It was the summer of 2010. I was at camp, because I was always at camp.
Camp was my everything, the place that most felt like home. The place where I clearly saw God. The place that eventually birthed my own deconstruction process.
Of course, I didn’t know I was in the middle of what some call a spiritual deconstruction - I just thought my square-peggedness was normal, something everyone went through at some point (especially when donning shaving cream hairstyles well into their thirties was considered culturally normal).
I began to ask questions, a whole lot of questions:
Why do we assume old models still work? Why does my job hang on getting kids to sign up (and have to pay for) a really expensive camp? How can we claim to be inclusive while still putting barriers around who’s in and who’s out, particularly when it comes to the LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities? Why are we proclaiming a one-sided atonement theory, a single answer to the story of Jesus? What does it mean to proclaim a many-sided theology of the Kingdom of God, one that lies outside the bounds of the white church?
Perhaps like you, I was filled with why’s and how’s and what’s, oftentimes with too many questions for those on the other side of my asking.
For me, so many of these questions landed back in a place that formed me: church camp. I was brought back to Camp Arrah Wanna as a child and Malibu Club as an adult; Mission Springs as a college-aged staffer and camp speaker, and many, many more Young Life camps over the nearly twenty years I served as a staff person and volunteer in the organization.
Camp was one of the most formative places in my spiritual journey. And camp, as previously mentioned, was also where it all came crashing down.
For the last six months, I’ve been piecing together the stories of my past, particularly when as it relates to church camp. I’ve interviewed nearly two dozen people, and have another couple dozen I yearn to interview. I’ve read books, I’ve penned chapters, I’ve filled my wall with dozens of notes and ideas and quotes about the intersection of the white evangelical church and its many entanglements.
I’ve been changed by the stories, including a story of a couple of friends who were featured in a Buzzfeed article last week.1
In the article, a gay couple pays a $720 deposit to attend a camp reunion at one of Young Life’s properties in British Columbia. A month later, chaos ensues: their deposit was refunded and a volunteer from the reunion’s planning committee called to say that “representatives at Young Life’s headquarters in Colorado decided he and his spouse could not attend because of the group’s policies against same-sex couples.” The reunion was later canceled altogether, but that didn’t stop a backlash of support for the couple and other queer-identifying folks who have been rejected when they come out.
This, of course, is a many-layered story.
It’s a story of conservative theology. It’s a story of continued power dynamics present in white evangelicalism. It’s a story of belonging and identity and finding oneself, just as it’s a story of exclusion and hate and being kicked to the curb.
For me, although I cannot (and will not even begin to) stake claim to knowing and understanding what it means to have the deepest, truest part of your identity rejected due to your sexual identity or orientation, it’s also a story of a place that means something, of a place that changed you, of a place that formed you, even if in that forming you don’t quite seem to fit in anymore.
It’s a story of church camp, which is to say, it’s a story of the both/and.
Sometimes, it’s even a story of the God who is more-than present in that place.
It’s a story of laughter and of speaking truth; of tears and of naming what’s broken; of wondering if there’s another, different, better way forward in those holy places that changed us.
For now, I am honored to hold the stories and the questions. I am honored to lend a critical eye, ask the hard questions, and lean into the wisdom of those who have gone before me.2
Might it be the same for you?
Please, go back. Click on the article and read it if you haven’t already.
If you have a story about church camp that you think I need to hear, please reach out to me. Comments are for paid subscribers only, so hey! Become a subscriber! Or, find another way to connect with me. It won’t be too hard.