Little Wolf's World

Yesterday on my way to my review class from work, I heard Ed Shultz talking about the documentary Jesus Camp that is coming out this weekend in New York and LA.  Some of the things that were being reported in the article he was reading from were . . .  not the most encouraging things I have ever heard on a religious front.

I had a discussion with my wife about the situation and for a class she is taking we decided I would do a bit more research on the story.  The information I found was less troublesome to me than the article that I had heard yesterday.   The one thing I did read that I found rather frightening was that the leader of the organization that runs the camp that Jesus Camp was filmed at, Pastor Becky Fischer, brags that she could walk on to any playground full of children and begin to talk to them and have the entire playground of children following her ideas in a very short period of time.  If this is true it concerns me on several levels:

1. This shows an incredible lack of religious education in our children.  After all if a stranger can convince them that they are missing something spiritual from their lives, what could people who know these children and work with them regularly do for them.


2. Another is that it opens up a wide range of possibilities for charismatic people who have less divinely inspired goals in mind. (Child molesters and ‘hate merchants’ come to mind immediately.)  


3. The third is that there is the very real possibility that Pastor Fischer could be ‘manipulated’ by someone as well.

Today on my way home from work Ed was interviewing Pastor Fischer.  She was very well spoken and dispelled some of my earlier fears of the situation from things that I had read.  The only problem was that she gave me the creeps listening to her talk about her mission.  It was nothing particular that she said that caused the feeling just sort of made me feel uncomfortable.

Labels: Commentary