Abstract:

Nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary (Feature) and touted in its trailer as both “admirably even-handed” and “a lightning rod”, the 2006 film Jesus Camp offered glimpses of a twelve-year-old preacher, war-painted boys performing a musical number in military garb and youngsters convulsing in the throes of religious ecstasy. The contexts for these thought-provoking images were a children’s Pentecostal prayer conference and the now-defunct “Kids on Fire” summer camp. The movie sparked outrage and accusations of abuse that led to the site of the titular retreat being vandalized and the annual getaway’s permanent closure. In this paper, I will explore the place of Jesus Camp in the post-9/11 “culture wars” through a critical lens informed by documentary film theory and emancipatory children’s rights. I will argue that, despite an aura of objectivity, documentaries do not provide unbiased access to their subjects and Jesus Camp constituted an inflammatory leftwing critique of the religious right that helped to fuel a split within American society that continues to intensify. Absent from the film itself and from polarized responses to it are a mediating position and a child-centered perspective that problematizes a purely protectionist approach, shortcomings I intend to redress.