A new documentary about pint-sized Christian zealots is chilling secular liberals to the core. But a former Christian soldier has good news

How do you spook a theater full of New York film snobs? Show them footage of children speaking in tongues, cradling plastic fetuses, and fondling cardboard cutouts of George W. Bush. I learned this when Jesus Camp, the much discussed documentary about a Pentecostal Christian camp, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last spring. Early in the film, Becky Fischer, evangelical youth minister, camp director, and the human embodiment of conviction (if conviction wore mom jeans), looks out over a sea of tear-stained children and remarks: "Extreme liberals, they have to look at this and start shaking in their boots."

When the lights came up at the Tribeca screening, it appeared she was right. As the film's directors, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, moved to the front of the theater for a Q&A session, dozens of hands flew in the air. The questioners' voices were filled with concern and urgency; most saw the film's three featured children, Levi, Rachael, and Tory, as appendages of a dangerous leviathan—coming soon to your town to annul your gay marriage, release your stem cells, reinstate Prohibition, and confiscate your pornography.

Little did the they know that, lurking in the next to last row, sans mullet, telltale fish bumper sticker, or any of the stereotypical marks of an evangelical upbringing, was their worst fear—me, a Jesus Camper all grown up. My own feelings were a bit more complicated.

I got my first taste of evangelism in fifth grade when my parents, long members of a Methodist congregation, migrated to the fundamentalist church across town. The differences were immediately apparent: My old church was all stained glass and frayed prayer books, but the new one was modern, with stage lighting, JumboTron video screens, and a pastor with bleached teeth and a tie. A bouncing ball tripped along lyrics to synthesizer-heavy Christian music, while 1,000 congregants convulsed in praise. It was Jesus with an exclamation point.

I soon joined the Christian equivalent of the Girl Scouts and loaded my vest with award badges and silver bars for memorizing notebooks full of bible verses. After a year, when I could recite the better part of Romans in my sleep—and my vest weighed as much as I did—I was granted the greatest prize a young Believer could ever want: A free ride to bible camp.

As it happens, I'm not the only former Jesus freak seeking salvation in New York City. When Jesus Camp goes into wide release next week, many will view it with more familiarity than fear. They'll remember endless summers at camps with soft-focus names like "Mission Grove" and "Sacred Springs," where campfires were interspersed with hard-core ministry. They'll feel nostalgic for the long lost earnestness of being a Jesus teen who sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" without irony. But, no matter how much my fundamentalist past may clash with my adult desires to drink, cohabitate, and blaspheme with abandon, I still look back on my early years with a certain sentimentality. It's difficult to avoid feeling wistful for a time when swearing or cheating at "Uno" led to tears, confessions, and life rededications.

The truth is, Blue State America is crawling with ex-Jesus campers like me. Though we attended different camps with different quirks and varying levels of zealotry, we share a pool of collective memories. We carried "teen study bibles" with indexes in the back that linked modern sins like "marijuana" and "belly button rings" to obscure passages in Leviticus. We sported t-shirts with slogans like "Jesus: Don't Leave Earth Without Him." On Thursdays, when it was time for "rededications," we gathered around the fire pit and begged god to forgive us for our myriad sins. We were disgusted and disappointed with ourselves for adopting the low standards of worldly classmates, for saying things like "sucks" or copping attitudes when asked to unload the dishwasher.

The moral certitude I learned during those years at Jesus Camp—dormant as it may be—sometimes puts me at odds with friends in New York who take a lack of faith as a given. But a great irony is that much innocence is actually lost at Jesus Camp. When I last attended camp in the early nineties, I was informed that Dungeons & Dragons was satanic. The antipathy to contemporary culture has not changed. (During one particularly stirring scene in Jesus Camp, kids quietly wail when Becky Fischer bellows that warlocks like Harry Potter ought to be put to death.)

One summer a counselor broke the news to us that our midriffs were sexually appealing and advised me and my fellow campers to cover ourselves from prying eyes. Offenders would be excluded from pool time. Eventually, we learned to carefully navigate the landscape of skits, pranks, and bonfires, well aware that immorality lurked at the cabin door. Heather Husa, an 8-time Bible camper, remembers joining with a friend for a well-intentioned lip synch to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana," complete with feather boas and red lipstick. It was to be her adolescent magnum opus.

"We ended our bit with a camp-wide conga line," she recalls. "It was a huge success. But, whether it was the fringe, the tarty lipstick, or Barry's provocative lyrics about a "dress cut down to there," she soon discovered that she had crossed the line.

"We felt cool for about five minutes until the MC of the talent show said, 'Next year, we'll screen the acts ahead of time for anything inappropriate.'" The sting of that public castigation stayed with her for years. "We were mortified. We felt the need to repent."

I was reminded of a scene in Jesus Camp when Tory, a 10-year-old girl who loves to dance, tells the camera that she must moderate her behavior, lest she "dance for the flesh" and not for God.

So what happened to us? And what of today's Jesus Campers? Is their faith strong enough to last them through adulthood, when their votes can turn American life into one long episode of the 700 Club?"

"That is the million dollar question," says co-director Heidi Ewing. "Does it stick? At several screenings already, adults have walked up to us and said they were once as devoted as the kids at Jesus camp but have since abandoned ship. Many kids raised in these environments grow up and grow out of their faith." As for the camps themselves, she says, "There is the fear that a child will grow disinterested in God and move into more 'worldly' pursuits."

This, of course, is the very slipping away that Becky Fischer is trying to prevent. It's difficult to preserve faith in an environment filled with temptation. In one scene, the camp director admires the ability of Islamic fundamentalists to produce willing martyrs. While her unabashed fervor may make the NPR set a little nervous, the former Jesus Campers among us know that Fischer is fighting an uphill battle.

Those of us who went AWOL found the Internet or kissed a boy and liked it. We listened to a Nine Inch Nails album and figured that—since we'd always heard it was a slippery slope anyway, we'd listen to another. Before we knew it we were voting for Kerry and stocking up on Plan B. For better or for worse, children drift from their childhood passions. And America is a culture that makes indoctrinating anyone a real piece of work.

For Heather, now 26, who attended a Nazarene college and describes herself as a "good middle-of-the-road has-been Jesus Camper," it's not black and white. "I think a lot of us grew up and realized, 'Wait, you mean I have a choice about this stuff?' she says. "We probably took little bits and pieces with us that we'll never shake, and we're probably all grateful for those bits and pieces, but to say we're just as fervent? Nope."

Yes, I too was once a Kid on Fire who—far from conquering the world as a Christian soldier—has since mellowed into your average secular yuppie; a person who commits the usual array of sins, but prays when she's afraid and has a few leftover social booby traps, like giving Elizabeth Hasselbeck the benefit of the doubt, and wondering aloud if Tinky Winky really is a little light in the loafers.

Try to sleep well, rattled latte drinkers and Huffington Posters. Sure, evangelism is on the rise and sales of Christian books and music have soared by 700 percent in the last decade. But, if there is a rising army of evangelical zealots, there's an equally large army of ex-Jesus Campers who burned out, rebelled, or simply left the fold because band camp sounded more appealing. We may not be able to lift bans on stem cell research, but we do have inside information. Should the rapture come, we will gladly teach you the words to the "God told Noah to build him an Ark-y Ark-y" song.