Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation
Cara Meredith
Broadleaf Books, 226 pages
Published April 29, 2025
In a prior role as an associate pastor for children and families, I was inspired by a particularly faithful family of five. Yet, during a family retreat, I began to grow curious. During Bible study, the oldest daughter spoke of hell, damnation and judgement. Our church programs centered on a God who called her by name and loved her deeply and unconditionally; where was this coming from? It was a mystery—until I checked the website of the summer camp her family recommended so highly. The camp’s statement of belief was chock-full of harsh references to our inherent sinfulness, followed by an insistence that Jesus was the only way to avoid punishment.
While asking forgiveness for our sins and turning to Jesus is what Christians do, the camp’s heavy-handed and fear-driven language bore little resemblance to our grace-filled Sunday mornings. Theologian Cara Meredith spent 20 years as a camper/leader at a camp like this, and Church Camp is both her story and a well-researched assessment of the Christian camping industry.
Over the course of a week, Meredith and her fellow counselors followed a clear process: introduce campers to God as a (White) Father, meet “Superhero Jesus,” make them feel like “dirty rotten little sinners,” emphasize Jesus’ suffering on “cry night,” and invite them to ask Jesus into their hearts. Meredith describes “the transactional nature of church camp,” in which donors were provided with numbers of souls saved and kids were asked to commit to a God who loved them conditionally. She also wondered if it “worked”? Kids were introduced to God in the over-the-top world of summer camp (superhero costumes! counselors on ziplines!); did it translate into a long-lasting faith that could be sustained during boring or challenging days at home? More worrisome are the concerns Meredith raises about ways camp reinforced Whiteness and patriarchy as the norm, making campers of color feel like their families of origin were particularly “broken.”
“When I look back on it now, I can’t help but see the threads of manipulation and coercion,” a former Young Life counselor shares with Meredith. This counselor is now a military chaplain who moved into a more open Christian tradition — he is grateful for his more nuanced understanding of conversion yet mourns the loss of camp community.
The Church Camp experience is not my own, and it may not be yours. So why read Meredith’s book? If folks reject a God who loves them only when they do the “right” things, they may still be open to a gracious God filled with unconditional love. Some of the antics she describes sound suspiciously close to Vacation Bible School curricula, and her reflections might allow us to reassess the messages we share in our own camp environments. These camps are appealing for a reason — what can we learn about the intense bonds formed in camp communities and the attractiveness of a faith boldly and unapologetically proclaimed? Meredith invites us to wonder about all these things so that we might best proclaim a loving God who walks alongside us daily life — no ziplines required.
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