Putting Their Faith in the Audience

Heidi Ewing, left, and Rachel Grady, the directors of "Jesus Camp." (Copyright Magnolia Pictures)

In one scene of Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing's new documentary, "Jesus Camp," minister Becky Fischer calls upon a group of children to wash away their sins as she pours bottled water on small outstretched hands. Some of the children are red-faced; tears stream down their cheeks. Some are speaking in tongues. Some are prostrate on the floor of the church, overcome with emotion.

It's a scene frightening or uplifting, shocking or beautiful, depending, of course, on who's watching. (See review on Page 36.)

Here's what we know for sure: The film follows an evangelical Christian pastor and her young charges -- including 12-year-old Levi, 9-year-old Rachael and 10-year-old Tory -- before, during and after a stint at Fischer's North Dakota Bible camp. Beyond that, however -- as phone interviews with the filmmakers and Fischer confirm -- everything depends on your point of view.

"That's the nature of faith," Grady says. "It's so intimate, it's so personal. Even within single churches, single families, how people feel about God and why they feel that way . . . can vary."

Most people have seen only the "Jesus Camp" trailer, but, according to Fischer, that hasn't stopped them from voicing strong opinions: "You have people who have extreme hatred for anything Christian, and they're coming out against it. . . . As for other evangelicals, they think we're being put in a very poor light. Then there are the people right in the middle, who said they loved [the trailer], and they're looking forward to [the movie]."

Despite her overall support of "Jesus Camp," Fischer calls it "a very polarizing film" and decries the directors' decision to explore the collision of politics and religion in contemporary America. Fischer says that her camp "has nothing to do with politics, but it has everything to do with religion." Then again, in Grady and Ewing's film, an antiabortion activist speaker leads a chant for "righteous judges" at a camp meeting; at another, the children are encouraged to "speak a blessing" to a cardboard cutout of President Bush.

The two women shot "Jesus Camp" in the summer of 2005, right in the middle of a singular political moment: "George Bush had the chance to nominate two Supreme Court justices, so people were motivated to be active in this big decision coming forward," Ewing explains. "While we didn't intend to make a film that's a Rorschach test on religion and politics, it worked out that way."

Still, the filmmakers bristle at the suggestion that they're pushing an agenda. Their goal, Grady says, is to start a dialogue. "There's a culture war that's going on, and there's no conversation," she says, and besides, "if we'd wanted to make an exposé, we would have cut it differently. We felt like an exposé was a wasted opportunity."

Instead, the women used their broad access to the daily lives and church services of their subjects, learning about the "parallel world" of a group of people who try to limit their children's contact with pop culture and the secular world. The families in the film home-school their kids and send them to Christian sports practices, dance classes and, of course, summer Bible camps.

Eventually, as Fischer points out in the film, these children are going to grow up. They'll join the larger society; they'll vote. Ewing says she was struck by the sheer number of evangelical Christians -- some estimates point to 100 million in the United States -- and by their activist spirit: "They write the FCC, they run for office, they join the PTA," Ewing says, and they believe they can make a difference in the government.

And they firmly believe that raising engaged citizens depends on sheltering children from outside influences, at least on the evidence of "Jesus Camp." But is this cloistering really so unique to these evangelicals?

"They live in a bubble," Grady says of the "Jesus Camp" subjects, "much like everyone else lives in a bubble in America."