Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation

by Cara Meredith

Excavating a sometimes wacky, and equally harmful, part of white Evangelical culture

Roasted marshmallows, campfire stories, shaving cream battles--for some of us, Christian summer camp is where we felt most at home, where we could be the most authentic versions of ourselves. But for campers at white Evangelical church camps in particular, camp was also often the place to inherit a toxic image of God and of each other. From purity-motivated admonitions not to "make purple," to the emotional manipulation of "Cry Night," to the utter lack of diversity among campers and staff, the culture of white Evangelical camps has too often betrayed a generation.

In Church Camp, longtime camp speaker Cara Meredith exposes the ways in which white Evangelical camps sold individualized versions of Jesus to impressionable youth. Campers were forced to "sit with their sin" so they could fully understand God's conditional love. Camp life emotionally coaxed campers into making a formative commitment to Christ (and therefore to white Evangelical subculture). Further, camps commodified the faith of these young people to bolster their own funding and power.

Along the way, Meredith weaves in notable history of the camping movement, revivalism, and white Evangelicalism. She asks profound questions about who God is and what it means to be human. Following the progression of a typical week at camp, Church Camp weaves together Meredith's own story and the powerful stories of dozens of other former campers and camp staff members. Along the way, she invites us into the tension of accounting for our past while moving toward a better future.

Whether you went to church camp or not, whether you loved camp or hated it, Church Camp will peel back the layers, hold the powerful accountable, and help you envision a more vibrant, loving, and inclusive faith.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Christian, Christian Living, Spirituality, Church, Audiobook

257 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 29, 2025

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published April 29, 2025.

2 stars for a general audience

4.5 stars for those involved with church camps and youth pastoring

Church camp. A beloved rite of passage for some. An unimaginable nightmare for others. Mark our author down on the “loved it” side, and so much she seems to have made it into a full time (maybe, I can’t tell) adult job, working as a counselor, head of camp and, later, as a camp speaker where she “spoke the message” to groups of campers each night.

Now, understand that throughout this book we are speaking of WHITE, EVANGELICAL church camps. I was raised a Southern Baptist girl in the South and attended church camps, retreats, etc., so I’ve been there. It’s the hard sell, but by the time I was going to sleep away camp everybody had already been saved anyway, so what was the big deal, I figured. I didn’t know the people got extra credit if you went forward and rededicated your life. If I had, I would have tried to parlay that into something for myself, then would have marched right on up. Working the angles. That was youthful me. A budding lawyer already.

So, as per my ratings for this book this gets down in the weeds a bit, breaking down the specific messages given to the kids each night, and while I recognized them, and appreciated what the author had to say about, “maybe we’re manipulating the kids, maybe we should be more friendly to people of color and LGBTQ kids, etc.” I wasn’t really her target audience. I’m no longer an evangelical Christian, I have no kids, and this is all pretty inside baseball. However, what a wonderful resource it SHOULD be for those in the community. I sincerely hope they use it.

[Tor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t always write reviews for Christian books because I’m not the target audience and I’m going to disagree with their conclusions, but this book was frustrating in ways I didn’t expect.

For one, the author took no care with her sources. Many of her citations are her just plunking down what was clearly a bunch of things she google searched, and her url’s still contain all of the tracking info. Much of the book felt quote-mined—slapping in citations where they seemed to fit without any care to their actual context or the author themselves. For instance, she misattributes a Merriam Webster definition of patriarchy to someone who was quoting that definition. She says “Ashley Easter defines patriarchy as” but Easter herself wrote that patriarchy “is defined as” with a link to the dictionary definition. And Ashley Easter was writing about how patriarchy enables abuse within Christianity, something that had nothing to do with the topic at hand in Meredith’s book.

She goes so far as to call Susan Sontag a “critic of camps” seemingly because she so hurriedly was slapping sources into her book, she didn’t bother to take the time to understand that Sontag wasn’t talking about “camps” but about *Camp.* Even if you didn’t know what “Camp” meant in this context, surely if you read your own source, you’d get to lines like “The relationship between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained” and realize she wasn’t talking about camping retreats?

And that’s just it, it doesn’t appear that the author even did a *cursory* read of her sources. This makes this book incredibly unreliable. Why should I care about the topic at hand if the author doesn’t care enough about it to even do her sources justice?

This is unhelped by the fact that “church camp” is a hard topic to write a book about once you veer outside of straight-memoir. She tends to just quote unrelated things, and then say “this was true at church camp too” Okay, but then why write a book about church camp? What makes it specifically unique as a topic worthy of an entire book?

It’s never made clear. The entire book is more a critique of beliefs, not the model of church camp, which the author seems to actually be all in on. Church camp was bad because white Evangelicalism but is inherently good as a “sacred space.”

I thought reading this that this was going to be a solid critique of the structures of church camp—not just the sermons, but the space where you are away from others, in a high-energy, new place—and how that can be used for emotionally manipulative purposes, but “camp” in and of itself is only praised. She has no solid critique of it, only of “white evangelicalism” that appears to have mucked up this thing she wants to unabashedly love.

She doesn’t do a good job of even defining “white evangelicalism” instead it seems to be a be defined as “the parts I hate about Evangelicalism are white, and the parts I don’t aren’t white.” How is penal substitution white, but the cross isn’t?

She spends time telling us that the problem with white Evangelicalism is these manipulative or transactional ways of framing the faith, but what she provides instead seems just as deftly crafted as any “church camp” story night. Jesus “wasn’t actually trying to get people to convert to another religion; he was just trying to get them to change direction.” These are..synonyms? The cross is real, but we shouldn’t focus on *death*—but it’s there? If anything, it feels worse, like a handwaving away of just what the issues are with teaching children that Jesus died on the cross for your sins by saying “well, maybe we just focus on resurrection more.” Well what about people harmed, manipulated, traumatized by the resurrection story to? That’s never going to be interrogated because the author does like those parts.

There’s also something deeply well, white Evangelical, about putting the concept of “sin” as being “outside human control” in the same paragraph you talk about Gaza. “Systemic” and “outside human control” are not synonyms, and the idea that this is all happening outside of anyone feeling personally “sinful” about it is a level of crass I sort of expect from white Evangelicalism.

