Meet Levi, a 12-year-old aspiring preacher who talks into the camera about an ineffable something that doesn’t quite feel right when he runs into non-Christians.

“Something that makes my spirit-man feel yucky,” he says finally.

His friend Rachel, 9 years old, pushes graphic crucifixion comics to strangers in between her turns at the bowling alley. Victoria, called Tory, is on their church’s praise team. She adores hard Christian metal and eschews Lindsay Lohan.

“When I dance, I really have to be sure that it’s God, because people will notice when I’m dancing for the flesh,” says Tory, age 10.

These and others talk straight into the camera, knocking out America with their devout, often brassbound opinions in Jesus Camp, a feature-length documentary on the evangelical summer camp Kids on Fire. The film screened last Saturday as part of the Oberlin Film Series.

“One of the great strengths of the film is that it doesn’t come with any prepackaged point of view,” issued Distributor Eamonn Bowles in a statement last summer.

But for a film that has no opinion, there are a lot of clues. First, we see a resoundingly bleak America. Sober long shots of highway, the flap of a flag against an iron sky, a dusky tree line — something is clearly the matter here in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

Enter Christian citizens. Mike Papantonio, a moderate Christian host for AirAmerica who is the token “Good German” who stands alone in a sea of fascism; he offers outraged commentary on the craziness going on in the Christian world. We see what he means in due time. At a praise dance performance, boys in camouflage paint and girls with sticks march smartly with faces upturned to heaven. Children stretch hands toward a life-sized cutout of George Bush and pray together for his faithfulness. They sit rapt, as they hear about Harry Potter, who — had he lived in the time of the Old Testament — would have been executed. Finally, in a clincher scene, these children hold model fetuses, crying “no more, no more [abortion].”

Then Rev. Becky Fischer, founder of Kids on Fire, makes an appearance. Although at this point it is hardly necessary, she offers to spell out her program’s mission.

“They’re so open, they’re so usable to Christianity,” she says.

Interestingly, at this point the scene cuts into a grainy, monotone shot of a child in tears. Fischer’s face returns promptly, sporting a look that, without context, smacks of conspiracy.

“Where should we be putting our efforts? Where should we be putting our focus? I’ll tell you where our enemies are putting it. They’re putting it on the kids….They’re putting hand grenades in their hands, and they’re teaching them how to put on bomb belts. They’re teaching them how to use rifles. They’re teaching them how to use machine guns.”

The muted shots of children, now praying in tongues, murmuring and swaying, return.

“It’s no wonder with that kind of intense training and discipline that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam,” said Fischer.

According to her credits, Fischer is a Pentecostal minister who runs a ministry for evangelical kids. The distinction between the Pentecostal and the evangelical, however, is meaningless for most viewers. What is Pentecostalism anyway? With no effort at all, it becomes the face of America’s conservative right, even while somewhere on the back burner something nags us that it should not.

Fischer’s monologue is not the same when viewed as a response to a question — which, in all fairness, it probably was. Imagine a question such as, “What do you feel is a solution to weak faith in Christians?” Ignoring the pictures, what emerges is a lady pushing the precept that Christians should teach the godly lifestyle early. The difference is not trivial: she is no longer equating raising children to raising suicide bombers.

Context adjusts volumes. On that note, so does the soundtrack; this documentary has a particularly good one, an electronica score by Force Theory that jags between frenetic and downright eerie.

But what do most of these images of children say? When sinister, dissonant chords thrum in the background and the camera draws within inches of a small blond girl’s mouth, it takes steel not to squirm. Is this reaction due to surprise or suspicion? The traditions of a charismatic church tell no more about evil, indoctrination or Bush than does taking communion at mass or fasting during Ramadan.

That is not to say that there isn’t a grain of truth in the evangelical horror story — these are children who hold views unorthodox in and potentially dangerous to contemporary society; most liberals and many conservatives would agree.

But the question of whether the religious right is emotionally abusive in rearing their children — one that Jesus Camp objectively prompts and then answers all by itself — is hard to concede. After all, these kids are fed, hugged, taken bowling and told that God and their parents love them. True, such parents may come with a Republican ticket and an opinion on global warming that could use an update, but for many, that’s a bargain at any price.