did, I was severely chastised.Relax you who are seething right now!....i know that "Jesus Camp" is not representative of all Christianity,but it is out there, and it is maybe not so "fringe" as you may think!
I was totally disturbed by this wonderful documentary simply because, though it is very "fringe" in the extremes of Christianity in the U.S, much of what is presented in "Jesus Camp",especially the attitudes of exclusive right to "The Truth" and an allegiance to the President is very common in even lesser denominations of Fundamentalism ( OKAY...now that remark may spare some Inquisitional attitudes!).Who Becky Fisher is IS real.Who Ted Haggart is ( oh boy was he exposed!) IS real.These children and their "radical stand for Christ" is as real as any Muslim Fundamentalist Extremist.
I was "deprogrammed" (as it were) over time.What bugs me still is that I am a really intelligent human being....BUT if you are needy and aimless, this brand of "Jesus" can be very appealing as any "search for truth or enlightenment".
Don't be shocked by this documentary....fear it...and fight it.I know whereof I speak.
(What.... no hateful retorts yet?.......)