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Two items for those who watched In God’s Name and appreciated seeing the evidence of Christian fundamentalists and their influence in politics (locally, thanks to David “I’m a tolerant kind of guy” Cameron and his ‘nice’ Tory party):

1. Jesus Camp gets a repeat airing on More4 at 10pm tonight (Tuesday 27 May, 2008). You may recall this classic footage of children urged to bless a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush. Expect to see this and more tonight.

(Trailer and background. If you miss it tonight you can catch it online starting here.)

2. Independent – Suburban Sydney shows dark side as Muslim school row gets vicious: Liberal Australia has been shocked by the ferocity of the opposition. Riot police were called when nearly 1,000 people turned up at a public meeting of anti-school campaigners. Two pigs’ heads, impaled on stakes, with an Australian flag strung between them, were left on the proposed site, a paddock on the fringes of town. Among the meeting’s organisers was Fred Nile [1, 2], leader of a fundamentalist Christian party and a long-standing member of the New South Wales parliament. Mr Nile – who has no links with Camden – accused Muslims of hating Christians, and called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

(If you’d like to spend more time watching wingnuts exploiting valid concerns of locals as hatred begins to swallow them whole, read/see more here, here and here and revel in a notable highlight here; “”They’ve got terrorists amongst them, OK? We can’t say they haven’t – they have,” said one resident.”)

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UPDATE (28 May) – Jesus Camp is a hell heck of an outing, isn’t it?

Josh Timonen – Surviving ‘Jesus Camp’: “Raise your hand if you think that God can do anything!” Pastor Becky Fischer throws her arm into the air as an example while darting her eyes back and forth over the children in the audience. She yells in a fake high-pitched voice like a sleazy, overly animated kid’s show host and waits for them to imitate her answer. In one aisle a mother lifts the arm of her disinterested son, no more than 8 years old. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem.

Amen.

I have a number of Christian readers, some of them more devout than others, but I would hope none as delusional or as predatory as Becky Fischer, who says things like “The Devil goes after the young; those who cannot fend for themselves*” without a shred of self-awareness.

(*Followed by a charming message about Harry Potter, which you can see from 03:40 onwards here.)

And, like Denny Pattyn, Becky Fischer plans to export her nonsense. Look forward to the Daily Mail playing fundy-footsies with her soon.

Oh, and here are some after-show treats for you:

Carman – Who’s in the House? (That totally rad choon what lets kids get down wif Jesus and his posse.)

The Creation Adventure Team (Highlights from the ‘educational’ DVD you saw Levi watching. The video description on YouTube is a tad OTT, but the author is bang on with this warning; “Don’t listen to what they tell the press, listen to what they teach their own children, because that’s what they really mean.”)