She doesn’t stay long enough in any critique either to really feel like she’s said anything. A chapter on ressurection veers into a discussion of capitalism and a breakdown of church camp costs—which she even points out that she did. But why? This padding doesn’t help the ways that it feels like she can’t even offer an interesting critique as to why this set of beliefs is wrong or why Christianity should look like this instead.

And then on a craft level: Much of her metaphors are still very…cheesy sermon illustration. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I don’t know what to do with the whiplash of reading a paragraph about how Jesus is in the “mess and rubble of war” and then to start the next paragraph with “Like thick slices of bread slathered in butter…” as we learn that the “cross and the resurrection pair together” just like a grilled cheese sandwich.

The last chapter is when the author finally delves into racism in any real way, which in a book about “white evangelicalism” making racism seem like the afterthought just put a bow on all the other problems of this book.

Sloppy research, half-formed conclusions, cheesy metaphors; by the time I got to the end of the book, I was just glad to be done with it. I can’t say that it made me particular think that this is some new novel approach to Evangelicalism, or that it presents an exciting new way to live out the gospel. It mostly just sounded really…white Evangelical.

I do hope the author fixes those citations on a reprint at least. Please read Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” for real, and also acknowledge that the definition of “patriarchy” comes from the dictionary.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel as if this was not really the book I was expecting. If you are a religious person who wants to make faith-based events, especially for young people, more welcoming and inclusive to all, this is your book. However, if you are more interested in the topic from a sociological perspective, and are one who doesn't feel especially moved by hearing others' religious journeys, there is not as much here for you.

That said, I do appreciate the author's genuine interest in making her faith community a place that is kind to everyone, which is a virtue she found lacking in most church camps.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot to unpack in this...I'm not trying to criticize everything written.

A good question we all need to consider is "What is the gospel?" And by this, I mean, what is the gospel according to the Bible - the full canon of scripture. Then, we need to ask what does that mean for us today? In some of her own wrestling with this question, the author indicts many camp speakers (rightfully) who give a very shallow version of what the gospel is - but then, in her analysis/deconstruction, never fully arrives at an answer to the question - and therefore, is still stuck in deconstruction.

For what it's worth, some of her interviewees acknowledged that she asked very pointed questions to support her conclusions. It doesn't mean the experiences of these people is invalidated or not true, but this is an echo chamber more than an honest discussion - and I think it drifts more anecdotal than an honest assessment of how we have missed the message of the gospel and applied it to our discipleship tactics.

[Amanda Kingston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this one - the author misquotes Susan Sontag in a weird way - and overall really fails to engage with how oppressive structures (such as white supremacy, heterocispatriarchy, ableism, etc) are mutually produced with evangelicalism.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof what a book. There were a ton of lines in this book, especially early on, that I noted to journal through. Many that put many of my own discomfort with evangelical theology and its type of evangelism into words. It's important to note that while this is part-memoir, the author's deconstruction did not lead to a loss in faith. She is still a Christian, just a different sort than she was when she was working at the church camps.

This was a thoughtful and incisive look at white evangelical church camp that I hope spurs on more conversations. As Meredith mentioned, it was harder to get interviews from BIPOC former campers for whom camp was a traumatic week rather than the "best week of their life."

This book is organized like a typical week at church camp:
1. Welcome to Camp!
2. God the Mostly Father
3. Superhero Jesus
4. Dirty Rotten Little Sinners
5. Cry Night
6. Side Note, Rose Again
7. Now Go and Live the (White) Way of Jesus

For me, most of my own highlights were in the first half of the book. The second half was rough, and I found myself rushing through just because I was feeling triggered by my own evangelical church trauma. If you grew up in white evangelical culture but was in any way marginalized, I think you might also really enjoy the labeling in the first half and then need a bit of time to rest from Day 4 and onward when Meredith discusses the manipulative parts of evangelical Gospel messages. It is affirming to hear someone else say that yeah, they really are just trying to hit a KPI for salvations, but it still sucks. Also very helpful to see someone point out that white evangelicalism is trying to convert you to white, cishet, able-bodied Christianity and it excludes those of us who are not.

The Navigators, the evangelical group I was in, is mentioned on page 13, but not much beyond that, I'm guessing because it's primarily a college parachurch organization. Young Life and FCA were mentioned much more.

Meredith has done her reading and cites some excellent writers and theologians, in addition to the former campers and camp staff. As a person of color, I especially liked her quote from pastor Jared Stacy who pointed out in a 2021 blog that evangelicals focusing on "just preach the gospel" was a way to reject social justice because hey, if only Jesus matters, you don't need to worry about earthly things like power and change. I love a book that has a good bibliography, and this one has about 17 pages of endnotes.

For me, this book was helpful for labeling. I think this is a good resource for those deconstructing their evangelical childhoods and for those who want to understand. I'm not sure you'll necessarily feel inspired, but at least you won't feel crazy or alone.

Thanks to Netgalley and Broadleaf for this ARC.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Church Camp is both an affectionate time capsule and a necessary autopsy, capturing the earnestness of youth ministry while revealing how it often mirrors the very culture it's meant to challenge. With humor and tenderness, she never mocks the sincerity of those involved but pulls back the curtain on a system shaped more by consumerism and white supremacy than by the Beatitudes. What emerges is a sort of memoir/interrogation that holds space for both nostalgia and necessary critique—a book that invites us to ask what we were really being formed into, and what a better way might look like.

[Erin Straza]

For me, books have always been like a ticket to another world. Reading immerses us in places and situations that may be foreign, with the author serving as our guide. In “Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation,” Cara Meredith immerses us in the world of Evangelical church camps and introduces us to some people (herself included) who once attended or worked in them.

No, church camp is not a world I’m personally familiar with, as I did not have a religious upbringing. I was a college student when my faith took root. Church camp was unknown to me until some college friends regularly referred to the songs and the games and the lessons. At the time, I felt left out. It seemed like church camp was a marker for faithfulness or spiritual hunger or nearness to God. Because I had missed it, I wondered if my faith would always be lacking.

