Jesus Camp revisited

A couple years ago I posted about the movie Jesus Camp and my initial thoughts on it, though at that time I had yet to see the film. Well, I finally got around to watching it with Caitlin recently and it disturbed me as much or more than I thought it would. Rather than get into a big slam-fest or political argument, what I'll say is that the right wing, Moral Majority brand of the Christian faith bears little or no resemblance to what I understand of Christ and how he lived. When I was watching the film, I thought "where is the compassion, or peace, or loving people like Christ loved people?" What I saw was an agenda, extreme emotional manipulation, judgment, and a political zeal that bordered on maniacal. When you see children stretching out their hands to pray over a life-sized cardboard cutout of then-President George W. Bush, whom the fundamentalist right thought of as some holy man, something isn't right as far as I'm concerned. I can appreciate people having convictions, but I struggled with the actions being taken as a result of of those convictions. Attempting to raise up an "Army of God" using naive children who are not yet old enough to truly understand, in many cases, what they are 'signing up for', is just wrong in my opinion. Plus, forcing 8-12 year olds to make decisions (if you can call it that, I call it brainwashing) on abortion as well as other moral/ethical and political issues robs them of their innocence, forcing them to grow up too fast; after some of what I have experienced working with kids, this makes me really angry.

That's my two cents on this for now...