[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, you're really welcome back to the Prejudice podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Eric Swizinski.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a former fundamentalist who exposes the dark side of the church from the pulpits to the pews.
[SPEAKER_01]: If this setting hasn't given it away and the title hasn't given it away and the thumbnail hasn't given it away, this episode is going to be about camp, particularly church camp, something that played a formative role in so many of our lives growing up in evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's also the subject of Cara Meredith's new book titled Church Camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bad Skids, Cry Knight, and how White Evangelicalism betrayed a generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to just read this one section of her book.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's on page fifty seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I want to read this is because I think it sums up so much of what the deconstruction journey has been.
[SPEAKER_01]: for me, and I'm sure to relate to so many of you as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anything in the next two paragraphs I'm going to read, stand out to you, head to the link in the show in the description, grab a copy of Kara's book, and start reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if Camp was in a huge part of your life growing up, even if it's something where you had a generally positive experience,
[SPEAKER_01]: The way she talks about camp is really a just microcosm of evangelicalism in general, and so it's really well worth reading.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what she said on Patriot VII that I just highlighted and highlighted in highlighted.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, forty years later, the life of faith doesn't feel as easy as it used to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: The name of Jesus now layered within a journey of belief and disbelief, of running away from God and being pulled toward God in synchronous moments along the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose the Jesus of my church can't days is still there.
[SPEAKER_01]: His compassionate love, the one my inner compass points toward, is fierce justice the guy that I try to follow.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Jesus is no longer the tool I use to prove an equation correct, where the name I use to draw divided boundary lines between who's in and who's out.
[SPEAKER_01]: No longer is he the one whose name I employ for positions of place within an inner circle, or for decisions of who remains on the outside of understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: This Jesus comes not with warnings or caveats of the longing, for he is no longer the one in whose name harm is done, for whom exclusion becomes the role.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe in a Jesus who does no harm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually opened this episode with a passage of the book that I think stands out to me as kind of like why I would recommend the book like what is the thing that like I think this book is about and so I read page fifty seven and fifty eight which I won't reread back to you and my audience has already heard it and just a page before that you talk about how automatic Jesus' name is to your personhood and you know I think regardless of where people are now
[SPEAKER_01]: I know for me, there's such a intertwined nature of the faith that was reason for the time I was literally born to go like, what is my actual default operating system without any programming on it?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I actually feel about these things?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like this book to me was very much an examination of kind of like a microcosm of that whole system in the course of a seven day period of camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really interesting to me in that regard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll be honest, going into it, I was like, camp was one of the things for me that I have really fond memories of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, for me, camp is something that was like a highlight of my year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I still looking back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I identify a lot of things you talk around the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I look at things that traumatized me growing up, camp never climbs into the list for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was almost hesitant to pick up the book and go like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, don't I want to start feeling bad about something that I feel pretty good about, you know, so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: But looking at us in examination of like a microcosm of Christianity and like all of it compressed in the seven days was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you say first and foremost, just to kind of set the baseline?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was your goal in terms of like the readership of this book?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when you were picturing like who's gonna pick this up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you picturing someone like me that goes like it seemed fine to me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there was something that was not gonna about it or were you looking for the people that were like campus horrible?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the darkest periods or somewhere in between.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what was your kind of target audience you had in your mind as you were writing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a great question because I did have both of those were audiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm trying, I mean, even as you're asking or as you ask the question, I find myself going, which one was it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's where, and you probably sent this as well, but the both hand, there's a theme of both hand and or a paradox that runs throughout the book, or at least I think some people pick up on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: In that way, it was equal parts.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also had an incredible experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that that's part of why I was in the camp world for so long was because I loved it because it was so life-giving because it wasn't negative and
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on the receiving end of privilege for the most part, minus being a woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on receiving end of privilege.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think there's an audience of those who have deconstructed their faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a huge fan of the word deconstruction, even though I realized that this book could probably land in the deconstruction tone of books.
[SPEAKER_02]: because it's about my own spiritual evolution or deconstruction.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's for those people, which is probably also to say those who would identify within more progressive versions of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is for those who have experienced harm.
[SPEAKER_02]: at camp, particularly people of color, the LGBTQ community women.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it wasn't written just toward either of those audiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm realized I don't have a completely clear question or answer, which is also probably why the publisher was like, well, is anyone going to pick this up?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's about like you identified and you set it perfectly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about this microcosm of
[SPEAKER_02]: or white evangelicalism, but I think we can examine the microcosm and not can help us understand the whole picture.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's also that third audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really was like, it was so interesting picking it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't remember, I think it was maybe your public system reshutton pitched it or I forgot how it even initially came on the radar.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was just one of those ones where I was like, is there something I have to even talk about relating to this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it something that I want to open the door to?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the pretty immediately going through it, I was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's clearly just like everything about growing up in evangelicalism condensed to seven days.
[SPEAKER_01]: You even kind of structure your book in that format of like what are the seven days.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the next level of that is like I realized reading it like the reason that can't didn't seem that crazy to me is that I would have already done the conversion part in my day to day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like
[SPEAKER_01]: we just had fun stuff added to like the typical things that we're already hearing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that stuff didn't stand out to me as much attending camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: For somebody who's listening to this who's wondering like what's your approach this you mentioned you were working at camp for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long did you work at these camps and how many
[SPEAKER_01]: different camps, should you work out?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it the same camp where you spread out like how much of an experience in this world did you have?
