This is the sixty-sixth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a clip from the documentary Jesus Camp. This clip shows a Fundamentalist homeschooling mom “educating” her son.
Jesus Camp scared the crap out of me. The willful ignorance and brainwashing that is allowed because “Religion” harkens back to more ignorant times. This clip brought back all my OMG feelings.
The mom says Science doesn’t answer anything. Really? Because I was under the impression that science is all about proving the unknown. Plus, she says this as she listens to her radio, loads the dishwasher with plastic and glass form dishes, and her children watch videos on a television. Tell me again how science is useless.
Her dismissal of Global Warming as a political issue gobsmacked me the first time I watched the film. Now? I hope she gets to witness first hand the effects of those imaginary political issues.
On a side note – the dog sitting in their home classroom? Totally needed it’s nails cut. Bad doggy owners for not taking care of one of what they consider to be Gods’ creatures. Not sure how the critter could even walk. But they are Gods “Chosen”. Yeah. Right.
Even if they do get blown away in a climate change influenced storm they’d just blame The Gayz. Yah know how we’ve ruined everything./////////
It’s sad that our political “leaders” lack the moral courage to stand up for children who are being abused in religious environments. The trauma to their young psyches is just deplorable, but because it exists under the auspices of “religious” institutions, nobody wants to shake their cage. My hope is the internet will continue to shine a light on these practices and the public at large will decide this is no longer acceptable.
Funny thing is the more ignorant someone is the more confident they are in their beliefs.
Global warming and evolution shouldn’t just be blindly accepted but neither should they be blindly denied. In school we looked at the evidence for/against global warming. This kid needs a teacher who will encourage him to think critically and examine evidence. His mom is just pushing her opinions. The blind leading the blind.
Also this belief that America was founded as a Christian nation really pisses me off. Learn your own history. The founders may have been christian but they based government on enlightenment principals and while ensuring religious freedoms purposely kept chuch and state separate.
Ironically Britain is a ‘christian nation’ as the Queen/King is head of the church. But in reality we are far more secular.
Jesus camp was so eerie when I first saw it. Even though I was still a Christian and Evangelical at the time, it was simply so extreme. This young boy, Levi I think, preaching and being pushed onto the path of preaching. All the other children so young and sad and utterly convinced of their depravity. It felt like child abuse. It was far too extreme.
Children should be happy and care-free, if in any way possible: it’s bad enough when that isn’t the case for whatever reason, war, illness, death of a parent etc, without adding to their grief in this way. The woman who leads the whole thing was such a fanatic, so zealous, that was scary too.
The problem we have over here in Europe (and so I did too) is that it is so easily to dismiss. You simply think, oh, it’s Americans going overboard again. Or it’s another denomination, not your own, and that way you can pretend it isn’t about (Evangelical) Christianity or the Gospel itself. Later I realized that similar things happened in my country too after seeing (a little less extreme but still upsetting) documentary about a Christian camping we knew about. We knew quite a few people who went there every summer. It followed this preacher and the camping-employees. They even had a security team called Guardian Angels that picked up teens who had sneaked out to make out or grab a drink somewhere. These were called attacks by the devil on the young. Just teens being teens…. It felt extreme and such an overreaction. I began to realize that perhaps I didn’t fit in this close-minded world anymore, and that what had started as feeling a little uncomfortable around these ideas was growing to anger and doubts.
Much later I figured that the extreme parts of faith, though dangerous and troubles-some, are what the Bible intended. Give up your life for Jesus, even if it costs you everything. Die for it even. The message is extreme and these people are like a mirror showing what it truly looks like when followed to the T. The most fanatic, zealous people are actually doing it right: and if that offends you, perhaps so do the teachings of the entire religion, when it really comes down to it. It even calls itself foolish and a folly.
You have hit the nail on the head. It is easy as an evangelical to dismiss this sort of thing as unbiblical crazy and wierd and think our group is more enlightened. But perhaps the wierd extreme groups are more biblically faithful than our enlightened group.
Also we disagree with what some evangelicals say but in reality believe the same thing.
We may dismiss hell fire preachers that talk of flames and torment as bullying people into heaven but when we say that without christ you will go to a place that jesus calls hell where you will receive gods judgement – are we any different?
When I first heard about snake-handlers or people refusing treatment because God would heal or protect them, I thought: these people are crazy. Absolutely not in their right mind. But when it comes down to it, they really do take the Bible for true because God does promise healing and protection from venomous snakes to his people.
Most Christians don’t actually believe that. They will say they do but will never test it out: snake-handlers do. There are all these rationalizations and excuses why you shouldn’t do it, very logical and good ones, of course, but if you really believe and have faith, that should override your common sense. Fortunately, most of the time it doesn’t override people’s insticts and common sense, but that does ultimately reveal a lack of faith.
“but if you really believe and have faith, that should override your common sense.”
That pretty much sums up what Gawd belief is… And evangelicals sick with examples of the ‘unexplainable’ are quick to jump at any and every chance to show people they cannot explain everything, therefore Jesus is among us and God lives! Uncle Bob was cured of cancer. One day it was there and the next gone therefore Gawd! Aunt Bobbie had a nervous disorder and was healed by Benny Hinn!
Faith should override your common sense indeed! My family still preys (sic) on me in the belief that Gawd might make me lose my sense and come back into the fold!
Aw, c’mon now! Imagine all those children being infected by school ideas and those little brats at the neighbor’s house! Yes! Keep little Levi safe with you! Once you believe the woo-woo about humanity being evil-born and the hopeless ugliness of your own life, then you must vist that on your own children and all close to you. Praise dear gentle Jesus! (And sometimes that Devil has to be beaten out with a fervent Mike Pearl hand or switch! It is not easy when you are a babe in Christ but you’ll begin to like it as time goes on… )
I wept tears of sorrow for the f%%%ed up world that the US of A has produced, because of this kind of crap. Sorry as someone who lives in the southern hemisphere and who knows much of SE Asia, this video makes me want to vomit!
I think Frank Schaeffer would put this ignoramus to shame, let alone a true scientifically based unbeliever. Do they put something in US of A drinking water, to make them so stupid?
I know this happens, I know that homeschooling is a blight if the person doing the educating is as ignorant as the mother featured here (whom I don’t blame, as she is no doubt the result of cultish indoctrination).
Even so, the video made me angry. The child in question appears intelligent (as, again, the mother appears to be if she allowed herself), and with a decent education could contribute to society, in a way he is being prevented from. The ‘discussion’ about global warming summed up the dangerous nonsense that homeschooling instils and the remarks about science were just too ridiculous for comment.
Homeschooling should be banned, other than in very exceptional circumstances.