I erred in placing church camp on a pedestal. As if God could only be found there or within its framework, structure, approach, teaching, and interpretations.

That is the error Cara Meredith points to throughout her book. Cara Meredith experienced church camp in childhood as an attendee and in adulthood as a speaker. So she has the keen perspective to see the structure from both angles, as one experiencing it and as one delivering it. Combining her experience with those of her interviewees, she shares concerns for the way church camp packages its offer to young people. It’s a version of faith, of faithfulness, that is defined by a certain set of rules and conditions, rooted in Evangelical doctrine. Not surprising, of course, as that is the purpose of any religion. Her concern is valid, however, in that young people are taking home religious baggage that can weigh them down for a lifetime, all because young people assume what’s being offered is the one and only way to think about following Jesus.

While I do not relate to the church camp experiences shared, I found great value in hearing the stories and the analysis Cara provides. By the end, I was reminded how much the human heart longs to be included, to belong. We want to know that God’s arms are open wide to us in welcome. I’m sure some people felt that at their church camp experience. But not all did. Their stories stoked my compassion for the ways church structures and leaders can wrongly make nearness to God feel impossible.

I’ve known Cara Meredith for some time now and gladly accepted an ARC. I highly recommend this to anyone who has attended or worked for a church camp, as well as anyone concerned with the ways faith is packaged to young people.

[Becca Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not have the same experiences as the author specifically to faith-based camps growing up, but I was able to draw so many parallels from other conferences, mission trips, and other events that my church participated in. I frequently had to pause, put the book down, and dwell on the author’s idea because it was so simple, yet spoke the cold truth. Oftentimes I found myself thinking, “finally here are the words that I couldn’t put together myself to describe this feeling that something is not right here.”

Some of the points that stuck with me were the fear-based tactics to increase “conversion” numbers instead of focusing on conversions of love, the tracking and reporting on conversions themselves, the influences of capitalism on these camps, and the lack of inclusivity and diversity of anything other than the normative white evangelicism.

I also appreciated that the author was critical but still emphasized that we can do so much better, we need to do better, without damning the faith as a whole.

Sometimes I had a hard time understanding the authors train of thought or point they were trying to make, like they were moving on too quickly without fully discussing the thought. At some points I liked the storytelling narrative, and at other points it felt repetitive and I wanted her to move on.

Overall a read I would recommend to others who experienced camps/mission trips/conferences/etc in the evangelical faith.

Thank you to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC.

[Elizabeth Blood · Rating 5 out of 5]

With vivid and compelling story-telling, Cara Meredith recounts her decades of experience at church camp, and the eventual evolution of her faith away from the evangelical world of her youth. First a camper, then a counselor, and finally a camp speaker, it was at church camp where she felt most deeply herself — a place where she found deep connection and belonging. However, as an adult, as Meredith’s world-view and faith expands, her relationship with camp becomes complicated, causing her to ask big questions about all she had once held as true.

Having attended an evangelical church camp over a couple of summers, I resonate with her writing, as I, too, have a complicated relationship with my camp experiences. Additionally, my faith has evolved from the evangelical tradition in which I was raised to a more progressive, inclusive expression of Christianity. I wrestle with many of the same questions as does the author, and this book is a wonderful companion along the journey. I long for more dialogue and connection between the different strands of Christianity, and I’m grateful that Meredith is a leader in these important conversations.

In sum, this book offers an honest and clear-eyed reckoning with the world and legacy of evangelical church camps. Readers who have attended such camps — as well as those who haven’t, but are interested in learning — will enjoy Meredith’s thoughtful and thought-provoking book.

[Whitney Dziurawiec · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm all about interrogating the evangelical machine, and I mostly agreed with the author, but this book fell flat for me. maybe because I'm not sure who the audience is: is it people like her - former camp enthusiasts turned exvangelicals? if so, then the book is fine. Is it for current camp leaders and programmers? if so then the author does very little to meet them where they (likely) are and get on her enlightened level and change their minds on important theological topics just because she says it's right. The progressive jargon will only turn off those who might be otherwise willing to hear what she has to say (not that I'm insinuating she shouldn't have addressed racism, sexism, etc but she didn't really put in much effort to SHOW it was happening to a skeptical reader). if it was simply a memoir for anyone interested, I would have loved to see a little more wrestling, rawness, or self-reflection. idk. just okay for me.

[Jen Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would round this up to 2.5 stars. I agree with her thesis: church camp was made (intentionally or not) for white, middle class, straight Christians and often used transactional or emotionally manipulative ways to convert kids and teens. However, the writing is a bit of a mess. The book is more of a faith memoir than it is a book examining Christian camp ministry, although camp is the organizing principle. Each chapter starts out on one aspect of camp and meanders to several other topics. Again, I agree with most of her conclusions, but the book itself is a disappointment.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who went to church camps through early adolescence, I thought this book would be for me but it was not. Most of the book was not about church camp, but rather used the author's experiences from camp as a spring board to talking about a more inclusive version of Christianity than that which is practiced by white evangelicals. This did not interest me as (partially thanks to church camp) I am not a "believer". It was good to know that some Christians such as the author acknowledge and condemn the racism, homophobia, sexism and culture of exclusion practiced by the SBC and organizations such as Young Life, but this book will have little appeal to those who have left the church.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one got me. My life formation is rooted in (religious/church) camp experience. I find Church Camp both healing and hopeful. I shared it with online groups of camps I worked at and got some heated backlash. If you have roots or connections in Christian camping I highly recommend reading this book.

[Catherine McNiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book to read as my own Mid-Faith Crisis is launching. When you look back at something beloved to your younger self, and realize that so much of what you thought was wonderful was actually dangerous, do you do then?

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled a bit to finish this book. While I did learn a bit about how big an industry church camp has become, much of this book was the authors deconstruction of the theology preached at some of these camps and it just didn’t resonate with me. A few sections about the camp experiences of persons of color were more interesting. This just wasn’t the book I was expecting apparently.