[SPEAKER_01]: And spoiler alert a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for some of you, what was kind of your circles that you were in in the camp world?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I oftentimes say I went to camp for the first time at the camper.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not a staff person, but at the camper in nineteen eighty eight as a nine year old.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can do the math and figure out how old I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I just stayed for another thirty years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was never on full-time staff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like year-round staff at a camp.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was always either a seasonal staff worker or a seasonal staff employee, which is how the American Camping Association would classify it or call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I was a contract employee.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a camp speaker.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was a camper.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, for probably the first seven years of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was nineteen ninety six.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the first time I was a staff person.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was a volunteer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I worked in the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a lifeguard.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a ropes course instructor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a camp counselor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on program staff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in charge of leaders.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I graduated from college, I became a teacher.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a high school English teacher for a handful of years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I needed to keep paying rent during the summer, so I became a camp speaker.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was how I've filled my summers.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was still in the evangelical world, but I was very much in more of a progressive side of the evangelical world that allowed women to speak.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started speaking at camps and really that was what I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, now I have to think about the math, but the last time I ever spoke at a youth camp was twenty fourteen and then a family camp was twenty eighteen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was in that environment and and as far as the number of camps, it initially started out just at either
[SPEAKER_02]: young life camps or at there was one covenant camp that I worked out for a handful of summers.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once I started speaking, that's where I began speaking at a number of different camps and a number of different denominations or organizations.
[SPEAKER_02]: And literally speaking to thousands of children every summer and every year.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really unique experience because you're getting to see so many different
[SPEAKER_01]: facilities and organizations and how they operate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you'd share to review from crocheting today, kind of creating your book and talking about how you've done a certain amount of interviews.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you interviewed fifty for your book.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you talk about different experiences, but they're argument really leaned heavily on, well, this is account for all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You haven't been to all of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you've been to a large swath of camps from a variety of stripes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some that you've mentioned were far more progressive, some that were far more conservative.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you say were consistent positives that you saw across these camps where you go like, this is what I think is beautiful about church camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what were the consistent maybe negative threats you saw represented pretty equally around the camps that you visited over your career?
[SPEAKER_02]: The CT article to me was just, I mean, it was just kind of silly.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think that it's in all honesty, it's kind of backfired and it's gotten a lot of attention on the book, which is not what they were intending.
[SPEAKER_02]: But part of why I did all of those interviews was because I knew that my experience was largely centralized on the West Coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were there were some camps that were a little more in the Midwest, but it was largely on the West Coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I then sought to find interviewees and interview folks across the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I interviewed a lot of people in the South and in the Northeast and also in the Midwest and also on the West Coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I wanted to get interviewees.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to get interviews from people across denominational spectrums who had all experienced camp.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, so that's where we we see within this book, there's a representation of kind of costals and SP steers and non-denomination.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, do I put in non-denominationalers?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not really a word, but it kind of sounds like what I should do right here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But across this, the theological spectrum within or of evangelicalism,
[SPEAKER_02]: So as far as the positives, because that was actually one of my initial questions I asked everyone, I said, what are some of your fondest memories of camp?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is their one experience?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we would go down this list of fifteen questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as far as positive experiences or memories, I would say probably the top three
[SPEAKER_02]: would be nature, so people being out in nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: What people who loved camp enough, who had enough experience at camp in this world, they so often they came alive in nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nature was a place that, I mean, in camps like camp is a nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those, I think, who perhaps find a home in the Christian tradition would say that camp is a place where God and nature meet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And whether or not you want to believe that, it's a place that is so elevated.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the second thing, it was just fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Campus fun, it's can't be, it's silly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, it's just no holds back some weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's part of why I thrived in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Third, and I guess I could keep going down, but third, it was oftentimes a place of foundational friendships and relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so many people spoke to the fact that the friendships and the relationships that they established in those environments
[SPEAKER_02]: As twenty year old as twenty five year olds, whatever it was or even as campers, those those friendships would stay with them oftentimes stayed with them for the rest of their lives because there was something that happened in that condensed unique window of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: As far as some of the negatives, I was I was very strategic about who I interviewed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I only wanted to interview people who
[SPEAKER_02]: had been a part of white evangelical camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: And white evangelical camps, as you know, from reading the book, but also just in general, it's not like you can go to a website.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they'll be waving a banner across the top or an announcement bar that says, we are white evangelical.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's a little bit more about reading between the lives of belief systems and or of who holds the power and or of the denomination at large.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wasn't necessarily interviewing folks who were part of mainline accounts or who were part of non-religious camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was specifically interviewing those who had an experience in white evangelical camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would say, I mean, first, the thing that was universal was that there was always if they remembered the talk for question or the theological progression that happened, it was universal to what to what and how I built this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it then oftentimes accumulated in
[SPEAKER_02]: something of a cry night or decision night, something that was about kids getting right with God.
