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33 reviews for:
Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation
Cara Meredith
3.72 AVERAGE
33 reviews for:
Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation
Cara Meredith
3.72 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I was really excited to read this book. I grew up in white evangelicalism, albeit in the UK rather than the US. White evangelical culture has its differences here, but many aspects have been somewhat exported from the US to the UK, and ‘church camp’ culture is definitely one of those aspects.
Reading this book as someone who experienced a lot of the culture described here was deeply validating. I’ve been in a ‘deconstructing’ period with my faith for over a decade now, and I’ve read many works and memoirs on experiences with white evangelicalism in that time. I will say that this is probably one of the books I’ve read that has most validated the extremely weird and complicated feelings that come with growing up in a faith and then later coming to realise the harm that the toxic theology you’ve been exposed to and perpetuated has caused to yourself and other people. It’s extremely hard to explain or convey how you can be almost nostalgic for places that were actively harmful for you, because they were also somehow places where at one point you felt deep joy and belonging. I felt this book and the author really well explained and validated that feeling, and it was an emotional read.
I also want to say this book is extremely well referenced and researched, and I found some great new resources and reading material in the footnotes. If you’re expecting purely a ‘memoir’ this is not what this is book is, but the deeply researched and well thought out explorations of why white evangelical church camp culture is the way it is (and also what we could do instead!) are very important.
I do think this book is a little ‘niche’, in the sense that I think someone who hasn’t experienced white evangelicalism would be quite lost reading this. Having said that- for those of us who did experience and grow up in that culture, especially those of us who have trauma associated with it, this will be an important, emotional and validating read.
Thank you very much to Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for the ARC!
reflective
sad
fast-paced
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 much of message. Will it be read as eagerly by someone who does not resonate with its message? Unless that reader is open to seeing another point of view, I think it will just create great ire.
Cara organizes her thoughts into each day of camp 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. 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.
I flew through this book and resonated with much of message. Will it be read as eagerly by someone who does not resonate with its message? Unless that reader is open to seeing another point of view, I think it will just create great ire.
Cara organizes her thoughts into each day of camp 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. 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.
Meredith ends this book talking about how it's not about her deconstruction of faith, and she's not wrong. This isn't a book about how her faith was wrong and how damaging it was to her. It's instead a story of coming to better understand what she actually believes and doesn't, and it's explored through the lens of church camp.
I grew up in the 90s and attended a church camp for years. I loved the camaraderie, even if I didn't always understand why we only sang songs about God or we had to sit through so many counselors telling us about how they finally opened their hearts to Jesus. I ignored it, putting my time and energy into running around playing kickball or looking forward to 90 minutes of swimming and hitting up the canteen. But this book opened my eyes so widely–I indeed went to a white evangelical church camp where the mission wasn't to have kids have a good time away from home. It was to convert young people into the evangelical faith. The stories Meredith shared from her time as a camp speaker mirrored so much of what I remember sitting through.
This book does a good job reckoning with race and the evangelical strain of faith. It's white and the messaging of so many of this belief that "they don't see color" is explained through the fact they only see people in two ways: converted or not. They lay out the idea of choices in life as only one choice, either accepting their faith and beliefs or not. Meredith explained a lot of things I've been thinking about in terms of why such a narrow minded view of faith has become so mainstream and so embedded in American politics, giving language to patterns and observations I hadn't quite gotten my tongue around.
If you've read any of the bevy of recent memoirs about leaving evangelicalism, this will be up your alley. But even if those aren't your usual reads but you remember church camp and/or want a lens into the far-right, extremely strict confines of evangelicalism we're seeing culturally and politically in 2020s America, this short read will give a lot to think about.
I grew up in the 90s and attended a church camp for years. I loved the camaraderie, even if I didn't always understand why we only sang songs about God or we had to sit through so many counselors telling us about how they finally opened their hearts to Jesus. I ignored it, putting my time and energy into running around playing kickball or looking forward to 90 minutes of swimming and hitting up the canteen. But this book opened my eyes so widely–I indeed went to a white evangelical church camp where the mission wasn't to have kids have a good time away from home. It was to convert young people into the evangelical faith. The stories Meredith shared from her time as a camp speaker mirrored so much of what I remember sitting through.
This book does a good job reckoning with race and the evangelical strain of faith. It's white and the messaging of so many of this belief that "they don't see color" is explained through the fact they only see people in two ways: converted or not. They lay out the idea of choices in life as only one choice, either accepting their faith and beliefs or not. Meredith explained a lot of things I've been thinking about in terms of why such a narrow minded view of faith has become so mainstream and so embedded in American politics, giving language to patterns and observations I hadn't quite gotten my tongue around.
If you've read any of the bevy of recent memoirs about leaving evangelicalism, this will be up your alley. But even if those aren't your usual reads but you remember church camp and/or want a lens into the far-right, extremely strict confines of evangelicalism we're seeing culturally and politically in 2020s America, this short read will give a lot to think about.