[Victoria (hotcocoaandbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough review to write, and I am going to do my best to come across in the most compassionate and graceful way I can.

I loved Cara Meredith’s book The Color of Justice that came out a few years back. I therefore was getting quite excited about this book, since I also am a big lover of camp.

I went to a few summer camps, some weekend camps, and camps as a youth leader. I was a kid going to camp in 1994-2000, sometimes for a whole month. Two of those summers, I worked at a camp. I also went to summer day camp at a church between 1991-1995 and actually got kicked out of it (see, I have my own story I could tell, but I also can see both sides now that there was miscommunication involved). I’d say I have experienced various types of camps.

When reading this book I had to think about two things: 1. Cara is married to a black man and has two sons, so her awareness of things comes from a place filled with mama protectiveness for her children who will be treated unjustly due to the color of their skin rather than from the beauty in their abilities. She will see the world in a way that I may miss from time to time as a mom of white boys. 2. Location is key. A lot of this book seems to talk about camps from the south, and the south is known for its heightened racism and have a more intense evangelical strict way of life that is prone to judge and hurt rather than love and respect. Her experiences and the people she interviewed for this book went through what they did and they should not be ignored. There needs to be a change in how camps, especially in those areas are run.

Let’s get to some of the heart of this book. Cara Meredith talks about how so many of the camps around the country lack people of color in them, be it in leadership (and how they are treated if in leadership) and in campers attending. She states how most camps are quite too expensive for those who live in the margins, which are often people of color. I definitely think this is problematic. She even put in some of the costs of the most expensive and popular camps that exist. I went and looked up the prices of some of the camps I have been to in parts of NY, PA, and NJ. They all ranged from $250-$700 a week compared to the prices she stated that cost over a thousand bucks a week. She states how if the church wants to spread the gospel through summer camps, the prices need to be attainable for those who may not know the gospel. I agree. That makes sense to me.

She does go into how camps seem to make it their job to ensure sexual purity to their campers. I don’t know if she is talking specifically about what she has seen as a counselor in the late 90s or when she was a camper in the 1980s/early 1990s, but as someone who attended so many camps, and yes, one of them was an all girl camp, there was only ONE of these camps that ever talked about sex at all, and that was World of Life camp in NY (The Island) where they did a whole play (similar to what she talked about in her book) and then they gave us all stickers to put in our Bibles to promise we’d be pure for marriage. I remember one girl who had talked very openly about how she had sex with many guys and she was only 14 at the time say, “I guess I’ll rededicate myself to purity again,” like it was nothing. At this camp, the messages were an hour to two hours long and we had multiple sessions per day. The camp was the biggest I had been to and the most boring, honestly. It was the only camp that reminded me of what she talked about throughout her book. However, it costs $500 for high schoolers to attend and is still a lower cost than many of what she talked about, it has always had people of color in leadership and always had a variety of kids of color attending, even in the 1990s when I went. Now, even more. It is not too far from NYC. Back to the purity stuff, I don’t think many camps talk about it anymore. As an adult when I went to these camps, I never heard it at all anywhere. I think a lot of people who came out of the purity movement and who are now in leadership, understand that the ultimate message to teach is the gospel, not the fire and brimstone and purity push.
I did find it interesting that near the end of this book she was talking about slogans that some summer camps have used to pump up students about attending their camp and one of them is a camp I have been to as a youth leader called Lake Champion in NY, not too far from NYC. I wondered, “Did she not look at the website?” This camp is known for having a variety of people of color yet she used that slogan when talking about how black children won’t feel welcomed or treated well at these camps when the slogan was “This is the best week of your life.” It is a Young Life camp, which you can hear she has a lot of bitterness towards Young Life camps. I just have seen that camps I have actually been to have more than a couple black kids in them. Also, as someone who attends a church where only a handful of the people there are white (myself being one), The kids in my inner-city Mennonite church go to Spruce Lake Camp in PA regularly and there is a huge variety of people of color there. Quite a lot of them are Latino/Latina. I have been to that camp two times as a kid, and it is amazing and it has the cheapest and most available prices. I don’t know how many of these types of camps exist, but yeah. I do think that this book is absolutely allowed to be about her experiences and what she has found through them, but I am just stating my own experiences are very different.

That also being said, while Cara talks about “Cry Night” as she calls it, when there is a call to come to Christ after fear is driven into kids about what hell looks like and explains how Jesus died on the cross for their “dirty sins” as she puts it, I only saw that done at Word of Life camp and never any of the other camps I went to (which is about 7 or 8 camps). That is MY experience, of course. I remember kids having to put sticks in a bonfire to signify that they were asking God to cleanse their sins so they could start anew. The stick represented what they were leaving at camp and giving to God. I saw a lot of kids doing it just so they wouldn’t be looked down upon by others around them.

I went to an all-girl camp that was called Camp Cherith in the Adirondack Mountains of NY, now called Camp Cedarbrook, which was my favorite of all my camps, which I attended the most and worked at. I am still in touch with many former campers (even ran into one last month who ran up to me and gave me a hug as soon as she saw me even though we haven’t seen one another in a couple decades). Some of those campers are now in charge of the camp and are counselors themselves. It is pretty wonderful, the community that was built there (they even have an alumni camper weekend set up this year).

Cara Meredith stated how a lot of the people she interviewed were those who were LGBTQI+ and how they were mistreated at camp, were not allowed to be leaders when known as someone who identified as binary or lesbian or gay, etc. Looking back at my camp experience at this all-girl camp, some of the girls I went to camp with there are indeed lesbians (some married women) and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the counselors I recall were too, but regardless, they never talked about sex or anything like that at this camp, and I appreciated it. We didn’t have a cry night (did girls open up and cry when we’d hang out alone in tiny groups sometimes? Yes, but it was nothing at all like what was described).

