Jesus Camp

By: 
Lynn Hunt
Year: 
2006
Volumn: 
38
Number: 
2

 

There is one thing missing from the children’s chapel sessions in the movie that is rather surprising —stories (and) one would think that a ministry that believes “the Bible in its entirety to be the inspired Word of God and … our infallible guide of faith and conduct” would use parables and stories in homilies for children, but telling stories is not the practice of Becky Fischer …    I think it is a deliberate decision by Fischer … because stories promote nuanced thinking and intellectual inquiry not directed by categorical pronouncements.  These children are being educated in a manner that … inhibits metaphorical thinking.

The great end in religious instruction . . . is, not to stamp our minds irresistibly on the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; . . . not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may, in the course of Providence, be offered to their decision; not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, which rest on no foundation but our own word and will, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment, so that they may discern and approve for themselves what is everlasting right and good; …In a word, the great object of all schools is to awaken intellectual and moral life in the child.

FileSize
PDF icon Vol 38 No 2 Hunt.pdf130.78 KB