"And this one time, at Jesus Camp..."

Well, technically speaking, you can't prove anything via the scientific method, only disprove it or fail to disprove it. But somehow I don't think that's where this lady's train of thought was leading.

I actually went to Penecostal church camp as a child (in South Georiga, which I can only guess is on par with South Dakota), and the description from the article sounds pretty accurate: children everywhere crying and shaking, a few who claimed to be possessed, intense politically conservative indoctrination (one of our classes was about how Bill Clinton and the ACLU were turning American into the Soviet Union, which was actually kinda scary to me as a 12yr old in 1992 - and don't even get me started about the abortion materials we were shown).

I think the most disturbing part was this, though:
"I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and in Israel and Palestine and all those different places. Because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth."

So, her problem with Muslim terrorists is that they are Muslims and if they were Christian terrorists, she'd have no problem with them.

"Hello mullah, hello fatwah..."

What a bunch of crazies. To them, the world is about to end, and they're going to be swept up in the clouds within a couple of years with ole Jesus. The rest of us are gonna FRY...

...That is...if the FBI and the Delta Force don't pay them a visit first crushing them with tanks and blowing in flammable poison gas--you know--to save those poor children or something like that.

Show me kids at Jesus Camp, I'll show you a lot of future militant atheists.

Gimmie that new-time religion.

/Turn up your speakers
//Not a prank

Hate to say it, but this is what happens when we push all of the culture war and tribal identification buttons. As himans, we need our groups, but in mass, internationalizing society they are fraught with risks - suspicion, disintegration, punishment of fence-sitters and violence.

You know, the center cannot hold, the falcon can't hear the falconer, and beasts start slouching kinda thing.

How do we get past that - by pressuring groups to change? Or by paying attention to tribalism and by trying to build wider common bonds? If the latter, we need to be careful, because attemptes at sophisticated discussions of identity might easily ruffle feathers and be perceived as bigotry by those who perceive their identified group to be under attack. So indirection might be essential. So we should just talk about sports and the weather (NOT the climate!).

Wow, from the flash intro to that newbirth site, I'm guessing that it's a religion based on the X-Games. Or is it Mountain Dew?

i hate to ask, but since i did read tom's comment..

who's "we"? what are "culture war and tribal identification buttons"? What is "mass internationalizing society"? 3rd 'graph - what is it that you (you claim we, but i'm not conviced) are trying to get past?

The more I think about it the more convinced I become that the existence of places like this is a symptom of the world actually becoming a better, more open place. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for people like this to go somewhere and raise their kids in total isolation from reality, and so they have to invent more and more intensely artificial arenas for indoctrination. But maybe I'm just blind with optimism.

I think 6 probably gets it exactly right, too.

Yeah, what we don't want to see is the world turned into a giant walmart parking lot, where we're all homogenized and forcefed the exact same watered down cornfeed brand of bland, passion free spirituality.

I tend to agree with ya, Robust MM. A cultural landscape should be diverse and full of a wide assorment of freaks. One person's freak is another's longlost soul-brother, after all.

Religion is one of the great dividers of mankind, but it's also one of the great adhesives for communities. This camp can be held up as beautiful straw man for the prototypical Bush supporter (whatever that is), but in reality, I think it's more of a sign that some people grow up with too few brain cells, and then subsequently resort to simplistic worldviews in order to cope with a rapidly changing and incomprehensible cultural and intellectual landscape.

I do pity the children there, though. They are sure as hell going to rebel from that in the biggest possible way, and thus forever be marginalized and alien to those whom they meet throughout life.

and thus forever be marginalized and alien to those whom they meet throughout life.

Only if they stay isolated. The fact is, no matter how many days they spend cheering for the apocalypse this summer MySpace will be sitting there waiting for them when they get back.

ABC News coverage

Michael, Jon put it more simply in his third paragraph below mine.

I disagree with RMP - this kind of intense bonding/indoctination reflects not only the tribal aspect of our human nature, but is dangerous in that it also reflects a knee-jerk reaction to perceived threats abroad (a perception encouraged and reinfoced by this administration), an increasing revolt from trying to understand the increasingly complex world we live in and - as people seek greater security in closer bonds with smaller groups - a disintegration of broader civil society. The same dynamics are visible throughout the world, and our war on terror is helping to fuel what I see as the negative aspects.

Who is "we"? Everyone will give you a different answer. I'm American, but have lived abroad a long time and realize that there is a bigger "we" than the US that shares the planet. The many "thems" that make up that "we" have many common objectives and reasons to get along.

Apo's post of this video demonstrates that there are culture wars going on. What are those? Conflicts between groups.

What is mass internationalizing society? Take a look at the increasing economic integration between countries and the flow of cultural values. These bring us closer together, but weaken older, closer bonds. Thus we have the irony that as the world integrates, there are trends for countries to break up into smaller cultural units.

My third and rather dense paragraph was about how do people in different groups, who perceive the culture wars and think that they have enough common intersts that cooperation is more advantageous than conflict, should best foster cooperation and mutual trust and diminish hostility and mistrust.

As to the point I made here: "If the latter, we need to be careful, because attemptes at sophisticated discussions of identity might easily ruffle feathers and be perceived as bigotry by those who perceive their identified group to be under attack," consider that while posters here are concerned about Campt Stigmata and Camp Jihada, our expressing our concerns directly or by poking fun might very well be perceived by the group that is the object of our concern (funadmentalists, Muslims etc.) as bigotry.

Just pointing out that this is a difficult and tricky business. Europeans resolved their basic internal differences only by exhaustion from war and in uniting against a new common threat (USSR), an internal cohesion is now troubled by how to integrate a growing Muslim population that to some degree has been kept at arm's length through welfare payments. Global integration is threatened by the war on terror, it seems that the Palis and Izzys will never get along, and our counterproductive GWOT has also led to greater polarization in the US.

And when polarization has been realized or is underway, group dynamics mean that "uniters" or fence-sitters are in a very vulnerable position, subject to perception and attack as a traitor to one's own group.

Politicians often like to make hay by catering to one group and exploiting divisions rather than by bridging them. I bet you can point to some examples of that. Exploiting divisions is often a cynical strategy for elites to line their pockets at the expense of a larger polity. Many libertarians have made this point about the GWOT.

Sorry for being a little cryptic/turgid.

As a very young teen I was forced to attend a pentecostal church revival in Canada. The first thing they tried to drum into the children was that absolutely everything on earth was evil. It makes hating the world, hating people and hiding within isolated religious communities seem comfortable. I wasn't buying it, so I wasn't asked to return.