Jesus Camp
Sentient Developments, an excellent blog I recently found (via Open the Future, via Rebecca's Pocket), has a very powerful and (freaky scary) post on Jesus Camp, a documentary about an evangelical summer camp. Some excerpts from the post:
The paranoia and sense of fanatical mission is palpable throughout Jesus Camp. The struggle to spread the Good Word has escalated beyond door-to-door evangelizing. The spread of liberalism and scientific naturalism in the U.S. has forced evangelicals to take it to the next level. They've declared war against their enemies and assumed ownership of the United States; they are working to reclaim what they see as God's country...
Evangelical parents and teachers are unknowingly applying memetic and neurolinguistic techniques in their practice. They teach their children to frame the world in a very specific way -- and they do it in such a way that they become 'locked-in' to that frame.
They teach and reinforce complete submission to God and are told that people are nothing more than vessels. As a result, children learn to see themselves as tools rather than free thinking agents. They are taught that independent and 'out of the box' thinking is deviant behavior and a sign of evil or weakness...
Indeed, the evangelicals know exactly what they're doing and they're consciously going about the business of not just conversion but of refining their techniques as well. "I can go into a playground of kids that don't know anything about Christianity," says Fisher, "lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity."
Highly recommended but scary article.