"Jesus Camp." That's the name of a disturbing documentary about American evangelicals, released in French theaters on April 18th. It follows the "faith formation" of children aged 8 to 12 from families belonging to the evangelical movement. They attend catechism classes taught by a missionary, a Bush supporter, whose pronouncements are chilling. The poor children would love to read Harry Potter, like their classmates, but the catechist strictly forbids it, reminding them, without a hint of irony, that wizards are enemies of God and that "in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death." The camera then captures a brief moment of joy: a child of divorced parents mischievously confides to his neighbor that he was able to watch the DVD of the latest installment... at his father's house! But the condemnation of the crimes of the fictional wizard pales in comparison to the brainwashing these children endure at the summer camp. The entire agenda of American conservatives is laid bare, and in the worst possible taste: a visit from a cardboard cutout of President Bush, whom they are made to greet like the new Messiah; the distribution of small plastic fetuses to make them realize the horror of abortion; a radical critique of Darwinian theories on the evolution of species… All this in a constant atmosphere of carnival, applause, and songs in tongues. At the end of the documentary, the catechist is accused by a journalist of brainwashing the children. The question doesn't shock her in the slightest: "Yes," she replies, "but Muslims do exactly the same thing with their children." Islam is one of the obsessions of these pro-Bush evangelicals. A striking scene closes the film: a young missionary girl, who must be about 10 years old, approaches a group of Black people in the street to ask them "where do you think you'll go after death?" The answer leaves her speechless. “They’re sure they’re going to heaven… even though they’re Muslims,” she confides to her young missionary friend. “They must be Christians,” he concludes after a moment of hesitation. These people are “evangelical” in name only. Their sectarian ideology (we are the true chosen ones) and warlike rhetoric (we will dominate the world to convert it) are the antithesis of the Gospel message.
We also end up being disgusted by their obsession with sin, especially sexual sin. We tell ourselves that this insistence on condemning sex (before marriage, outside of marriage, between people of the same sex) must be hiding many repressed urges. What just happened to Reverend Ted Haggard, the charismatic president of the National Evangelical Association of America, which has 30 million members, is a perfect illustration of this. We see him in the film haranguing children. But what the film doesn't say, because the scandal came later, is that this champion of the fight against homosexuality was denounced a few months ago by a Denver prostitute as a particularly frequent and perverse client. After denying the allegations, the pastor finally admitted to being homosexual, "this filth" of which he claims to have been a victim for years, in a long letter sent to his congregation to explain his resignation. This deceitful and hypocritical America, the America of Bush, is frightening. However, we must avoid unfortunate generalizations. While these Christian fundamentalists, trapped in their narrow-minded certainties and frightening intolerance, may seem like mirror images of the Afghan Taliban, they do not represent the entirety of the approximately 50 million American evangelicals, who, it should be remembered, were largely opposed to the Iraq War. We must also be careful not to equate these religious fanatics with French evangelicals, some of whom have been established in France for over a century and now number more than 350,000 in 1,850 places of worship. Their emotional fervor and proselytizing, inspired by American megachurches, may be unsettling. This is no reason to equate them with dangerous sects, as public authorities have all too readily done over the past decade. But this documentary shows us that the certainty of "possessing the truth" can quickly lead people, undoubtedly well-intentioned, to descend into hateful sectarianism.