ATD: evangelicals

[pynchonoid]

...from Boing Boing today:

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/08/american_madras.html

David Byrne on Jesus Camps: like Madrassas, with less
literacy

David Byrne on "Jesus Camp," a new documentary film
about the indoctrination of young Americans into an
intensely politicized form of evangelical
Christianity.

    There were some perfect sound bites — at one point
Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they
should be willing to die for Christ, and the little
ones obediently agree. She may even use the word
martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East.
I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus — the next
step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of
course, the grownups would say, “Oh no, we’re not like
them” — but they admit that the principal difference
is simply that “We’re right.”

    In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W.
Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought
out and the children are urged to identify — many of
the little ones come forward and reverently touch his
cardboard hands.

    I kept saying to myself, “O.K., these are the
Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic
religious instructional schools in Pakistan and
elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money)...so
both sides are pretty much equally sick, there’s a
balance." (Although it must be said the Madrassas
provide some regular education and literacy where no
other option is available, they do community work that
is non-religious...and they take in aimless troubled
youth.) 

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