So. Jesus Camp. You can pretty much imagine how it went. The ongoing indoctrination of a bunch of devoted Pentecostal kids of the non-compassionate type - you know, the sort that's more about glossolia performance art, how demonically wrong everyone else has it, and not being stuck on this iniquitous floating rock when God decides it's curtains than it is about taking Jesus's life as some sort of example and struggling to alleviate the burdens of your fellow man in a very practical feeding-the-crowds sort of way or healing-the-blind sort of way. Christianity as unmitigated self-centredness.
And that's all. I didn't feel good watching the movie. It didn't add anything to what I know about Pentecostals or do anything else useful. There was an amusing five minute cameo by Ted Haggard - probably one of his last before the meth'n'manwhore bust - and a strong feeling that adults who involve themselves with children's ministry are prrrrrrobably perverts - one pro-life rally organizer took the time to tell a little girl she looked good with the "life" duct tape over her mouth as he pressed it on. . . uhm . . . yeah.
I think the film caused some talk when it came out because all this was done without commentary from the documentarians - it's mostly just footage of the Pentecostals. But then there were five or so insertions of blathering from some Air America guy who didn't serve any purpose except to remind us what we were watching was INSANE. Fine. But I went out with the same conviction I had going in - children love to perform the way adults congratulate them for. Until they hit puberty, which of course the documentarians couldn't show us, because teenage rebellion against Christian fundamentalism wouldn't be INSANE enough. Bah. Skip it. No thumbs up. Just go to a zoo and watch the monkeys jerk off, it's about as edifying.
4 commenti:
Now you understand why I am so pissed off at Christians. I'm still in the teenage rebellion phase and I have a whole smackload of cousins who still have to wake up and stop listening to that self-centred bullshit.
I was at a cousin's pentecostal wedding last year. She was a very young bride (below the legal drinking age). I naively expected really good (mousy) behavior from these folks. but au contraire. it was a young crowd (mostly barely twenty-somethings), and the more devout they were at the ceremony, the more out of hand they were at the reception. by which I mean, way way more drunken and lecherous and raunchy than participants at any other non-fundamentalist wedding I'd ever been to.
I was left to surmise that their 'special relationship with jesus' granted them license to go overboard, because this gave them all the more opportunity to repent. which I find to be a really miserable dynamic.
Shit, that is miserable. I thought not doing that sort of thing was something all these new-wave Christians had on Catholics, but I suppose not.
Yeah, Sugar, I reckon I understand. Christianity seems so beautiful until you run up against the self-centredness of so much of it. No wonder there's always been a new sect popping up every day - people must want so much to fix it.
No secret relationship with Jesus - just shit-loads of guilt with a hangover on the side, I think.
Fix it by keeping it to yourself, people!
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