Layla and I watched Jesus Camp last night. It's a fantastic film about evangenical Christian camps run in the heartlands of America. Well worth your time, highly recommended, five stars, and all that.
The thing that struck me most about the film was the burden placed upon fairly young children (typically aged 8-12) to prostheletize the Christian message to nonbelievers. I understand and support the rights of parents to dictate the beliefs handed down to their children—but the level of judgment and intolerance impressed upon these kids to drive them to be effective evangelists left me with a very sour taste in my mouth.
And it isn't even the message that's the problem here. It's the way in which these kids are driven to preach what they've been taught without respect, understanding, or even acknowledgement of opposing views. It's a strategy that turns kids into automatons for a cause—and it seems to me that not even evangelism is worth that.
Battles like this—battles of mindshare—need to be fougth by adults who have independently affirmed their own beliefs. Instead, the evangelical movement is betting big on the kids that were born into their beliefs.
I don't like it.
Would you believe that I went to one of these once? heh
Freaked my parents out something fierce when I returned with stories of the rifle range, and with some spare .22 bullets. I never had to go back. Praise Jesus.
I was forced into something similar on a number of occasions, but was unlucky enough to suffer through firearms or abuse or anything I could use to keep me from going back.
Did you really end up going to one of the super-evangelical camps? As much as I hate to say it, I think there's a difference between Christian camps and nutjob-crazy Christian camps.
--Dan
I suppose there's probably a continuum of creepiness, and I would rate the one I went to in the middle somewhere. It wasn't completely crazy and I didn't get a single nutjob, but there was a lot of forced participation prayer and stuff like that (which I quickly learned to skip).
Side note: Either Dawkins or Sam Harris called that sort of religious indoctrination child abuse. Couldn't agree more.
I'm not sure I agree entirely with that. It's exploitation, certainly—and deprives a child of many of their opportunities. But I think using the word "abuse" isn't going to help fix the problem because unlike most forms of abuse (physical, sexual, drug, etc.) there's absolutely no inkling that what the perpetrator is doing is in any way wrong. This sort of indoctrination is, after all, typically a very proud act for parents to commit.
Dawkins has always had trouble discrediting himself by being far too off in left field—I think we'd all have a much easier time convincing a moderate that this is exploitive behavior, instead of abusive behavior.