Now, what kinda makes me tilt my head a little when reading this book, is that if you are known to be LGBTQI+ and want to get a job at a Christian camp, why are you not surprised that you will not be allowed the job? The Bible specifically states in 1 Corinthians 6:17-18 “But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” Cara makes it seem like she accepts sinfulness by finding it unfair that they can’t be hired. Should they be treated poorly if they are in the camp, absolutely not. They should be shown the love of Christ definitely. What we often forget is that Jesus when he would hang out with people who were looked down upon, he always told them to not sin after hanging out. He wanted them to focus on living for God. That is what this verse I shared states, we are one flesh with God when we accept his Spirit to be within us. Since sexual immorality (and yes, in the time it was stated this included same-sex relations) causes us to sin against our own body, we need to make our body a “temple of the Holy Spirit within us.” as verse 19 states. I guarantee you that most camps will show love and kindness to anyone who identifies as these things because God still loves them, but of course leadership should be different, just as you don’t want people who are into drunkenness or drugs or who has been known to have affairs, etc… to be a leader in a camp. I just feel like Cara Meredith was very bitter and upset over something that is pretty clear knowledge of God’s word.

The first half of the book was hard for me to read. I just kept reading things that sounded so wounded and I wanted to hug Cara Meredith and let her cry in my arms like a fellow camporee. The second half of the book had a lot of loveliness. I enjoyed that she wanted the gospel portrayed in a loving way through a loving God. I enjoyed that she doesn’t want all these kids to be a number, of who was won over to Christ at camps, but as important individuals that matter and have value. I agree so much.

It was a good book. I like how Cara Meredith writes a lot. I just don’t see eye to eye with her on a few aspects that she conveyed. I feel the stories were important to learn and that some camps need to just be renewed with how things are conveyed and taught. I hope that if any people who work at camps read this book, it will help them see that there is some changing that does need to be done.

[Richard Propes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose it could be said that I'm not exactly the target reader for Cara Meredith's "Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation."

After all, I wasn't exactly raised evangelical. I was raised Jehovah's Witness, and we sure didn't have church camps.

I didn't really reach the evangelical world until my late teens and early 20s. It was long after the JW's had tossed me aside, shunned because of sexual abuse I was told was my fault.

So, I have no experience with camp other than a few years spent attending Indiana's Camp Riley, a camp dedicated to children with disabilities.

While I'm not quite the target audience for "Church Camp," I resonated with this biting and yet surprisingly tender exploration of a world that provided a home away from home for many evangelicals - though, it must be said, mostly white evangelicals in their teens and young adulthood who would start off as campers and eventually move into various roles of responsibility.

Yet, as Meredith quickly points out it's also often the place where those of us who do identify as Christian, myself included, inherited a toxic image of God and of each other. A longtime camp speaker, Meredith takes us through it all from purity-driven admonitions to the infamous and emotionally manipulative "cry nights" to commodified faith and "heat of the moment" faith commitments born as much out of peer pressure as they were any genuine expression of faith.

Truthfully, I can't help but return to that word "tenderness" word again and not just because it's my favorite world in the human language. I was sort of enveloped by the tenderness of Meredith's writing, somehow managing to acknowledge toxic faith without making faith itself toxic.

It's a gift and I really appreciated it.

Throughout "Church Camp," Meredith immerses us in the history of the camping movement, revivalism, and white evangelicalism. She lays bare truths about, in particular, one-week camps with each day's theme and how they built upon one another. There's a sense of melancholy as she short of confesses her own involvement in this toxicity and those moments when she began to realize that things were changing inside her. Meredith shares her own experiences, that's for sure, and yet she invites others to share theirs as it becomes clear this wasn't just a one-off experience but an actual movement that occurred over and over and over again.

Truthfully, I've always wanted to go to "church camp," though I'm now in my 50s and church camp these days, having become a fairly new Presbyterian (PCUSA), would involve something resembling adult summer camp.

I practically wept...okay, I did weep as Meredith shared the ways in which church camps have excluded, whether by race or ability or any number of other measures. Having visited a few church camps, I must admit that I'm always struck by how inaccessible they really are and how difficult it would be for me to function even as a relatively independent disabled adult.

I don't know. What can I say? I can say I expected something a little different from "Church Camp," perhaps something a little more bitter and yet something pretty miraculous happens along the way as Meredith paints us all toward a better way, a healthier faith life, and even a different vision for church camp.

In the end, I'm not really sure I'd ever want to experience the kind of toxic experiences Cara Meredith writes of in "Church Camp," however, the church camp she dreams of sounds pretty amazing.

[Amanda Fles · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️⭐️

[Olivia Meister · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admire the important conversation that this book is participating in. As someone who never attended a church camp like those this book is referring to but did grow up in a Catholic/Christian context, I could uniquely relate to and/or understand the points made. As someone who is similarly asking questions about that context, it was comforting to read a book that acknowledged some thoughts I’ve had.

I loved that the author participated in many different interviews with a diverse group of people. Their unique experiences shared was a vital and enriching part of this book. The use of quotes from those interviews as well as other people/books was very well used.

My only real complaint with the book was that I wish it was broken down with more headings and perhaps bullet points within each chapter. At times the information felt a little overwhelming as a reader and that could have helped.

Who should read this book? Anyone whose attention has been piqued by it, whether because you’ve attended church camp, have been hurt by white Evangelical Christianity, or are an outsider of the experience intrigued to learn more.

