Letters to the Editor
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Kids just want to have fu-un
Camp is supposed to be fun. Many camps provide just plain fun. My brother and I went to a great place in Colorado. We rode horses, climbed mountains, and learned to run chain saws.
Please find a fun camp for your kids. Plenty of options out there. Jesus hates religious camps. Suffer the little children to have fun. Go into debt to send your kids someplace fun, and stick out your tongues at the manipulative fundamentalist grandparents. Free yourself from their financial manipulation.
Fun will set you and your kids free.
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I went to a Baptist summer camp, no harm done
I went to a Baptist (Northern!) summer camp for three years in late elementary/early jr high school. I recall turning into a Bible-thumper for about two weeks afterwards every time, but that faded, much to the relief of my agnostic-ex-Catholic parents. Truthfully, I only went because that's where my friends went to camp. When I went into jr high, I made new friends, and that was the end of that. Actually, *then* I went to a Quaker summer camp, which was populated almost exclusively by tie-dye-wearing, sneaking-off-into-the-woods-
to-smoke-weed-and-have-sex hippie kids. Deprogramming, of a sort. THAT was a fun camp (although I wasn't smoking any weed or having any sex).
I wouldn't worry overmuch about a week out of the year, especially if as you say your own parents are sensible enough to respect your wishes regarding the tone and tenor of the camp. Bible camp *is* manipulative, but only for one week. The other 51 weeks they live in your world, with your philosophy, and your teachings
Trust that you raised your kids well. Let them go to camp, and spend time with their family who clearly love them and are good to them in their way. Soon enough they'll be too cool for summer camp anyway.
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They need to be innoculated!
We supposedly "enlightened" members of the progressive wing of America (whatever that even means) all too often dismiss any sort of organized religion and then wonder why our children become raging fundamentalists (sometimes).
In all fairness, progressive churches tend to offer such a milquetoast melange of pseudo-spiritual pablum (I say this as a Unitarian Universalist - we are terribly guilty of this) that many humanists tend to avoid church altogether, since church might as well not be.
But how humanity craves that sense of being part of something bigger, something not completely explained! If you leave out some sort of faith community in a child's life, you can rest assured they'll find one later.
So for a start, take an eight-year old to a Pentecostal tent revival, complete with writhing and speaking in tongues. Keep them there until they are crying and want to go home. my father did this with me - called it "inoculation." It worked beautifully.
And then find a progressive church with some semblance of religion beyond regurgitating all other churches' "faith traditions" (read: shamelessly aping other faiths) and make it work for your family. That's worked pretty well for me.
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Better yet...
Send them to a Jewish summer camp. Grant them a wide variety of life experiences to take with them as they grown into well-rounded adults.
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Lead by example
I was raised in buckle of the Bible Belt. Fortunately, I had liberal, secularist parents who respected my free will. They never went to church, but when I would ask them to take me they always did (this always coincided with some Christian child or adult telling me I was going to hell for not going to church), although they rarely made it a family affair. The irony of this, is that the parents of those same kids that told me I was going to hell would never show their children the same respect that my parents showed me. If their children decided they wanted to try out the agnostic or atheist lifestyle and not go to church, I seriously doubt their parents would react kindly to their request to not go to church.
The Right is always alleging that there is some kind of gay/atheist/secular agenda. What better way to prove them wrong then to lead by example and show that we aren't afraid to expose our children to beliefs other than our own. We don't need to really on their horrid tactics of indoctrination. By refusing to allow your children to attend a camp that they want to attend because you're afraid that they'll be exposed to views contrary to your own, how are you any better that the Christian Right that you're so afraid of?
P.S. I'm still agnostic, much to the chagrin of my VERY Southern Baptist grandmother.
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Trust your kids
A session of summer bible camp isn't going to turn them into miniature Jerry Falwells. (My kids have endured numerous vacation bible schools and are still perfect little heathens.)
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A slightly different way of looking at it..
Godwin be damned.
If I were Jewish (which I'm not) I would have a hard time letting my kids go to the Hitlerjugend camp for a week or two. And I suspect that almost all of the commentariat here would agree with me in that particular case.
The people running the camp think you (atheists) are THE ENEMY. Do not allow yourself to forget this.
Your children are unlikely to be permanently harmed by the experience.. But why take the chance?
You might want to ask the relatives wanting to provide this little outing for your kids if they would send their own kids to an explicitly atheist camp for an equal length of time. The answer should prove most illuminating.
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Here's what you can say to your kids
Kids... Do you want to go to that stinky, weedy little lake, where they won't even let you swim on Sundays? The place where they try to convince you to say grace over your birthday cake?...
Or...
Would you like to try the place where you get to parachute into the ocean, and ride flying horses, and sing pirate songs while you sail past volcanoes, and then camp in the jungle?
Other camps besides fundamentalist camps!
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oops
We don't need to rely...
I should have proofread better.
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Don't believe the hype...
Sorry, but I'm not inclined to trust the grandparents' "assurances of non-indoctrination" on this. Sneaking conversion in under cover of "good works" is a typical fundie move. Try a test--would the grandparents pay for your kids going to a camp that's equally fun, but not a hard-core religious one? If not, they don't have your kids' best interests at heart,(though they most assuredly believe leading your children to their version of God is in the kids' best interest,) and this is an end-run around their "failure" with you to convert your kids.