Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by heykellyjensen
Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation by Cara Meredith
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.