Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 86 Editor's Choice: 7
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Camps are designed for indoctrination...
[Read the article: Our kids want to go to Christian summer camp]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If this camp is sponsored by protestand evangelicals, more than likely the whole purpose of the camp is to convert and/or indoctrinate as many kids as possible. Please do not subject your kids to that. They may not be able to see through all the high-pressure conversion tactics and stand their ground - especially given the group mentality which is so characteristic of these situations. Besides, if your kids choose to become religious at some point in their lives, it should be because they are able to fully understand the religion and make an informed choice to embrace it. Find out everything you can about the camp and its mission.
I grew up Southern Baptist, and became a healthy, happy, well-adjusted atheist while in my first year of college. By mid-teens I was a doubting Christian, and a good course in logic sealed the deal my first year in college. I also went to Christian camp for a week or two almost every summer between the ages of 12 and 17.
Evangelical Christian youth camps are not all about enjoying the outdoors, playing sports, and making music with the occasional bible verse or chapel service thrown in. These camps are about one thing: indoctrinating young people into that form of Christianity. The camp I went to was overseen by the Baptist Church, but the evangelists they brought in were all about "hellfire and brimstone" and converting as many kids as possible. They didn't try to convert the kids by giving logical or philosophical reasons why they should believe; they tried to literally scare the hell out of us. The first year I went to camp, we played a 'game' in which various groups of people were 'called to judgement'. If you couldn't say all your Bible verses within a few seconds, you were banished to a dark room with horror movie sounds, and adults acting as demons and tormenting you. The idea was to make the kids so completely terrified of hell that they would 'accept Christ as their savior'. I have a crazy-good memory, so I didn't go to hell. But my best friend did. And she cried for hours after it was over. Those kids who went to 'hell' were scared shitless and had nightmares for a while afterwards. Needless to say, when we all got back home and told our parents what had happened, most of them were livid and accused the camp of psychological abuse. But...the church's youth pastor said that he had no problem using scare tactics, so long as he was 'winning souls'. The end justified the means.
The next few years I went to camp, and nothing quite that extreme happened. However, those places are conducive to a degree of mob mentality. Anyone who doesn't totally buy into what's being taught and preached is seen as a target for more concentrated efforts of conversion. I also remember some really bizarre group psychology at work. Sure, there were a few moments in there about respecting your parents, helping poor people, and learning how to be a decent human being. But the primary emphasis was on converting any 'unsaved' person at the camp and then preparing the 'saved' kids to go back home and try to convert others. My last year, I made the mistake of admitting I had some serious doubts, and had to spend an afternoon in prayer meetings with camp officials and my youth pastor. The didn't let me leave the room until I pretended to believe again.
Compared to other people I know who went to fundamentalist camps, my experience was not unusual. That 'heaven or hell' game was a popular conversion tactic in area youth programs until enough parents screamed "psychological abuse!" and threatened to sue. And these baptist camps were mild compared to some of the camps run by other fundamentalist churches. Really scary stuff. Another friend of mine went to her church's youth camp and confessed she had doubts about Christianity. A group of elders spend the next several hours trying to cast a demon out of her. When nothing happened, she went back to her room and called her Aunt to come take her home the next day.
Even if this camp has far kinder and less scary methodologies, do NOT let your children go if the main goal is to proselytize. Young kids may not have the intellectual tools to withstand such concentrated evangelism. And, if they do withstand it, people will not be kind. Also, what are you going to do if those kids convert to Christianity at camp and them come home and freak out because Mom and Dad are going to hell?
I think that you should not place children in a situation in which they could be so vulnerable to manipulation. The people who operate and volunteer at these camps are good-hearted, well-intentioned people, but many of their tactics are simply not good for the mental health of your kids.
Maybe someone else went to church camp for a summer and loved it. Maybe one of you even went to camp and weren't pressured into embracing the faith. But my experience was so awful, that I would urge these parents to stay far, far away.
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can't type today...
[Read the article: Our kids want to go to Christian summer camp]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"protestant evengelicals" not "protestand evangelicals"... sorry!