Friday 30 May 2008

God Fearing

Roz and I watched Jesus Camp on Tuesday (after getting back from Deceptacon). It was one of the most disturbing things ever. It is a documentary about a summer camp run by evangelicals where they train kids to hate anyone different from themselves. They are taught to channel the spirit of the lord, misuse science, feel sinful for having natural desires, oppose abortion, etc. They are not ever taught to question the nature of anything, but to live by the fear of God alone.

These children are absolutely and completely used and manipulated in a completely calculated way. And these kids are helpless - they love being told how special they are and that they have been chosen to "take back American for Christ" (there is a horrible nationalist subtext behind most of the teachings), but you cannot help but find them unbearably smug and idiotic. (Christian children are the most annoying type of children, and evangelicals are the most annoying type of Christian.) I hope that at least some of them will grow up to question what they have been indoctrinated with, but some of them won't at all. So it will keep on going, for centuries at least.

If you haven't seen Jesus Camp then it is probably on YouTube, I'm guessing with hundreds of comments from godnuts countering athiests with stuff like "fine if u want the devil to have ur ass in hell fag" (that is a real comment I saw once). There is a nice cameo from Ted Haggard, who you might recognise as the anti-drugs anti-gay preacher who was revealed as a gay drug-user. Sweet.

It makes me happy that we have Cool Science, but I wish the lyrics were a bit more specific, a bit more direct. It is a bit of a confused song (like most of ours). I might change the words a tiny amount when we record our EP. I think that's allowed - like John Lennon recording Revolution twice and saying "count me in" on one version and "count me out" on another. He wasn't being careless or covering his back; he was documenting his own confusion on a massive issue that was impossible to cover in a three minute song. I want Cool Science to be accurate to us when we record it.

1 comment:

Bonjela said...

I liked it when the woman said she wanted christian kids to be willing to die for the gospel in the same way that muslims are willing to die for islam. then she said "cos, excuse me, but we've got the truth!"

Amazing.