Organizers of an
evangelical summer camp for children featured in the
documentary Jesus Camp are discontinuing the
camp because of negative reaction sparked by the film and
recent vandalism at the camp site in Devils Lake, N.D.
"We have decided
to hold different activities in future," Pentecostal
pastor and camp organizer Becky Fischer told Reuters.
Fischer was the
central figure in Jesus Camp, a documentary
about Pentecostal Christians, some of whom send their
children to summer camp where they pray, "speak in tongues,"
and are urged to campaign against abortion.
In the months
since the film was released the campground was vandalized
and Fischer was inundated with negative e-mails and phone
calls.
In one of the
film's scenes, a cardboard effigy of President George W.
Bush is placed onstage before an assembly so attendees can
pray to him to make America "one nation under
God."
The film has no
voice-overs or narrative. Heidi Ewing, who directed the
film with Rachel Grady, said the aim was to show a slice of
American culture unfamiliar to many in the United
States and abroad.
When it was
released in May, a Variety magazine reviewer
said, "Liberals might also be alarmed by images of
7-year-olds in camouflage face-paint performing spiritual
war dances." Fischer was criticized by some for
"brainwashing" the children.
The film also
features scenes with disgraced evangelical leader the
Reverend Ted Haggard, who resigned as pastor of the
14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs,
Colo., last week after a gay sex and drug
scandal. (Reuters)