[SPEAKER_02]: But oftentimes, it was to the detriment, it involved really harmful theology.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't necessarily that way across the board, but it was for a good majority of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So so that's where so many people they they'd be like it was this really bad theology.
[SPEAKER_02]: They made me feel like shit about myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to test on your podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you're you're a hundred percent free to cost and if you weren't, it's too late.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go ahead, keep it going.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually wrote down the first thing on my notes is a quote from your book where you said, making kids feel like shit in order to understand God's love doesn't make sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's later the first note.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so let it rip because that was something it stood out to me, certainly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, I think for a lot of the people, they, if they remembered the theological progression, there was oftentimes, there was this memory of just feeling really bad about themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: We, I, I title it, dirty, rotten little sinners, but really, it's a matter of, it was oftentimes a matter of making kids feel like shit about themselves in order to understand that God loves them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, which I think you and I could obviously rift on for quite a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for some people, they went to very rustic camps, so they didn't necessarily experience highly programmatic or glitzi camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there were, there were some experiences there that were depending on which, which of the two situations were either really positive or really, really negative.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say that's where, that's where a lot of, that's, that's where both the harm and the good took place.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was kind of universal across the board.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was just stuff that was kind of fun reading and there's like this nostalgia that happens when you're reading it where you're like, oh, I remember going to camp and I was thinking through like, because we can't in Southern California in like the desert, which was, that was like where I did the majority of my camping.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was very western themed.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're walking kind of like, you know, bandana and you know, drinking very cold soda and getting dehydrated, you know, walking around and then, you know, and then going to Michigan to camp and enjoying like, something I felt so,
[SPEAKER_01]: foreign to me as a California in like getting in the the woods and enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then going to Northern California, which is like this kind of wooded mountain setting as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's it is all those great memories flood back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you remember these progressions of like feeling immense amounts of of shame or guilt about things, you know, you mentioned in your book like feeling shame for sex that you weren't even having at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had earlier like some day I could be this bad and I will feel bad then, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess let's talk about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned before the call, I kind of pulled three categories that I picked up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about patriarchy in the book, which you can't talk about something that is a microcosm of conservative Christianity without that coming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about purity culture, which really comes front and center, I think, in the camp setting, I know in the ones I went to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you talked about pressure decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're kind of already in the realm of the pressure decisions, because that is
[SPEAKER_01]: The overarching goal of these seven days at many camps is to get campers to make a decision with that in mind before we get into that system.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were in the camp world for so long, you've been around so many camps.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there was this sinister rubbing your hands together going, how do I manipulate these kids into doing this?
[SPEAKER_01]: but also their kind of is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, for people that are questioning the motivations of camp workers, like, how would you describe that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what was your mentality going into the camp setting?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the average camp employee, I think for the ones who really buy into this, maybe that's where I want to start.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is where, and I write in the book, again, and this is a camp, it's a microcosm of white evangelicalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where, within this mentality, the most loving thing you can do is communicate that you can communicate that God loves you, you can communicate this message of hell, because you want to spend the rest of your life, you want to spend heaven.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to spend the rest of your life if you believe in this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to spend eternity with these people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where the most loving thing that you can do is present this message that hopefully gets them to say yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then, which I, again, I go into this in the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: which I think is part of it's part of the mindset.
[SPEAKER_02]: So in that way, when it came to resenting the message, especially when I, I mean, when I was a camp speaker, and this is what I was doing and saying year after year, week after week, there was this end goal of
[SPEAKER_02]: of conversion.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, which is the whole, I argue in the book, that's the whole point of most camps.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the point is conversion, even if a camp says no, we're not about converting, we're about discipleship.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reality is that in the end, the way these, the way camps, which are privately owned and operated entities, either within denominations or without the way they make money,
[SPEAKER_02]: is by is oftentimes through private donors.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so within that they have to be able to prove to their private donors and or whoever is supporting them that they are doing what they have set out to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's where at the end of the summer you are going to have camps that are presenting a message of, oh yeah, X number of kids, a hundred and nine kids came to know Jesus for the first time this summer.
[SPEAKER_02]: or rededicated their lives, a couple of SBC camps or SBCers that I interviewed, they also included missionary numbers and or campers who decided to go into full-time ministry.
[SPEAKER_02]: So oftentimes, there's a need for quantifiable evidence that what they are doing in these environments is actually working.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where you take a step back and that's where the decision night happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when I was in it, did I think it was sinister?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the most loving thing I thought I could do was help bring people to Jesus to help convert them, essentially.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if I would not use, I would not have used that language.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have said, no, I'm ushering them into relationship with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, or something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, like, this is the best thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, why wouldn't I want them to know where to hear the good news?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you and I both came from this world.
