Jesus Camp Channel 4, 11.05pm IN a display of charity rare among TV programme-makers, Jesus Camp underplayed its biggest revelations by consigning them to the closing credits. Having concluded its look at the alarming indoctrination methods used on child believers by America's Christian fundamentalist right, this 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary posted two on-screen announcements.

Jesus Camp
Channel 4, 11.05pm

IN a display of charity rare among TV programme-makers, Jesus Camp underplayed its biggest revelations by consigning them to the closing credits. Having concluded its look at the alarming indoctrination methods used on child believers by America's Christian fundamentalist right, this 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary posted two on-screen announcements.

The first pertained to superstar evangelical preacher Pastor Ted Haggard; the second concerned the current status of Jesus Camp's main subject, the Kids on Fire annual summer shindig in North Dakota, at which brutish methods were used to terrify impressionable children into the arms of the Lord. Pastor Ted had loomed large late on in Jesus Camp, addressing a congregation at his packed-out church in Colorado Springs, a booming Christian right burgh. Haggard's smooth, well-groomed and youthful face featured large, perfect teeth that seemed permanently bared. Their effect was closer to a vulpine snarl than a cheery grin.

In his sermon, Haggard, a married father of five, decried homosexuality while repeatedly exclaiming his confounding mantra - "It's written in the Bible!" - with a mixture of anger, disgust and glassy-eyed abstraction. Strangely, he also joked about issuing the programme-maker with a $1000 blackmail demand over the latter's adultery.

This behaviour was baffling at the time it was uttered, although it did serve to shine an extra light on Jesus Camp's subsequent captioned message: "Since this film, Pastor Ted Haggard has been removed from the New Life Church. He also resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations of methamphetamine use and paying a male prositute for sex."

Whoops. In addition to still- unrefuted charges of hypocrisy, the stench of money-grubbing secularity attended Pastor Ted's odd filmed exchange with 12-year-old Levi, a budding child-preacher.

Haggard wanted to know whether the lad's popularity was owing to his youthful novelty value or the content of his sermons. Understandably, the kid said he didn't know.

This prompted unpalatably slick marketing advice from Pastor Ted, offering an apprentice his insight as a well-paid professional religionist: "Use your cute kid thing till you're 30, and then you'll have content."

But what of Jesus Camp's second concluding statement? It announced that Pastor Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire project - Kids in Fear would be more apt - had suspended its operations following local discontent in the wake of Jesus Camp's initial cinema release in 2006. Pastor Becky was hard to dislike even though overly prone to martial sloganeering - "This means war!" - and telling weeping six-year-olds that they were phoneys and hypocrites.

For she was possessed by a fearful form of Christianity that saw irresistible sin lurking in every corner. Tragically, she was impelled to hate other religions - especially Islam, you'll be unsurprised to hear - by a faith which is predicated on love.

Fischer's camp also provided scenes of specious old-time holy rolling and speaking in tongues (no snake-handling, thankfully). Its one modern accessory was a cardboard cut-out of George W Bush (he's a bit of an idol to the US Christian right).

Worse still, her brand of faith propagated the materialist fallacy that praying gets you exactly what you want in this life. Dear God: give us all the strength to endure these folks' perversion of the Christian message (and if you could stop them any time soon, too, that would be dandy).