*I received an advanced reader copy of this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 stars, plus a bonus star for the thinly-veiled Mount Hermon context (I went to family camp there every year growing up and loved it).
Excerpts:
- - -
Eleven-year-old church camp attendees may not be envisioning a future house in the suburbs with a dog and 2.5 children to boot when they say a special prayer and ask Jesus into their hearts, but the invitation to choose has profound consequences on the life that follows. . . .
In more ways than one, authentic engagement means accepting an invitation into conformity, which is to say, into an idealized image of Jesus followers. Conversion into white evangelicalism means buying into the “myth of rugged individualism, family values, and traditional gender roles as a response to the cultural uprisings linked to communism, women’s liberation, and the Civil Rights Movement” — even if this understanding is never stated from the front of the room or isn’t realized for another twenty years, if ever.
- - -
[On the Purity Movement] To no one’s surprise, “girl campers” were generally considered the more sexless of the genders — sexual desire supposedly the least of a girl’s worries. Young men were taught their minds were evil, whereas young women came to believe their bodies were evil — which is to say, “men’s thoughts and actions are said to be either pure or impure, while women themselves are said to be either pure or impure.”
. . .
a ‘pure’ woman is compared to a delicious hamburger just set down on the table, while an ‘impure’ woman is compared to the last slobbery bite of that hamburger.
- - -
“Purity culture is a projection of all the gendered, racial, and societal fears that white Christian nationalists harbor onto the canvas of teenage flesh.” -- Onishi, Preparing for War, 112
- - -
To theologian N. T. Wright, the cross too often becomes the great heaven—and-hell scheme of Western eschatology: “In this view, God hates sinners so much that he is determined to punish them, but Jesus more or less happens to get in the way and takes the death blow on their behalf, so they are somehow spared.” Love remains eerily absent from the conversation in this particular interpretation of the cross — even if a hearty quoting of John 3:16 eventually shows up, the verbs become twisted and mangled along the way.
“Look at the two verbs,” Wright says. “God so loved the world that he gave his son. The trouble with the popular version I have described is that it can easily be heard as saying instead, that God so hated the world, that he killed his only son.” . . .
It sounds instead like fear. In this scenario, Jesus becomes the superhero who steps in to save humanity from the conundrum of a loving God who has no other choice but to send everyone to hell — who subsequently leaves behind a trail of breadcrumbs that leads to the one campers are supposed to want to “get to” in the first place. Fear prompts them into saying yes: they’re left with no other choice but to accept Jesus, even if they don’t understand, even if they feel pressure to make a decision, even if they don’t actually believe in the triune God.
- - -
[on "cry night"]
When sleep is riddled by late—night activities and the daytime hours are filled to the brim with constant activity — when a camper is “hyped up on sugar,” as Olivia recalled, and far from the familiarity of their family, the speaker is but a cog in the wheel in a story of emotionality. Add to this a message that takes a child or adolescent from the heights of love to the depths of wretchedness, that maximizes on fear-based black—and—white choices of faith and focuses on the violence Jesus experienced on the cross, all in an effort to define love. It’s no wonder that at least one person in that room or around that campfire pit would experience a heightened state of emotion — and after that one person experiences such emotionality, that a number of persons would subsequently begin to feel a similar effect, the emotions of one camper building on another and then another and another. Like a giant train of dominoes stacked upright on the sports field in the center of camp, when one falls, you know a hundred more are soon to follow suit.
. . .
If the expectation is to cry, then they cry; if the expectation is to repent, then they repent. To confess, then they confess. To speak in tongues, then they speak in tongues. The list goes on, whatever the denominational preference of that particular night at camp: a camper does that which is expected of them when individual thought is sidelined and groupthink becomes the overriding force.
Perhaps it’s easy to see how, when groupthink is pervasive, "consensus is manufactured through manipulation of emotion, and the fastest way to achieve that collectively is through widespread fear."
- - -
“Oh, that person got a twenty-five-dollar gift card to Outback Steakhouse,” she replied. “Even if you didn’t get it the first week of camp, you still had another week or two to get your conversions up. Quantifiable fruit for Jesus, you know?”
. . .
For Caroline, the mindset of white evangelical capitalism demands proof: donors, in particular, need to see their dollars at work.
- - -
Is this what I realized when I finally left, when I no longer found a home in the cozy conformity of the ministry world and of that place called camp? The farther I got from that place and those people, and into beliefs that resonated with the God I never really stopped wondering about, the more I unearthed a truer version of me and, dare I say, a truer version of God. For me, leaving white evangelicalism behind didn’t mean renouncing religion altogether: instead, it meant falling more in love with the God who loved me first — because this God made the feasting table wider than ever before.
- - -

[Alicia Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love/hate this one. Having grown up as a biracial, poor evangelical who attended Young Life and half a dozen various church camps, doing Work Crew at a YL camp, leading worship, being a YL leader and youth pastor, went to an evangelical undergrad, then later deconstructed and no longer identify as evangelical, and now trying (and struggling? failing?) to raise a teenager and a tween who love camp, I was super interested in this.

I thought it was okay. I thought the format was really creative -- I liked the seven chapters for the seven nights of camp -- but I thought a lot of the conclusions she drew were based more on preconceived notions and her experiences. I know it's a newer research field, but I think this would be a different book in 10 years with more research, both her own and others', to draw from. it felt too opiniony-trying-to-be-passed-off-as-scientific.

Still a lot of really good stuff, and being roughly the same age with similar experiences (I even Facebook stalked a few people she mentioned in her book and we have several people overlapping in our social circles), I could relate to a lot of it.

Favorite quotes:
"In white evangelical church camp settings, exclusion doesn’t make sense— not of my brothers and sisters of color, not of the LGBTQ + community, and not of women. Making kids feel like shit in order to understand God’s love for them doesn’t make sense either, and neither do values of manipulation and capitalism; violent and bloody depictions of the cross; magical, saving prayers; and golden tickets to a faraway place called heaven."

"It’s not, then, that white evangelicals even have to identify as white (or even as evangelical, for that matter) but that the conversations that characterize this particular group of people and the belief system that follows largely center, benefit, and advance those who are white. In this way, white evangelicalism becomes a matter of inclusion and exclusion; it becomes a structural story of space and tradition, of those who play a role in the greater conversation and those who do not."

"When Jackson really began to study the person of Jesus, he saw that Jesus wasn’t trying to get people to convert to another religion: he was just trying to get them to change their minds, to repent, to look for a better way to live."

“So when it comes to the whole Father- Son narrative, it left out anyone who felt like leftovers, whose fathers didn’t want them, or whose personal experience didn’t fit into this story."

In all of these places, I am, as Madeleine L’Engle once said, “still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be.”

"In a way, the word 'complementary' can sound rather innocuous, as if a woman is to a man what a tablespoon of peanut butter on one slice of bread is to a tablespoon of jelly on another slice of bread. Far from equal measures of beloved lunchtime sandwiches, the roles and responsibilities within a complementarian system are often hierarchical and connected to power dynamics."