[SPEAKER_02]: We could probably both, like, you know, it's not religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I sometimes wrestle with, you know, I feel like it's a constant rubber band between cynicism and like, also remembering that like,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my motivations a lot of times were not negative, you know, or like, or there were positive benefits.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, you waffle between being apologetic for the environment you grew up in, but also on the flip side being very critical.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, it's a weird bouncing act because I do look at so many people and I look at myself and I go,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you really did want kids who were dealing with really tough stuff to have a place that felt safe, to get away from, get away from their home, get away from their school and go to this place to connect with God and get in nature and do all these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would argue there's still benefit to all of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the flip side, I think what you address is that, like, like, I think, almost anybody, like, I'm not religious now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would still say, like, going and meaning God in nature is a really cool thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, and I don't even know what that really means for me at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a cool thing, and I still enjoy doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think when we talk about, like, conversion, specifically in relation to white evangelical camps,
[SPEAKER_01]: You hit on page twenty that conversion into white evangelicalism means buying into what Kristen Demes says is the myth of rugged individualism, family values, traditional gender roles and a response to the cultural uprising linked in communism, one's liberation and the civil rights movement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the key part here is that you add is even if this understanding is never stated from the front of the room or isn't realized for another twenty years, if ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So not only are you accepting like a relationship with God, you're accepting many times a pathway into ministry in a certain denomination with a certain college, getting married to a certain type of person, working at a certain type of church, like
[SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden, this escape from all the systems, this reconnects with nature becomes a funnel into a much more rigid system and a much more rigid process that isn't unique.
[SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't have the individualistic kind of thing that like you almost go to camp to like discover yourself and then they kind of go like, no, we're actually going to tear you down and rebuild you into X, Y, and Z. And I think that's like the part that goes like, oh, that feels a little bit off.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels a little bit wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these cry nights, you know, I know that they exist.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that this was a pattern in VBS and camp and revival services where you're so mentally emotionally, physically exhausted that like, okay, that one last sermon on hell and how bad you are for doing X, Y, and Z is the perfect introduction to, okay, now go home and start living this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's fascinating to me also that it is accepted rhetoric.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, it's accepted, but it's also expected, accepted and expected rhetoric.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think about, I talk about this in the end, the very last chapter, the main chapter, chapter seven, is about the harm particularly torquey people of color.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the, one of the young men that I interviewed, he had experienced both in the evangelical world, and then later in the, within the Episcopal tradition.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for him, he identifies as black, he identifies as bisexual.
[SPEAKER_02]: For him, the invitation into evangelicalism really was an invitation into conformity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was an invitation into conformity at the expense of his Amazon racial identity.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also of a myriad of other identities and parts of who he was.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as he began to grow in accepting who he was as a black man, he began to see how the norms of whiteness had been part of what he was expected to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was expected to give up his blackness to the detriment of whiteness.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I bring that up also just because that's part of what's happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you have these nights that are again universal across the board.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the articles I've been writing and toying with right now is, well, what is the role of ritual?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the role of ritual, particularly for young people?
[SPEAKER_02]: When oftentimes they need it, they need something to mark their experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think for camps, and perhaps also like you said for VBS, because VBS and camps a lot of times, they're just, they're, they're regurgitating the same message.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at what point do we go too far?
[SPEAKER_02]: I have two kids, I have a ten and a twelve-year-old, if they were sitting right here, they would say they are almost eleven and thirteen.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my twelve-year-old, especially, he has been coming into his humor this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he's super funny, but I also know when he's being funny and when he's not and so there is this conversation that we repeatedly have when we're driving to school or going to the gym or whatever and it's and I he'll try and he'll be trying out his jokes and I'll just be like all right, can't and you just cross the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: You cross the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you were right here, you're, you know, all of the sudden you just went a little too far.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you cross the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what point are we also doing that with camps that we're saying, yes, there is something magical that happens when humans get out in nature, whether or not we call that God who also is in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But at what point do the tactics toward conversion toward that end result, whatever it is, at what point do we cross the line?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's a lot of what I examine and what I'm critical toward and a lot of what those who are still in the system, you know, who still identify as evangelical or setting here going, no, there's not anything wrong with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's validity.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think on all sides of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's, there's, and it is like, it's such a thing to, you have to check yourself as a content creator, you know, if you want to use a word, it's always like, blah, content creator.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good job, Eric.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hotcaster, content creator author is like, you certainly have a perspective on this, but it's also you have to check yourself where you're going.
[SPEAKER_01]: were they making the most of their day or was this sleep deprivation to you know was it where they you know were they pushing you to get out nature or were they you know isolated you from outside information you know like you can start going down this very like like conspiracy theory approach to it and I think you do a good job kind of balancing like okay here's what we were trying to do here's what I wouldn't have thought it was at the time but I recognize was problematic now you know but there's
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all these layers to it that are like so interesting to unpack when it comes to the the pressure decisions specifically like we mentioned obviously like the salvation conversion is like the number one, but there's also layers and layers of other things that just
[SPEAKER_01]: feel very random and that can be getting rid of music which a lot of these things can be identity things to getting rid of music getting rid of movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been the variety of things you've heard people like felt shame over or gave up on a cry night.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you're the first person to ever ask me that question.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it had to do with behavior.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean I remember after one so personally I remember after one summer camp
[SPEAKER_02]: Just being like, I got to get rid of my secular CDs and just like being so sad about having to give up TLC don't go chase in waterfalls.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, it's just such good music.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was like, double demo.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, so that was that's not a behavior, but
[SPEAKER_02]: I I've ever talking to a couple of men who like as a result of camp like they formed these anti like masturbation groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they were like we're given up that which we need to not do because we need to not sin and we need to keep our sisters in crest, you know, like keep it keep it positive.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was literally like they didn't call it the anti masturbation group, but it was like this, you know, we're setting our eye on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were so many queer identifying folks that as a result of camp, I mean, in this one is not as funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think the previous one is kind of funny, but there were so many LGBTQ identifying folks that that camp and their experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: even if it was never said from the front of the stage, they knew the expectation.
