If you haven't met many Evangelical Christians, the new documentary Jesus Camp is a good place to start. These people are what you'd call the real deal. They are the God-fearing, bible-beating radicals constantly caricatured by those bashing Bush and his loyal base. And while it would be easy to dismiss filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's doc as a bizarre trip into the deepest reaches of the religious right, the problem is that there are 100 million of them in the US. Collectively they could overthrow the American government if they wanted to. And sometimes it seems like they want to.

But Jesus Camp isn't about politics, it's about kids. It focuses on a family retreat in rural North Dakota that takes place every summer, run by Evangelical children's preacher Becky Fisher. Attending the camp are a cast of amazingly precocious and good-natured pre-teens who while away their afternoons speaking in tongues while staring mercifully at the church ceiling, tears streaming down their cheeks. Becky, meanwhile, takes them through the paces of a typical sermon: There is a battle being waged for the soul of America; Global Warming is bullshit; Abortion's a sin; Dubya's the man; and of course, lest we forget, Harry Potter is a Warlock. Oh, to be young again.

With Jesus Camp, Ewing and Grady have managed an amazingly even-handed look at one of the most powerful, stigmatized and misunderstood groups in North America, and the result speaks volumes about where we are as a culture today.

Check out Jesus Camp as part of Doc Soup at Toronto's Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. West) this Wednesday, January 10th, at 6:30 and 9:15 pm.

Visit the official site here.
Watch the trailer here.