Film review: Marjoe

This movie chronicles the young life of Marjoe Gortner and won best documentary film in 1972, and with good reason. This clip is from the first 6 minutes of the film.

If you YouTube Marjoe, you will find that instead of realizing the sham that a lot of religion is, and how it preys on emotional, congregational antics, there is an overwhelming response to protect it by labeling Marjoe as a false prophet. Curiously, one way to tell a false prophet according to one commentor is to look at children's responses to such "preachers/teachers". Duh! Adults acting this way and anybody leading them like this is weird. If I was a kid, I'd be freaked out! And as an adult watching the film I was freaked out. Speaking in tongues and writhing orgasmically on the floor in public just ain't right whether you're a true prophet or a false one.

Jesus Camp Review

I just saw the movie, Jesus Camp. The movie tracks a preacher and a few youngsters out of about a hundred that attend an Evangelical summer camp. It shows kids becoming indoctrinated and some of the tactics used, the kids speaking in tongues, and being emotionally charged. If this was really widespread, I'd be severely alarmed, but the movie presents a Pentecostal fringe of Evangelicalism working to out-radicalize radical Islam. The evangelicals that I know and how I was raised is not quite so extreme. Still, there was certainly some overlap with my evangelical upbringing. For example, I'd long forgotten that pledges of allegiance to the Bible and the Christian flag. There are several discussions about so many parts of the film, now two years old. I want to make one observation.

What is it about extreme fundamentalists that would allow themselves to be filmed like this? I don't think they got paid, and to the outside world, they look like brainwashers and fearmongers to the innocent. What it is, I think, is that they believe themselves so righteous that anybody seeing their lifestyle and tactics would not in any way see anything wrong with what they were doing, and in fact, they believe that outsiders would condone it and want to join forces. When you know your beliefs are unsubstantiated, you have to convince yourself in so many ways that they are correct. It's disconcerting that one way to seek validation is through the coercion of children to also believe your craziness.