This is not the typical book I would choose to read. But as a former church camp kid, I was intrigued. The author took me right back to the days of shaving cream fights and bunk beds in cabins. As someone who has left the church i appreciated the reflection of the author. Looking back on the summers now I do see them in a different light and found this book to be very in line with how I feel.

For years, church camp defined huge parts of Meredith's life. First she was a camper, then a counselor, and then, as an adult, a speaker—she'd be hired to spend a week giving nightly talks to the latest crop of (mostly white, mostly evangelical) campers, spinning a progressive story that reminded them how pathetic and how loved they were, and with any luck by the end of the week there would be a new list of converts to report back to the higher-ups. But eventually, Meredith moved away from evangelical Christianity—and eventually, she started to question the things she'd always believed. Eventually, she started to question church camp.

"Church camp was such a *win* to me: I thrived in the camp environment, and camp, in turn, saw to my flourishing. But I was also exactly who white evangelicalism sought to promote: white and straight, I fit the mold. Outgoing and extroverted, I fought for my place as a woman, which camp rewarded me for when I proved I could *do* as the men had always done. But this was not the case for everyone. (loc. 874*)

Now: I should note that I never went to church camp. I am fascinated by religion, and particularly by certain iterations of it, but I was raised merrily heathen. My sister went to a YMCA sleepaway camp once, when she was about eight; she came away saying "JOY! Jesus first, others second, yourself last!" and so that was the end of my parents sending any of us to camp.** My point here is that I am not really the intended audience here: I read because I'm curious, but this book is really written for adults who were once church camp kids—maybe one summer, or maybe year after year after year, but readers who can hear Meredith's stories and conjure up visceral memories.

This book is structured around a week at camp and around the talks Meredith once gave. It's not about a specific camp—there are hundreds, and that's before you even get to the Vacation Bible School day camps—but about the messaging taught in these camps, or at least many of them. Jesus as superhero and God as benevolent father who happens to think you're pretty worthless. Cry night and purity standards. I struggled some with the structure—it took me a while to figure out why, but it's that Meredith doesn't tell her stories directly; she tells the reader how she *might* have told a story on any given night at any given camp. She might have told this story, she probably added that detail, campers probably reacted this way. It adds a level of distance to the writing; as a lover of memoir, I thrive on details and specifics, and I'd have found a walk through a specific summer at camp, specific campers, specific memories a bit more engaging.

I did value the research that Meredith weaves throughout, though, including the interviews with other once-upon-a-church-camp-kid folks. I'd have liked to know a bit more about Meredith's disillusionment with evangelical Christianity (before or after she had her kids and had to think about how the world, and how church camp, would treat them?) and a little more about how her views changed through the writing of the book, because at times my impression was that a lot of her understanding came about only through the interviews she conducted with people who were not straight and white.

But again: this isn't really a book written for me. If, like me, you're just too curious for your own good, this is one for your "maybe" pile or your "rainy day" pile. If church camp was once your jam, in any of its iterations, you'll probably see some of your experience reflected here, and it's much more likely to be a book for you.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

**I asked my sister about this, and she doesn't remember JOY, but she did say that she was scandalized by saying grace before meals...and also that camp was a good experience, 10/10. So I guess the YMCA did its job, and my parents did theirs.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf for the eARC!
I really enjoyed this book. I think Meredith has a way with words and exploring ideas that I've had swirling around in my brain but been unable to pin down for myself.
While I don't have a TON of camp experience, I was a camp counselor for a number of my high school years, and I went to a couple of YoungLife camps when I was helping out with a youth ministry.
This introduction felt like coming home - I could tell she knew what she was talking about - that she at one point held camp as a sacred place, but that she understood that there are things we didn't know then but that we know NOW that change the way we look at things.
There were a couple of places where I wish she had gone into more detail about what was bothering her or what changed her mind, but I think she asked a lot of really good questions.
Would highly recommend for any deconstructing (or deconstructed) Christians, or any Christians who wonder if the God we learn about at camp is really a good being, or if, perhaps, there might be a better way.
Maybe you can tell I'm still trying to digest this book, but I really, really got a lot out of it.

I appreciate that this book lends a nuanced perspective on Christian camps. It is not demonizing the practice right out the gate. That said, I find this book to be pretty unfocused. It lost me several times, as chapters seemingly bounce from one thesis to another. It reads more like an undergraduate's project rather than a formally published book. That said, I do think there is value in the perspective and story told.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

A necessary book on a multifaceted topic. Thought provoking reflections and suggestions.

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

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.

This book was not what I expected, but I still really enjoyed it! I was expecting more memoir-style stories, but this book had a ton of research and information from multiple sources. It was a dense read, with lots of info to think about! As a former “church camp kid”, this challenged me, in a good way!

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.

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.