[SPEAKER_02]: They knew the understanding around what was accepted and unaccepted behavior.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they gave up, you know, their sexual or their gender identities.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they repressed their sexuality as a result of cue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you're talking about the previous humorous kind of version of this, we just finished watching through One Tree Hill.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I had the, because I interviewed, that's the new joy lens on the show a while back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they had a whole season where like the kids started this group in school called The Clean Teens.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I was like, this feels way too close to home.
[SPEAKER_01]: This random show having this, this whole layout is like, this feels very familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clean teens.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call this emergency meeting because there is an imposter among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of you has soiled the clean team name, and I think we all know who that person is.
[SPEAKER_01]: fun reference for one tree health viewers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the conforming of identity, and I think that goes perfectly into the other P in my list, purity culture, for everyone listening, former baptist, I literally did the list of three takeaways.
[SPEAKER_01]: But gender and sexuality is a huge, like both unspoken and spoken thing, at least not all the camps I attended.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, you're getting a bunch of
[SPEAKER_01]: generally teenagers at a campground where you're going to be thinking about sex because you're a teenager on a campground with a bunch of people of the opposite sex.
[SPEAKER_01]: But almost every camp, I don't know if this is true for you, every camp that I went to was day one rule number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: girls are paying boys are blue don't make purple that was like the number one first rule that they told us many people broke that rule at camp but beyond that you know as like I think a lot of times it was unspoken but I know in the camps that I went to some it's on the case but
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, anything outside of heterodormative relationships was not okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: To the point where it was kind of a given, I think at most of the camps that I was attending, like, you wouldn't even be coming with your church if you thought that was even an option.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on top of that, there was a lot set about heterosexual relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, don't be this.
[SPEAKER_01]: only focus on girls but also do not focus on girls or do not focus on guys if you're if you're a girl in the camp in this way in this way and I would say the number one sermon topic was always you know not kissing free at Mary don't hold hands very at Mary don't do this like this long list of things researching all of these camps like what rolled to purity culture play and why do you think that that was like
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, purity culture and I would say sexuality in general because we can talk about kind of the LGBTQ audience in that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think that was such a big focus at some of these camps?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it almost feels like it was neck and neck with like the gospel.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like don't have sex before you get married and also don't go to hell and like those things are pretty neck and neck for your attention this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why do you think that is?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different answers to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say, though, for so far starters, the purity culture movement, so the purity movement itself started in the mid-nindies and Linda K. Klein, her book, is just phenomenal.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's, you know, about this whole thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But all of the sudden, that which birth, that which birth in the greater
[SPEAKER_02]: evangelical ethosphere found a home in camps like it just it naturally came into being part of it the way I one of the chapters that I lay out that really goes into a patriarchy but then into purity culture if you're already preaching a message that is largely patriarchal that centers on God the Father on Jesus as the Son but really
[SPEAKER_02]: entirely on male language and male understanding of who God is, and that becomes the picture of God, then that naturally also progresses into who God most prefers.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just further elevates patriarchy, which then just breeds room and ground per purity culture.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if that's really providing an answer, but it just
[SPEAKER_02]: It just found a home there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the, I mean, anecdotally, I really wanted making purple to be in the subtitle.
[SPEAKER_02]: We kept going back and forth though.
[SPEAKER_02]: So bad skits cry night and how white evangelicalism betrayed a generation.
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted a little bit of the both hand of both humor and, you know, and the serious.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was between either bad skits or making purple and the publisher felt like more people would understand bad skits than they would.
[SPEAKER_02]: The nuance of making purple.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when it comes to this, you have purity culture.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that it just, it naturally finds a home because of the language and the viewpoint of what evangelicals believe, about who God is and how values of purity culture fit into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think camp is interesting because you have like a broad group of kids, like give the super sheltered kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got the kids who, you know, are being sent to like, you know, made to conform back into whatever the system is, like that are like the trouble maker kid that gets sent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a broad swath of people and, you know, tea-loving socks about this in her book, like you're getting a lot of language and verbiage that for a sheltered kid is kind of shocking.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, we're talking about this stuff and really,
[SPEAKER_01]: wild ways and I think like this is the piece that I kind of want to circle around is like you're hearing rhetoric for the first time about things that you're hearing about for the first time when you've also been told like do not think about this stuff do not focus on this like tailiving socks in our book like we weren't allowed to go to blockbuster
[SPEAKER_01]: but my youth age was talking about orgies and you know all of these things that were like very extreme do you think it's just because camp is so heightened and extreme in every way that like they felt comfortable giving more extreme examples or pushing to be more like outspoken about certain topics why do you think there was that like heightened level of like we're gonna dig deep in these issues with these like
[SPEAKER_01]: twelve to seventeen year olds in a camp setting who otherwise don't talk about these don't have sex education don't talk about these topics whatsoever like what do you think the reason was for that heightened kind of focus on this topic i think part of it it was what camps deemed kids or campers most wanted to hear you know i said interesting that's an interesting statement i mean it's a lot done yeah i
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, and that's where I, again, you're doing, some of the questions you're asking Eric, I'm, you're asking for the first time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I can't necessarily repeat what I've said on the previous thirty podcasts, which is a very, very good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But not great at podcasts, thirty one where you're like, it would be nice to repeat a couple of those and that happened to make a new one, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I appreciate you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is a great conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, I mean, I think about, and again, I was on staff at camps a long time ago, but we would, you know, we would, we would make jokes about it, but we would say, all right, well, six drones in rock and roll.
