Welcome to Jesus Camp

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What a damn shame. The repugs finally get Foley safely locked away in rehab until after the election, and then the chimp-in-chief's #1 bible-banging butt boy Ted Haggard is outed with lurid accounts of gay hookers and meth... And yes, he appears in this creepy documentary also...


They Cry, Pray to Bush and Wash out the Devil - Welcome to Jesus Camp
A documentary on evangelical Christian children's camps has caused uproar in the US

by Dan Glaister

The children at the Kids on Fire summer camp are intent as they pray over a cardboard cutout of President George Bush. They raise their hands in the air and sway, eyes closed, as they join the chant for "righteous judges". Tears stream down their faces as they are told that they are "phonies" and "hypocrites" and must wash their hands in bottled water to drive out the devil.

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After a television news report about the film became a hit on YouTube.com, it attracted media attention across the country.

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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."

"Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots," Pastor Fischer says at one point in the film. She goes on to tell the children, mostly aged from seven to 12: "This is a sick old world. Kids, you got to change things. This means war. Are you part of it?"

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But the reaction from some evangelical groups has already harmed the film. The Reverend Ted Haggard, who runs the 30 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals and appears in the film, called on his followers to shun the film. The box-office in the midwest did not meet the distributor's expectations.

The Rev Haggard said the film was too literal in its presentation of some of the opinions of Pastor Fischer. "My concern is ... that those on the far left will use it to reinforce their most negative stereotypes of Christian believers," he told Christianity Today. The "war talk", he said, was allegorical. "It doesn't mean we're going to establish a theocracy and force people to obey what they think is God's law."


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0929-08.htm

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Haggard is a firm supporter of President George W. Bush, and is often credited with rallying evangelicals behind Bush during the 2004 election. Author Jeff Sharlet reports that Haggard "talks to... Bush or his advisers every Monday" and opines that "no pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism."

In a June 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "Ted Haggard, the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, jokes that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard

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Sweet Fancy Moses!! Shut down Jesus Camp?


Pastor will shut down controversial kids camp

By Religion News Service and The Associated Press


In the film "Jesus Camp," the Rev. Ted Haggard is shown preaching. Haggard was fired by a Colorado church amid allegations of gay sex and drug use.
The summer camp featured in the documentary "Jesus Camp," which includes scenes with disgraced preacher Ted Haggard, will shut down for at least several years because of negative reaction sparked by the film, according to the camp's director.

"Right now we're just not a safe ministry," Becky Fischer, the fiery Pentecostal pastor featured in "Jesus Camp," said Tuesday.

The documentary, which hit select U.S. theaters during the summer, portrays Fischer, 55, as drill instructor to a group of young evangelical children steeling themselves for spiritual and political warfare.

Led by Fischer, the children pray in tongues, as is common in charismatic strains of Pentecostalism; tearfully beg God to end abortion; and bless President Bush at a weeklong camp in Devils Lake, N.D.

Fischer has drawn fire from some corners for "brainwashing" the children. After vandals damaged the campground last month and critics besieged Fischer with negative e-mails, phone calls and letters, the pastor said she's shutting down the camp for at least several years.

"I don't think we'll be doing it for a while," she said.

Fischer lives in Bismarck, N.D., and is chief pastor at The Fire Center, a church devoted to children's ministry there. She has run the weeklong "Kids on Fire" summer camp, which is featured in the film, since 2002, with 75 to 100 children attending each year.

The documentary also includes scenes of Haggard, the evangelical leader accused of gay sex and drug use.

In one scene, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady visit Haggard's 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. He tells the vast audience, "We don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It's written in the Bible."

Then Haggard looks into the camera and says kiddingly: "I think I know what you did last night," drawing laughs from the crowd. "If you send me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife."

Later, another joke for the filmmakers: "If you use any of this, I'll sue you."

The married, 50-year-old father of five admitted in a letter read Sunday to his followers that he was "guilty of sexual immorality." He has yet to address specific claims by a male escort that Haggard paid him for sex over the past three years.

Haggard also leads the audience in praying for President Bush to select a Supreme Court nominee who supports their beliefs (it would end up being Samuel Alito) and later brags about the rapid expansion of evangelicalism.

"It's got enough growth to essentially sway every election," Haggard says with a smile. "If the evangelicals vote, they determine the election."

Haggard has acknowledged that he paid Mike Jones of Denver for a massage and for methamphetamine, but said he didn't have sex with Jones and didn't take the drug.

He resigned last week as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 30 million people, and was removed Saturday as leader of his own church.

For the last three years, Fischer has rented a campground in Devils Lake from the Assemblies of God, one of the largest national churches in the Pentecostal movement. But Fischer said she was asked not to return after vandals broke windows and caused $1,500 in damage at the campground in October.

Fischer said she has asked the distributors of "Jesus Camp" not to release the film in Bismarck because she fears for the safety of the 70 children who attend The Fire Center.

Grady, the co-director of "Jesus Camp," said the negative reaction to the film "has weighed a little heavy on our hearts."

"Not that we had anything to do with it, but [the campground] wasn't getting vandalized before the film and it was after it, and we need to acknowledge that," Grady said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003365311_jesuscamp08.html