They Cry, Pray To Bush And Wash Out The Devil - Welcome To Jesus Camp

Tory, aged 10, tells the camera why she likes "Christian, heavy metal rock and roll", rather than Britney Spears. "When I dance", she says, as she cavorts around her bedroom, "I have to make sure that that's God. People will notice when I'm just dancing for the flesh." Filmed over a year by two New York-based documentary makers, the film has caused a furore since it opened in the mid-west two weeks ago, setting evangelical Christians against non-believers, and separating Pentecostal from non-Pentecostal evangelicals. Too scary After a television news report about the film became a hit on YouTube.com, it attracted media attention across the country and opens in Los Angeles today. Some critics say that the often raw approach used by the camp's founder, Pastor Becky Fischer, as she prepares the children for "war", is too "scary". Others accuse the documentary makers of distorting Pastor Fischer's message. Jesus Camp is "a sarcastic documentary that paints evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, and politically concerned Christians as very shrill, warlike and dangerous," a critic wrote on the Christian website MovieGuide.org. At one point Pastor Fischer equates the preparation she is giving children with the training of terrorists in the Middle East. "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam," she tells the camera. "I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine." http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0929-08.htm

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