[SPEAKER_02]: And really, we were quoting our parents generation, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's I think that there was both there was this understanding of well, this is what is this is what kids are really dealing with.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think just even the sex drugs rock and roll like the reality of what children were were really dealing with.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you had just this understanding that well, yeah, they really were dealing with maybe you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They really were dealing with sex.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were dealing with the pressure of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we wanted to address it head on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of it, though, when it comes to purity culture, again, I think that there's this natural filtering that happens where you have the patriarchy, and then you have this filter into
[SPEAKER_02]: really complementarianism, the role of men and women.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you have male headship and female submission, then you have the expectations that have to be broken down even more from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bradley Onishi, author of Preparing for War, Straight White American Jesus podcast host, he would say that it's funneling toward an expectation or a norm of what they want
[SPEAKER_02]: children to become within Christian nationalism, like within the values there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know I guess I'm still circling a bit and figuring out the answer with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's keep figuring it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is one of the things that you mentioned that it just stood out to me and like, yeah, I think we could spend forever on is you said it's what the kids wanted to hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that is a really interesting piece of the puzzle where, you know, I would say like on the extreme side of this in the stories that I'm covering a lot of times when I'm talking about grooming.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know the conversation with leadership is like they talk about things that you're not really supposed to talk about and they do it in a way they can't point to and say like that's inappropriate because they are talking about it in like the the youth pastor that tells you they like a band that maybe the church wouldn't necessarily endorse or
[SPEAKER_01]: where they talk about sex in a really raw and unfiltered way or they talk to you like one of the adults like that's like the far extreme and I'm not absolutely not accusing every single leader who talks about these things of that but on the flip side though in a camp setting there is an element here of like
[SPEAKER_01]: the forbidden fruit also being the draw to pay attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, like, always talking about a very violent car crash that someone had.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're talking about this, you know, we had a wild illustration about like this guy that goes to a party and is doing all these things and they're descriptive about it in a way that is very sensational and very, I would say like, exploitative of the story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it has like this like shame element at the end with like a call to action.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is really interesting, like I think about those campuses where like we were so locked in because they're talking about like all of these really exciting and forbidden topics.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's interesting with it with the whole idea of seven weeks like how quickly can we get the guard down that like they lean into those stories that maybe they're not hearing in their home church or they're not hearing from their parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and I think, I mean, so first of all, going back to what you just said at the very beginning, I would say that it's what we thought kids wanted to hear.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't necessarily, I mean, so I think also putting that clarifier there too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how much did we understand what they really, you know, what they really wanted versus how much did we, you know, did we just think?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think there was, you have within this environment, and this is where I think it's, so again, I look at it, and I look at it, and I oftentimes use the language of conversion that again, as we've already talked about, the whole point was conversion, but it's also conformity into this particular way of life or belief system.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so even if that is never actually what is said, I think that's also where the grooming piece comes into play, where conversations of abuse come into play, which I know is something you examine and look at quite a bit here too.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so all of these together, how are they all, how are they all together?
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if staff people, for example, don't realize that they're doing it, that they're just doing what's always been done, or they're just following the rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just doing what they're being told to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: all of it is taking away personal choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: As much as that is a value within white evangelicalism, it's taking away personal choice to the point of conformity and conformity to these particular values.
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah and even going back to like what you said about like informing them about what they should want to hear about versus like versus going what is the need of this camper what is the need of the like it's it's generalizing and you know well again they know how to play up the interest like
[SPEAKER_01]: guys in youth group love gross games you know so it's like eat this weird thing you know that's gonna go over well like but when it comes to like what are the struggles of each generation it is very much like you should be concerned about sex drugs rock and roll the same way that I was when I was at camp and my parents were at camp their parents were at camp
[SPEAKER_01]: prior.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we're near the end here, but I do want to touch on this last piece and I think that there is, you know, I work backward through my list of things, but I think ending here on patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think it's relevant because so much what we talked about from the way that the decisions are pressured to be made to the way that certainly women are impacted in the purity culture settings of camp like
[SPEAKER_01]: There is so much of that that stems from having a lack of female perspective in leadership in ministries, whether we're talking camp, church, schools, you name it.
[SPEAKER_01]: When there is only, you know, guys leading, like you're missing
[SPEAKER_01]: the perspective of fifty percent of the population in your decisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: What role did you see patriarchy play in the way that camps are structured and how do you think it could be different if more women were in leadership positions within camps like this?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to read a sentence.
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, I think, and I've said this, but it starts first, the language that we use about God and how that centers.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if God is only defined as male and or by male pronouns and understood entirely as a man, then it favors a particular subset of human population.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have a sentence, page forty two, at church camp, we made it easier from men to succeed than women.
