A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from a friend of mine who pastors a small church near a military base in rural Missouri. Although I've spoken at this particular pastor's church before, a lot has changed in my life since the last time I visited him and his family. Since my first two visits, I've spent a year and a half in West Africa, traveled to Pakistan twice, debated a radical jihadist in London, and participated in a peace delegation with a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank.

Last Sunday when I met up with the pastor and his family, I knew full well that I wasn't the only one whose life had changed within a few short years. When I first met the pastor's son Levi, Levi was 10 years old and virtually indistinguishable from every other 10-year old boy, except for the tail on the back of his neck and his unwavering conviction that Jesus has called him to be a missionary in India. This time around, when I introduced myself to Levi, who didn't remember me before, I knew I was in the presence of a movie star...sort of.

The Levi that I'm talking about is Levi O Brien and the pastor that I'm talking about is Pastor Tim O Brien. The church I am referring to is Rock of Ages, the spiritual family of Levi and Rachel, two of the child stars featured prominently in the documentary film Jesus Camp. The film follows Levi, Rachel, and one other girl as they spend the week at a summer camp for Christian youth led by the charismatic preacher Becky Fisher. At camp, the children speak in tongues, dance around in war costumes, stretch forth their hands to pray to a cardboard cut-out of President George Bush (in actuality, the children were praying "for" Bush not "to" him), prophesy to each other, preach to each other, fall out under the power of the Holy Spirit, and pour out their souls in passionate intercession for the spiritual fate of our nation.

When I actually watched the movie Jesus Camp for the first time, I had very mixed feelings. On one level, I was glad to see young people passionate about their faith, but on another level I was thinking "Oh my! I hope there aren't too many non-Christians who will actually see this. They'll think we're all nuts!" It turned out that my fears were justified. Most of the reviews I read all but charged Becky Fisher and the O Brien family with child abuse. Some condemned them to hell for preying on the minds of the innocent and turning them into brain-washed psychopaths. One reviewer called it the scariest movie of the year. Another reviewer compared the children to Islamic jihadists in training.

Before I give my impressions of the O Brien Family and the Rock of Ages Church, let me start off by saying there were several aspects of the film that concerned my wife and I. In the film, Pastor Tim's wife Tracy teaches her children the literal six- day creation theory as if it were the only possible interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, implies that Global Warming is a left-wing conspiracy, talks about America being a Christian nation in a manner that many secular Americans and even a good number of Christians would consider naïve. My wife and I also felt that much of the political activism in the film was inappropriate for children who were too young to understand the complexities of the issues they were dealing with (such as 6 and 7 year olds placing red bandanas around their mouths and protesting the evils of abortion). The most disturbing aspect for me was the filmmakers' portrayal of evangelical Christians as a monolithic entity that by definition votes Republican and supports the Iraq War.

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