Jesus Camp

If you haven't seen the documentary Jesus Camp I recommend it. The movie is about a children's camp for evangelical Christians and the woman who runs it. It is, in all honesty, a scary movie. I am not saying this because the summer camp is really an indoctrination camp (though it is, one could argue that all camps are more or less indoctrination camps but I'll get to that in a bit). I am saying this because it highlights just what the evangelicals want and how they intend to get it. They want a Christian kingdom here on earth and they are willing to fight to get it. I don't take the warrior metaphor in the film to be anything other than that, a metaphor, but there is something disturbing about their views and their intolerance to anyone who does not agree with them. Why do they feel so damn concerned about little ol atheist me and my progressive ways that they'd prefer I (and those like me) was locked up or, better still, dead?

In the film the camp director asks what is so wrong with her camp if Muslims are indoctrinating their children in Palestine and putting grenades in their hands (the factual errors in this are so utterly absurd that I don't feel the need to refute them). She goes on to state that if they can indoctrinate people with the wrong beliefs then, since hers are the right ones, she ought to be applauded and lauded. I imagine that through her insanity what she is saying is that others raise their children with their beliefs why can't she. Fair enough.

This is often a critical and somewhat valid point made by evangelicals (though so often poorly made and spouted off like dogma by semi-moronic evangelicals that for the most part we rightly ignore it). They argue that the US currently has an educational system that inculcates the minds of the youth with a set of values that they abhor- namely liberalism (I mean that in the classical sense not the left vs right, democrat vs republican sense). In that sense they are mostly right. While they may point out (wrongly) that this country was founded on Christian values (it wasn't- it was founded on the ideas of John Locke, among others), in reality the entire social, educational, and governmental structure of this country is premised upon liberal values to varying degrees. Values that are threatened by the very people in this film.

What are those values and why are they important? Well, long story short they are the values of individual freedom and individual expression. They are important because without them we don't get much of a democracy (or capitalism, for that matter, as Locke argued that private property was a fundamental freedom). The strength of religion in this country, some have argued, is a direct result of these freedoms (maybe that is why so many preachers and priests are in favour of a separation of church and state). Moreover, liberal values don't make much of a claim to fundamental truths (though the inalienable human rights thing is a bit of a knock on my point but let's not get into that just yet). Most religions have historically laid claim to some fundamental truth and then slaughtered those that disagreed with them. Liberalism was a way to put that in check. (Ironically, a recent study contradicts claims by religious zealots that if America were more religious it would be less violent. Turns out that more liberal and less religious Europe is less violent).

Here's the rub: we cannot deny that our system inculcates and ought to inculcate liberal values in this country. But how can we then say that those are the right values? Any society will function quite harmoniously if everyone in it agrees on the basic principles underlying it- be they Islamic, Christian, or whatnot. Hence the common bar room argument that if you don't like it here go somewhere else- presumably where your ideas are more common (maybe that is why I like France so much). The problem is, in a nutshell, that societies are generally not that homogeneous and differences exist and, in some sense, ought to exist as it provides a more fertile ground for efficient government. Here is where my good friend John Rawls comes in (A Theory of Justice may be long and dull but it is almost as eye opening as Foucault's History of Sexuality).

Rawls is a committed liberal. He argued that a society's notion of justice (which forms the basis for the structures of governance and individual interaction) ought to be formed under a 'veil of ignorance'. Meaning that if we had no idea about our beliefs or those of others, no idea about our social status or wealth, and no idea about whether people like us were in the majority or minority that we would invariably devise a notion of justice that maximises one's individual freedom while recognising that taken to the extreme one's freedom might encroach on another's. In short, the individual freedoms inherent in liberal ideals provide the best possible framework yet devised for governing the relations among individuals in a heterogeneous (diverse) society- it also provides solid arguments for a progressive tax but that is another matter.

This is where I have my problems with the evangelicals. It is true that we are all being taught liberal values. But this set of ideas provides a lot of room for different views. Rawls advocated this position by making a few additional noteworthy points. Every society requires some basic agreement about how it will govern itself. He also noted that values can be split into those that go to some fundamental core (mostly religious) and those that are more temporal and pragmatic. Most of our divisions come from those core beliefs and since we can't come to agreement about them (and since many are immune to logic, reason, or fact) then we need a set of values that allows for different core values to exist- hence the pragmatism of liberalism.

I admit that we still must push one set of values onto another. But I also admit that there is a problem with some people's values that tell them that they are right and that we must all live like them (evangelicals and some forms of Islam- more accurately and categorical, fundamentalists in general). Our society may be built by we liberal folk but we aren't telling you what to do with your kids - except beating them. In point of fact, if we shut you up feel free to tell us it's your right to express yourself. Never hurts to reaffirm our values.