Roseyland

I have a thing for documentaries, and possibly my favorite documentary ever is Jesus Camp. Jesus Camp follows the lives of a group of children from evangelical christian homes. A lot of the documentary focuses on a summer “Jesus” camp the children attend.

I’ve always been fascinated by evangelical religion. Not being that religious myself, evangelical religion is very foreign to me. I like to think that I can always understand another person’s perspective and why they feel the way they do, but evangelicals are a tough nut to crack. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll all about the importance of community, and incorporating some sense of spirituality into your life, but I don’t get blind faith. I can’t shut off the logical/rational side of my brain. I need my beliefs to be compatible with factual reality.

I could ramble on about evangelical religion forever, but we don’t have time for that. In this post, I want to focus on my favorite scene from Jesus Camp. This scene isn’t even in the movie, it’s a deleted scene, and it’s awesome. Check it out:

Let’s recap what we just saw. The leaders of the camp have called a meeting to discuss contingency plans in the event that any of the children become possessed by demons. I imagine if you are running a summer camp, you have to have a lot of back-up plans. You know, things like what to do if it rains, what if one of the kids gets sick, oh, and also, what if the children become possessed by demons. Because you know, that could happen. I think what I love most about this clip is the way nobody is surprised when the head pastor announces that they will probably have to deal with “demonic manifestation”. It looks like there are about 15-20 people in that room. You would think at least one person would be like “wait, wait, this is a joke right?”, but no, they all act like this is a completely normal meeting. Given that nobody thinks this is a joke though, why aren’t they more freaked out? I mean if I believed in demonic possession, and someone told me it was likely to happen, I’d probably lose my cool a little. Aren’t demons supposed to be fallen angels who follow Satan? That sounds bad.

Another thing I want to point out in this scene is the description of a demonically possessed child. In the words of “Uncle Leon”, a demonically possessed child might be “a child doing funny things with their hands or whatever”. Dude, demonically possessed children are EVERYWHERE! It’s an epidemic worse than the swine flu, from now on, I’m throwing holy water on every child I see. Better safe than sorry.

I’m going to leave you with one more scene from Jesus Camp. I’ll let it go without comment, because well, I wouldn’t know where to begin.