"Young men were taught their minds were evil, whereas young women came to believe their bodies were evil— which is to say, men’s thoughts and actions are said to be either pure or impure, while women themselves are said to be either pure or impure."

"I believe in a Jesus who does no harm."

"Learning to belong is lifetime work.”

"Not only do they grow up believing God’s love is conditional and remain prone to guilt- induced, works- based models of faith, but they believe themselves worthless sacks of garbage."

“Jesus loves me but his dad thinks I’m a piece of shit."

“God so loved the world that he gave his son. The trouble with the popular version I have described is that it can easily be heard as saying instead, that God so hated the world, that he killed his only son. Far from an image of God as a loving Father or even a generous Creator, God becomes an angry despot, a jilted lover betrayed seventy- seven times over by the sins of humanity. Even if we try to throw love into the equation, it does not sound like God did what he did because of ‘love.’ It’s just that it doesn’t look like that or sound like that to anyone trying to make sense of what’s just been said, least of all a twelve- year- old camper sitting in the studio audience."

"Because they believe Christianity an all- encompassing identity and a race in and of itself, when some evangelicals say they don’t see color, they really mean it. They just see whiteness. No color but the dominant one.”

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’ve ever experienced anything like it, church camp, or a camp which is named something else so that we don’t directly associate it with the church but is still totally church camp, a lot of strong feelings will be triggered.

Hopefully a lot of those memories are fond and great. Maybe some of them, unfortunately, are not as great.

In Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, & How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation (galley received as part of early review program), Cara Meredith, someone who used to be quite active in the White Evangelical church camp world, reflects on her experiences and how she has come to re-consider much of what it was and what was going on.

That subheading is going to trigger you one way or another. It’s ultimately accurate, but I will say the author is much more conflicted within the text than the subheading might suggest.

The author cleverly frames her work in terms of the White Evangelical camp experience she, at the time, thoroughly enjoyed, and continued to perpetuate in young adulthood. One is led through the manufactured emotional highs and lows which attend to a White Evangelical church camp, all with a view to get as many campers as possible to “make a decision for Christ” as a way to justify the endeavor and the effort. In the process, the author interrogates the history and reasons which have led to the church camp experience as it is currently constituted. She appropriately contextualizes it within greater White Evangelicalism, and how camps embody and reflect its particular emphases, anxieties, and concerns.

She reflects on what the experience might have been like for people who were not like her: those who were not white; those whose identities, for whatever reasons, did not conform to the expected standards. She also considered what the impetus was for the creation of the church camp experience, and why it seems to work quite well for predominantly White Christian communities, and less so for others.

And, of course, a lot of (well deserved) critique is offered for the kinds of emotional manipulation and the impetus to make it all about a numbers game of conversions/ “commitments for Christ.”

In all of this, the author never approaches or discusses the deeply unfortunate issue of sexual assault and abuse in church camp contexts; that adds another lamentable dimension to what goes on in some of these contexts, exemplifying a lot of the same trends about the nature of White Evangelical church culture.

From this work I gained appreciation for the non-church church camps with which I have had some association for not making it so much about conversion as much as to provide opportunities for young Christians to come together and share in association for a week. But her many thoughts on camp as the “best week of the year,” and how that might be true of many, but it is not for all, remain haunting. Camp should not, and does not have to, serve as a betrayal of any generation; but we do well to consider many of the witnesses in this work and others to gain insight as to how to truly provide a fully welcoming environment at camp for young people to get to know one another and jointly participate in glorifying and honoring the Lord Jesus Christ.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you grew up in Christian church culture, than you probably went to church camp, whether it was an overnight or a couple weeks long. Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation by Cara Meredith explores how church camp influenced the world of campers and staff. As a longtime camp speaker, Meredith began her journey as a camper and then worked her way up the chain of staff. This book is her way of acknowledging the layers of complicated emotions that former campers and camp staff feel about the time they spent involved with camp.

Christian summer camps, to some of us, were days and nights full of roasted marshmallows, instant best friends, campfire stories, and prank battles. We felt like we could be our most authentic, awkward selves with other awkward kids trying to figure out their lives. To others though, these camps were toxic and dysfunctional, dealing with rough emotions. The camps that catered to white Evangelical campers perpetuated a toxic image of God, of themselves, and of other campers and staff. Statements about purity, nights of emotional manipulation, a lack of diversity, and being forced to make a commitment to a religion at an incredibly young age permeated these camps. Staffers were instructed to sell versions of Jesus to impressionable campers, who would hopefully then convert and commit to Christ and therefore the white Evangelical subculture and church. Nothing was off-limits manipulation wise. In order to secure more funding and power, these church camps needed to have high conversion rates and convince more and more campers to give themselves to Christ.

Granted these are the opinions of author Cara Meredith and the fifty plus people she interviewed for this book, plus the hundreds, if not thousands, of other people that she has met through her camp journey. If you attended a church camp, you will probably get more out of this book than those who haven't. The people Meredith interviewed mentioned their own powerful stories of camp, plus highlighted important questions of who God is and what it means to be a human in general. She doesn't hesitate to call out to campers, to ask them to think about their pasts at camp, and to work towards a better, more inclusive religion. Meredith wants to hold those in charge accountable, but also recognizes that the journey to a more inclusive faith won't be possible through one book, through one author's story, but she's hopeful that sharing her story will open someone's eyes. It sure opened mine.

[Hallelujah Brews Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Church Camp by Cara Meredith
5⭐️/5⭐️

You spent a week every summer there, climbing a spiritual mountain with the dearest of friends and experiencing the beauty and wonder of God in the forest...

For many, it's filled with treasured memories, laughing with cabinmates late into the night, seeking God, and promising to follow Jesus forever. But, for others, it is a place of deep hurts, wounds, questions, and doubt. This place is church camp! And now, especially for those of us who come from white American evangelicalism, it's time to deconstruct church camp.