[SPEAKER_02]: A man wasn't questioned about whether or not he could speak a camp.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wasn't told there were certain roles for which he lacked qualifications.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead, his penis single-handedly qualified him for anything he wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: but try to hand a woman a microphone in her qualifications, her desire and her entire identity will be questioned.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not only because this goes against the norm of who an audience expects to see, but also because it defies expectations of who a woman is expected to be at camp.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I realized I just said one sentence in that I read three, but what would it look like to defy patriarchal values, which is to say the patriarchy and put more women in charge?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think there would be not only would there be within this context a much different understanding of God and our spirituality, but we would be honoring the personhood of humanity.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will be under honoring the experiences of men and women.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is something that the church has done a lousy job at.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of those that still, I had so many, I've had so many women over the last couple of months who were in that world who are still in the white evangelical world who
[SPEAKER_02]: are still experiencing that which I experienced twenty-five years ago as a first-time woman camp speaker who are going there are still people who come up to me and who say, I've never heard, I've never heard a woman, I've never seen a woman speak her in the front.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what is this saying about who we value and about the message messages that we value and that we receive?
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe it starts with the people on stage but it also could start with who's in charge behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean,
[SPEAKER_02]: the camps staff are still predominantly, um, we camps are still predominantly run by men.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and by white men at that, perhaps to no surprise.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And how much does it say that your experience twenty years ago, or my experience, you know, and now ten-ish years ago, is still so relevant, you know, because I, that's the other thing too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, as I sit down to write something or sit down to records my go,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm out of touch, like, hasn't been too long, and then I start reading people's stories from now, and I'm like, it's the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you start reading at Crystal Dumas book, and you're like, oh, it's been the same for, like, a century, you know, like, there's plenty to talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is so funny, and this is like the cool thing between the synergy of someone reading and someone writing.
[SPEAKER_01]: In my notes page forty two men at camp had it doggard to mention on the podcast so I'm so glad you mentioned that section this idea that you know the only qualification you need is to be a guy and and I'll just kind of add this and I know we're here at the end but but one of one of the things that's really changed in my mind over the last year is like you know I've been doing the show for five years and I've talked about like
[SPEAKER_01]: like it's not good when one type of person always has the microphone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I always talk about, you know, whether whenever I'm a guest on podcasts, like I always say some variation of like it's time to pass the mic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like these types of dudes have had the mic forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give them mic to people that have never had it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like let's give it to victims of abuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give it to women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give it to minorities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like let's pass on the platform to people who have a perspective that has not been heard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, even as someone saying that, you know, for me it was always the most elementary understanding of like, well, if women are being disproportionately abused in the church, they should probably share their experience instead of us just guessing about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's layers beyond that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was talking to Hillary McBride on the show a couple of months ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't think people realize how rich the perspective of other people is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think sometimes we have this binary like, well, they'll just understand the girl side of this or they'll just understand the guy side of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even the way that information's interpreted is so different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like, I think that's the thing that we can fall into.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, we almost can have the pride and I'll speak for the guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can almost have the pride to like think we know what
[SPEAKER_01]: women would say if they were in the position like we almost think we can put on like our female thinking cap and go well they're probably going to notice these issues and address them and some of that's true and important but like talking to Hillary McBride she she called out something I said on the podcast that I said you know I was talking about healing and I was talking about this progression of time and she's like you have a very masculine view of time
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like, you're looking at things and going, I'll do this and then I'll do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'll do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: She said a female perspective of time is cycles.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's circling back through these things and re-examining them with new information.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just hearing that, I was like, wow, like that's a perspective that if I sat down with a bunch of other guys and we worked at this for years, we would make no progress.
[SPEAKER_01]: But bringing in that one piece of insight from someone who's, I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: All gender aside is way smarter and intelligent than most people I've ever talked to.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also has this perspective that isn't formed through gender that isn't formed through experience that goes like, no you're not even like looking at the right problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're not even solving for the right thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that is so valuable and I think like
[SPEAKER_01]: reading your book it's like so obvious like from the purity culture side from the decisions from the way that women are treated in camps from the ways that you know emotions are dealt with with men in these camp like having that other perspective could be a game changer and it's it's so frustrating that
[SPEAKER_01]: twenty thirty forty fifty sixty however many years you want to say have passed since this has started.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you're still not getting the impact of this voices that are so valuable.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not a question but it's just something that that is just something I think about more and more is like we don't even know what we're missing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we've never seen it in action like what would that look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and I think to that, I would say that it's not only getting the perspective, but it's believing the perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's trusting the perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things, not yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things I thought was so interesting about just going back to that CT article, there was a huge, one of the stinks she made was that I didn't back up the experiences of people who shared their experiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in particular, when it came to the stories of LGBTQ identifying folks, she said, well, you said they experienced harm, but you didn't actually follow up with those camps to see if it was true.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you effing kidding me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we get to believe the stories of those who have experienced harm.
[SPEAKER_02]: We get to believe the stories of women who have been subjected to purity culture and felt the effects of that twenty thirty forty years later.
