I haven’t seen the movie Jesus Camp yet, but I’ve seen this video about it, and I am aware of the phenomena: children being brainwashed into joining an army for Jesus. I don’t know why, but I thought that somehow I was far removed from this… until today.

This morning, I went to “show off” day at the day-camp we sent our four-year-old to. It was designed to show the parents what the children have been doing the four days of the camp, and give some recognition to some of the children for their achievements. Now, I have to admit that I knew the day-camp program was sponsored by a Christian group, but I had no idea it would be like this. I mean, the YMCA is a Christain group, too, as is the Boy Scouts. You don’t expect recruiting into the Jesus Army at a cub scout meeting, though.

The first thing we saw at this parents day was a clown act, which featured magic tricks tied to various religious lessons, such as “don’t seek revenge,” and “God will forgive your sins.” It was cringe-worthy, but relatively mild… until the last “magic trick” which actually involved our child as a volunteer after he whined a bit to be allowed to participate. At the end of the trick, the “magic” wouldn’t happen until he said to the entire assembly: “I love Jesus.” He seemed a bit reluctant, much to his credit. Still, I was disgusted, and furious.

Then we had the pleasure of hearing the different camp groups give their camp cheers. Our son’s group had one in which they said they were soldiers for Jesus. Another one had four-to-six-year-olds chanting the words “sin” and “death.” I don’t remember the other two groups’ cheers, but they were pretty much the same. All I could do was sit there, open-mouthed, thinking: “what have we done!” We grabbed our son and left as quickly as we could. Needless to say, he won’t be going back next year.

On the way home, I broke down in tears, but we did a pretty good job at hiding our distress from our son. My wife gently asked him questions about his experience. It turns out he thinks Jesus is some man who cured ten guys of chicken pox. Also, he thought the “chapel” time was pretty boring. He doesn’t seem traumatized by it, so I don’t think there was any damage done, but it did cause me to think more about how to involve him in our faith.

We don’t want to handicap him by making him a freak the other children would make fun of, but we don’t want him brainwashed by strangers, either. We are very much “in the closet” where we live. Nobody but the few other pagans in town know we are anything but “God-Fearing Christians.” We involve our son in rituals, though, and let him make offering to the spirits and gods, and teach him about virtue.

He doesn’t understand that what we practice is different from everyone else, but the day is coming where we can’t hide our differences from him or from the outside world any longer. We had put that day off as long as we could, and maybe we still can a while, maybe even another year or two. I’ve played “the talk” in my head since before he was born. It’s the big talk where we explain to him what we are and how we are different. That’s going to be a lot harder to talk about than sex, I think. And the day I’ve dreaded is coming soon. He is very intelligent. He will start asking questions soon. It just doesn’t seem to me a four or five year old should have to deal with these issues. All I can do now is fervently pray to the gods for guidance.