In this book, Cara gudies us through a typical week at camp. Although I didn't attend a Young Life church camp, I did find my experiences from Old Faithful Christian Ranch mirrored in this book. I had to examine my experiences from camp, and see them in a new light. I had to confront difficult theological questions, and dissect how so much of my faith came from a very specific recipe of salvation that is baked from the ingredients of straight, wealthy, and white evangelicalism.

After reading this book, I'm left honoring the moments of camp where I saw the goodness of God which laid a foundation for a life of faith and following Jesus. But, I also must reconcile these beautiful experiences with the fact that church camp is manufactured and formulaic...its a business, an echo chamber of white conformity and penal substitutionary atonement, and transactional.

If you attended church camp even one summer of your youth, I recommend this book. It might not be easy on your heart. But at the end of this book, I think you will come away healed from wounds you may not have known you had from a week at church camp.

Thank you Broadleaf Books for the digital copy to read and review.

#bookstagram #christianbookstagram #christianbookreview #nonfiction #churchcamp #deconstructing #thenewevangelicals #exvangelical #bookreview

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this wasn't nearly as provocative as the title and reviews are trying to make it seem.

In a time where there is major reckoning going on with white evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and rising Christofascism in the United States, revealing that the worship style of evangelical summer camps is emotionally manipulative is not enough for a book this length.

Nods are given to other issues of inequality, like racism, sexism, and income inequality, but not enough of it really lands. The quotes and insights from other theologians feel inexpertly applied, and the main thrust of the book seems to be that the author feels like camp isn't the promised place of belonging and love it held itself up as. It feels like a foregone conclusion, especially in a culture where people are finally demanding answers from historically unaccountable institutions.

I would have loved to see a deep dive into the other issues this book skates on the surface of, namely financial disparity and homophobia. The author relays anecdotes centring great excesses of money (camp staff ziplining through dining halls to throw food around in lieu of fireworks due to a fire ban), but doesn't stop to examine them. The queer interviewees name times of rejection and mistreatment, but Meredith focuses on how much it hurts to hear these stories about camp.

Ultimately this book tries to be too many things. It can't decide if it wants to be a heartfelt memoir of one women's reckoning with her faith and past at camp, a hard-hitting deconstruction of misguided faith practices, or a hard-hitting exposé of American summer camps and their white evangelical roots and theology.

It ends up being none of them, and suffering for it, when it could have been so much more.

[Siv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to the author for an early ARC.

I can't wait for more people to read this book so we can discuss it. As a former Camper, Church Youth Director who led, chaperoned, & served as a counselor at many, many camps, & a Parent who sent my own children to camp, this book challenges & enlightens. My camp experience was all fun & games, or if I'm honest, at least mostly fun & games. We put a high value on camp for sure, & only occasionally did something bump me out of the moment & give me pause to question the experience itself.

Meredith goes for it. With love & respect, she asks meaningful questions & offers both research & stories of those who did & didn't feel welcomed at camp. Structured on the 7-day camp speaker paradigm, where each night's campfire message had a prescribed theme, she relates the stories she shared to lead campers through emotional highs & lows on the journey toward the goal response: conversion.

To many who identify as Christian, "conversion" sounds like a good goal. But conversion to who/what? Can one still belong if they don't believe, or if they've been manipulated to believe, or if belief itself leaves out essential parts of their identity?

Come along to Church Camp & bring an open mind. We're gonna sing songs & eat s'mores & maybe throw a pine cone in the fire, & we're definitely going to ask some questions & consider new ways of being & doing church & church camp.

[Aoife · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summer Camps are definitely in full swing, but, they’re on a whole other level in America. In this book we explore the billion dollar industry of week long sleepaway Christian camps. The author immerses us in the seven day emotional journey of repentance, tears, breakthroughs and the all important conversions.

Cara comes to terms with scripts she recited, the plays she re-enacted and the pleas she made for the “Gods” above so they can reach their convertible conversions. She saw her LGBTQIA+ friends asked not to return once they came out of the closet and how others struggle in the mainstream world in a world without camps.

Cara no longer works in summer camps or a practicing Evangelist, but that in no way undermines this book, as in parts I was confused on her current perspective or stance of the camps and or her faith.
I really found this an interesting read and was concerned initially it would either feature a sexual scandal or fall under the extreme military style disciplinary camps we’ve come to know, but thankfully neither applied. My rating may seem a bit unfair but I guess I felt the book was only getting started and there was much more to be explored in terms of the industry, the matters of race, sexuality and who is really running these camps, but that may need a whole other book to tackle!

Thanks again to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for this copy.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC. I was eager to read Church Camp because I am also a "survivor" of 6 summers at church camp. I broke with the Baptist church at the age of 16 after seeing abuse and hypocrisy at the hands of church leaders and members. Cara Meredith's exploration of several church camps across several denominations leads to the uncovering of the business model and the psychological model used at the camps to ensure that a majority of campers are brought to Jesus. That is how the success is measured and, in turn, the church and the camps become financially successful through more funding. My experience in the Independent Baptist church and summer camps had be committing my life to Jesus at the age of SIX. When I think back to the pressure and scare tactics that would cause a six year old to commit her life to anything, I am appalled and I'm appalled that these abuse and pressures continue throughout the religious "industry." The manipulation of young mnds should concern any parent who wishes for his or her child to live a mentally healthy life as an adult The fact that Ms. Meredith was able to keep her faith in God and not lose it completely like I did in my teens is a miracle in itself.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Church Camp by Cara Meredith is a book that could be used to garner deeper discussions as to the how and why of evangelical church camps and their impact on the faith of campers and leaders alike.
I flew through this book and resonated with it for various reasons.
Cara organizes her thoughts around each daily camp theme and its intended goal. The end seemed to be a little stream of consciousness but the general theme is understood.
I really appreciated Cara's ability to process things without throwing the baby out with the bathwater and how she can still hold valuable something she has great issues with (ie; inclusion, emotional manipulation, monetary gain etc.) I wish the book had explored other types of church camping but that is not the purpose of the book. It is really a framework for the author to share her faith journey.
If you are a parent of a past camper or went/ worked at church camp yourself, if nothing else you will resonate with the memories reading this book will evoke, positive or negative.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this in exchange for my honest thoughts.