[SPEAKER_02]: We get to we get to believe the stories of people of color who were made to
[SPEAKER_02]: who were made to deny their ethnicity, their culture, and their race, all to conform to values of lightness.
[SPEAKER_02]: We get to believe the stories of those whose experiences are different from our own and to trust those stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yes, those stories, those experiences, whatever we want to say, of course, that should be elevated.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is how we become more human in our understanding of one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: in white evangelicals historically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a former evangelical, I can say this with confidence is that the number one way that we have historically defended the impact of our actions is by hiding behind our intent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it has always been.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't tend to hurt somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't intend to be racist.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't intend to be misogynistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't intend to suppress somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't intend to victim shame, but you can't neglect the fact that like
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a deeply negative impact on somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, the only way you're going to know that is by hearing the stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is, I'm coming at it from a place of privilege to go, like, camp was pretty cool to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed camp.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a perfect example is not to segue too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, my best friend growing up came out as gay, like, having two, three years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had kind of just life separated us, and then we kind of reconnected and shared, showed that with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I immediately went, oh my god, like I immediately went back through our childhood and just thought, what did I like I immediately went to me and went like, oh man did I ever make jokes with him while he was feeling like did I ever
[SPEAKER_01]: in that environment, say things that like harmed that relation, like, and just beyond that, like his experience and interaction with camp, with church, with school was drastically different to mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not that mine was bad and I didn't realize it, although there was some of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it was good for me because I kind of fit them old.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was really bad for people it wasn't built for and so like it's just again circling back over that stuff and getting that added voices like you know what maybe they totally intended this to be a very great get away and reconnect with got a nature but what did it actually do and the kids who are seeing they're going
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt so much shame that was disproportionate to what I was actually doing in my life as a kid who never drank and never partied and never did any of the things they were even talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how did that actually land for people?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, to stop me from talking more and more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think that's, that's what this is to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's literally like, how do you reexamine the impact, the effect?
[SPEAKER_01]: And also not have to just go like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt good about things and now I feel bad about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what was the good?
[SPEAKER_01]: What can be reclaimed from this that's positive?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's the stuff that just wasn't necessary that caused a lot of unnecessary harm?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we move forward from that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we do better?
[SPEAKER_02]: A couple weeks ago, I had, well, probably a month ago, this guy reached out to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was, he was the last camp director of the last youth camp I spoke at.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he had read the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, he had gotten in touch through another friend.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and so long story short, we line up lunch together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, he drives up to my house.
[SPEAKER_02]: I live in Oakland, California.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the San Francisco Bay area.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he drives up to my house.
[SPEAKER_02]: I make him lunge for sitting in the backyard.
[SPEAKER_02]: The birds are there and the bees are floating around in my little urban event of an oasis of a backyard.
[SPEAKER_02]: We sit down in the first question he asked.
[SPEAKER_02]: He pulled, well, he pulls out his phone and he literally has this note that he just starts crawling.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I, like, and you're nervous.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I already wrote the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: I already came out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You already purchased it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but he just said,
[SPEAKER_02]: Did I contribute to harm?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, well, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started to give an answer to my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of going, well, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I think that's for you to unpack.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, he said, it's really hard for me to realize that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he is a white man.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a privileged white man.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he is a privileged white man with an incredible heart.
[SPEAKER_02]: who feels called to camping ministries.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he is no longer at that place that he was at that I've preached at or spoke at.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, what he said, he, I didn't say a whole lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just mostly ate my curry and you finally goes, I think I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's just hard to wrap my mind around.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was our conversation for the next two hours as he went through all these bullet points.
[SPEAKER_02]: throughout the book, but it was also him grappling with it, but it was then him thinking about, okay, now I'm going to new camp.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so how can I do the better?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's such a big piece.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have so much empathy because it is rare for people to even ask the question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I contribute to harm?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's a big scary question asked.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have so much empathy for people who were well-intentioned who go, did I waste twenty years of my life doing this wrong?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or did I?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there is, but I don't think it's that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's literally, yeah, you did a lot of really good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the things that weren't.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do differently now that you're where you're at?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of the process is like, but asking that question is so is so huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's honestly really cool that to verbalize that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think go like, did I get you a harm?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like asking that is such a cool, a cool big step.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate you giving so much time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we're a little over and I know you are at the tail end of a massive leg of a book tour for this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much for taking my questions and for taking the time to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any final words for someone who's going
[SPEAKER_01]: is church camp for me, the book, not the location.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the book church camp for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your like, twenty-second or thirty-second elevator pitch for them to go grab the book?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think church camp is for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope readers regardless of whether they even ever went to church camp, regardless of whether they had a good or bad experience at church camp if they went.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I hope that like you, they will discover and perhaps learn
[SPEAKER_02]: something about this microcosm of white evangelicalism that I think we can very much look and see who is in charge of the decisions that are being made in our current administration and the connections to white evangelicals and we will probably connect the dots a little bit more as a result.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much again for doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope it's not the last time we talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to have you back on some time and dive deeper into some of these individual topics, but I really appreciate your work and for this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, thanks so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are officially a friend of friends for us now, Eric.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can't buddies.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm going to send you Michael W Smith's song in the mail and then we're in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to chatting again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.