Letters to the Editor
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after reading some other letters
I think the compromise position may be the best one. Send them to another camp. Take out a second mortgage on your house if you have to and send them to a nondenominational camp where they get to have their own ponies. Or, if that's really not an option, compromise with the grandparents and send them to an Episcopalian camp. Episcopalians (I am one, and have been to their camps) are mostly too busy apologizing for having beliefs to force them on anyone else.
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New camp!
I think it's okay to object to this particular camp. It's not just a "Christian" camp. It sounds like the kind of Christian camp that embarrasses other Christians. It's not anti-Christian not to want your children to learn values that go explicitly against yours.
But...your kids are lucky to love camp so much. It means they have years of intense, amazing experiences ahead of them. (I was a camp kid, can you tell?) See if you can swing it financially to send them to another camp.
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What's wrong with Christianity?
Even if the kids are getting "indoctrinated," I'm not sure it's such a problem. The stuff they came back with last time--honor thy mother and father and go to church--doesn't sound so bad. (And I'm a somewhat lapsed Jew, so I'm not just saying this because I'm evangelical myself.) I mean, it would be one thing if they came back saying everyone's going to hell and evolution is wrong and God hates gays, but it doesn't sound like that's what they're saying. It seems like everyone here is relying on the Jesus-camp stereotype, when in reality there are different types and versions of Christianity. My sister, for example, is raising her kids Catholic, but their church isn't at all the way I thought Catholicism was. They don't really talk about hell--or really even about the crucifixion. Their church is all about love and heaven and a nice, friendly Jesus. And it sounds like this is what the camp is. I mean, yeah, they're learning that Jesus loves them, but what's wrong with them thinking that Jesus loves them? They learn that it's good to go church, but what's wrong with going to church? In other words, you don't want to be too open-minded (i.e., don't send your kids to daycare with the local KKK), but this doesn't seem to be teaching your kids anything dangerous.
(Note: I attended one of those fun secular camps. Everyone smoked and sniffed aerosol cans and had sex in the woods. It was a great time, but I'd be wary of sending my kids there.)
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Trust your kids
Absolutely, let your kids go. It's ridiculous, I think, to try to shelter your kids from the crazies out there.
My stepson, who mostly lives with us, has a mother who goes through various Religious Phases. For about four years there, before her current Atheist Phase, she was a hard-core Bible Thumper. My husband and I are sort of Sufi-Buddhist Atheists, not religious, not practicing anything. Anyway, mom wanted the stepson to go to camp and she was paying for it, so we agreed. The first couple times the kid came back hiding a bible under his pillow and reading it at night (but not fessing up to having any sort of religious feeling, as his father was not particularly friendly to Christianity). Finally, she sent him to one of the gay-bashing, Harry-Potter hating types of camps and he came back... professsing atheism and hating fundamentalism. Whatever. He's 14 and will change his mind 20 more times before settling on his own Thing.
If you raise your kids with honest conversations about your beliefs, allow them to explore what they need to explore without putting them (or their grandparents) down, and have some genuine tolerance of others beliefs (no matter how loony), they can find their own way eventually.
Let 'em go, for sure. But sure, also send them to a cool camp in Colorado where they learn to use a chainsaw. Now that's cool.
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from my experience... I turned out fine.
Beautiful response from Cary.
I'd like to share my own experience with Christian summer camps. I'm a highly educated child of highly educated parents, and today I am solid atheist-leaning agnostic. I was raised going to a Methodist church. We were not very churchy at home, religion was not something we talked about in personal terms, we didn't read the Bible together or anything. My granddad gives really, really good, inspiring and moving prayers over Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners - that's really it. What church taught me was not as much about religion as about commitments to others and responsibility to do good in the world.
I went to a Christian summer camp in central KY every summer, sometimes twice in one summer, from third grade through senior year of high school. At age 13 or 14, I got pretty into it; I had a sublime experience, and although I abhorred evangelism and its tactics, I very much believed. Then, a few years later, I snapped out of it - I heard judgmental comments and spurious logic and trite speechesfor what they were. But I kept going to the camp because I had lifelong friends I only saw there, it was fun, I like to sing and be outdoors and sit around campfires and do team-building activities.
I'm fine today - a skeptical, critical thinker, etc. I think your kids probably don't even know what this business about yet, and someday they will, and perhaps be better for the experience of having been "on the other side."
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Where I live...
Our local science museum puts on fabulous science camps all summer long, for all ages. Dinosaur camps. Archaeology camps. Volcano camps. Camps to look at tidepools and seawater under microscopes. Travel camps to places out of state. Astronomy camps. All great stuff, reasonably priced, no second mortgage on the house needed. If you live anywhere near a decent science museum, it's worth some research.
I'm with the "send 'em to another camp" camp. Camp is great. The camping part... making friends, having fun, hiking, being outdoors, singing songs, etc. The judgemental, anti-intellectual part I can give a pass to.