Here’s what I don’t get…

Kenneth Hynek • 25th Sep 2009 • World News, American News, Politics, American Politics, Religion, Christianity, Society, Education
Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Heidi Ewing, Jesus Camp, Rachel Grady, United States

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It was apparently highly controversial when, in the documentary Jesus Camp (by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing), children were asked to pray for George W. Bush. This sequence from the documentary, among many others, had people up in arms, and I’m sure that more than a few people on the Left went into hysterics (in private company) about the dangers of a looming theocracy:

I wonder where the controversy is, then, that should properly be attached to this bit of nonsense:

Here’s the interesting thing. While I am by no means a defender of evangelical eccentricities, and while I do find some of the footage in the first video to be in the general area of creepy, there is a distinction that I have to remark upon. In the first video, which I suppose we are expected to regard as being “scary,” the children are asked to give a blessing to George Bush. They are not praising him per se; they are asking for him to receive a blessing. And yes, it’s tacky, and yes, it’s kind of weird how it all plays out…but in the end, there is still a semblance of a proper hierarchy of power there. Bush himself is not an object of worship, and in fact the idea of his being blessed speaks to the fact that there is an authority which is above him that is able to actually bestow that blessing.

In other words: as creepily and as clumsily as the first scene plays out, Bush is not deified in it; God’s authority above and over even the Office of the President of the United States is respected.

Contrast that with the second video, and in particular with these lyrics:

Red and yellow, black and white
all are equal in his sight

That’s one small example, the one that cuts through the audio fuzz the clearest. There are more such banalities in the tune.

What’s interesting to note is that, whereas in the George Bush video, the hierarchy of man and God was more or less maintained, in the Barack Obama song, that hierarchy vanishes. Obama takes on the role of the deity in the tune.

And yet…where’s the outrage? Where are Grady and Ewing, ready with cameras in hand to follow up their smash hit with a controversial “part 2,” Obama Camp?

Yes, I’m being a tad facetious with that last bit, but only just.