NZ's TV one late news last night (18/9/2006) reported on a film of kids in a Christian summer camp in the USA. The item had been advertised during the preceding family show asshowing Christians being trained to become terrorists.
The kids were shown singing militant songs, speaking in tongues, dressing in face and body paint, and doing dance/martial art-type movements with sticks. One boy was filmed commenting on how people from other faiths are prepared to die for what they believe.
The billing was really over the top. Agreed the rhetoric that the kids were being taught was a bit excessive, but then what exactly were te kids being taught to DO? Were they being taught to make bombs? To use rifles? To fire buildings? To beat people up or threaten violence? To shout "death to Iran" (or Palestine, or Al Qaeda, or anyone???)
No. The most risky behaviour that any of these kids are likely to engage in is that they might share their faith with someone who is dangerous and doesn't want to listen (such as a Goth or drug addict or terrorist from another religion). A very few might eventually go out to some foreign mission field. (In my experience many people may 'respond' in a meeting situation with willingness to go to a foreign mission field if God calls them, but few of those end up going personally - those who do go usually seem to have a missionary commitment born of a deep personal sense of God's call, not one instilled by others' rhetoric.) Their purpose is to win people to Christ individually, through love, not hate.
It is telling that (a) this camp was then used to paint the whole evangelical Christian youth movement as dangerous, and (b) the person brought on screen to criticise the movement was a "liberal feminist" who made two accusations against them. What were the accusations? That these kids might grow up to be opposed to abortion and not accept gay marriage. Wow. A long way short of being terrorists who blow up people indiscrimantly. So why was the camp being described a training camp for Christian terrorists?
Of course one must always qualify things. It is possible (however remotely) that some kid going to one of these camps could go mentally unsound and commit some act of violence because of his thoughts. But you get such things among people of any religion or non-religion. On the upside, those kids are much less likely to get involved in risky or socially destructive behaviours such as vandalism, theft, murder, drug-taking, unsafe and promiscous sex, or even tax evasion! They are more likely (because of their sense of purpose) to work and study hard and try to be kind to people in order to have an opening to share their faith. Not always of course - but I really think these things are nowhere near as bad as the TV tried to make it out to be.