TOW #28: Jesus Camp directed by: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewin

Watching Goals: Correctly identify the director’s purpose in making the documentary, and pinpoint the two most used devices.

Writing Goals: Correctly apply the relevant devices to their rhetorical effects

The main way to tell if a documentary was a good one is if it leaves you thinking. Jesus Camp, directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, was one of those films. I found myself almost paralyzed in shock as the credits rolled with “Spirit In The Sky,” a Christian rock song playing. Jesus Camp is not about mainstream Christianity, rather, it followed Radical Evangelical Christians. It focused mainly on their tactics for “training” their youth for the “war” of faith. Then, it touched upon the enormous political pull that this group has today in America. There is no doubt that Grady and Ewing achieved their purpose in alerting non-radicals of the growing radical movement, and striking fear into the average citizen through interviews with the children, and suspense.

Interviews with children helped the directors to achieve their purpose because they flushed out the insanity of the movement and created shock value. Kids throughout the film would say things like: “when I meet a non-Christian, my soul feels icky” and, “I think Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ.” Statements like these create shock value within the audience because they’re so blatantly radical and seemingly uneducated. As the film goes on however, and more and more of these statements are present, the viewer learns that this was their education, and that is the very nature of this radical movement. Statements like these exemplify the ideas radical Evangelicals instate in their kids, and thus shed light on the movement, inciting fear in the viewer because of how different and seemingly misguided this school of thought is.

Quotes from children strike a sense of fear into the audience, while suspense is discomforting and emotional. In the scenes where the pastors are preaching to the children, suspense builds. First, the camera focuses on the sermon and cuts to a few listening children with no music in the background; but as the sermon heats up, and the kids start screaming, music starts and the camera angle changes more rapidly. This creates a sense of discomfort in the viewer for a similar reason the interviews do. The radical ideas and practices are foreign to most of the audience and the whole belief system seems misguided, and on multiple occasions the people in the film threaten American life as we know it. Suspense builds to the highest points at places where they declare their war on all other faiths and small children declare they would die for christ in a fashion all too similar to terrorism.

With the interviews of the children, and the building of suspense, Grady and Ewing craft Jesus Camp to strike a sense of urgency into the audience, that this radical Evangelical Christian movement could have more effect on us than we had anticipated. With these devices, the film shouts to its audience: pay attention, they are stronger than we think.