Thought Theater

The following series of videos comprise the 48 Hours special title The Lord's Boot Camp. Much like the previous documentary, Jesus Camp, the piece chronicles a group of teen aged children; including their attendance at a Christian boot camp and the subsequent missions they are assigned to complete.

I'm sure the parents of these children believe they are doing the right thing but the camp is little more than an indoctrination process designed to reinforce the beliefs parents have sought to impose. Unfortunately, what I noticed first and foremost was that many of these children have simply been fed their beliefs as well as the words they express to prove them. Independent thought is clearly not encouraged and likely not allowed in many of these children's homes.

As I watched these children working in their assigned mission locations, I couldn't help but see the inherent manipulation in the program. In Africa, the camp participants have been transported to a country filled with desperate people in need. Their objective is to give those they encounter some measure of attention and care. In exchange, the impoverished children listen to the beliefs and suggestions of their newfound benefactors.

In other words, these vulnerable African children are told that if they believe in Jesus, their lives will improve and their souls will be saved. I suspect the real outcome of these encounters is to set the table for these African children to experience more disappointment and despair as their lives do not improve and they return to their squalid existence.

In Indiana, the camp children are told to conduct surveys with young people at county and state fairs in an effort to bring them to Jesus. The fact that they set a goal for the number of people they will save strikes me as rather absurd...but it's also a key element of the indoctrination. Essentially, it trains these children to accept rejection and to crave compliance. That's a very effective tool when seeking to ingrain these children with the beliefs of their parents and their handlers.

The last thing I recognized was the level of desperation found in some of these young people. In particular, I thought the girl who was in tears while talking about missing her boyfriend seemed intent on finding an outlet to escape her surroundings. Once she returned home, she announced her intentions to marry her boyfriend...a clear means to achieve some level of independence that isn't apt to be found if she remains at home with her parents. She also speaks of subsequently working in Africa which I view as more evidence she subconsciously seeks a means to escape.

The other child of note was Nicole, the troubled teen with a history of drinking and drugs. Once she returned home, she continued doing both and rather than addressing her underlying issues, her mother elects to remove her from public education and enroll her in a Christian home schooling program. I suspect Nicole's problems center on her inability to reconcile the strict beliefs of her mother with the world in which she lives. I also suspect her mom has characterized the divide Nicole sees as nothing more than good versus evil...right versus wrong. That likely leaves Nicole in a constant state of turmoil which only facilitates her efforts to escape through self-medication.

In the end, these children are forced to see a completely gray world as nothing more than black or white. They are also pressured to adopt uncompromising belief systems that are presented as incontrovertible ideology. While these parents and the camp founders may embrace this as a process of completing the Lord's work, I suspect it is more akin to full conscription into a cult.