Pod Only Knows #033 – “Jesus Camp” (2006) with Megan Goodwin
Jesus Camp was 2006’s other big documentary, nominated for the Academy Award for documentary feature but losing out to a little film called An Inconvenient Truth.
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (and timed, coincidentally, to the appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court) it mainly follows three young evangelical Christians as they prepare to attend the Kids On Fire summer camp, run by a youth pastor named Becky Fischer.
Largely through interviews with Fischer and the children, Ewing and Grady paint a picture of an emerging movement to indoctrinate young people in order to take on secularism at every level of American life as adults.
18 years later, Jesus Camp provides a fascinating juxtaposition between the far-right evangelical movement then (with its obsession with George W. Bush, Harry Potter, Intelligent Design, and Ted Haggard) and the post-January 6th, Trumpian present.
Megan Goodwin again joins Kelly and John to sort through all this and more.
For an update on the three featured kids, you can check out Jennifer Tisdale’s post on Distractify here: https://www.distractify.com/p/jesus-camp-where-are-they-now
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