Church Camp

""This evocative book is an elegy over white evangelical church camp culture from one who was once among the leaders of this multibillion-dollar industry. Church Camp deconstructs the theology and culture of this industry, making it a significant contribution to the comprehensive reconsideration of white evangelicalism currently taking place. Highly recommended!"" --David P. Gushee, author of The Moral Teaching of Jesus ""Church Camp peels back the nostalgia and shines light on both the fruit and the flaws of an evangelical rite of passage. Through personal experience and detailed research, Cara Meredith points toward faith formation that refuses shame, squashes fear, and embraces hope in the mystery. This book is for every camper who fought to belong or started asking better questions. It is for anyone who wants to sit in the warmth of God's unconditional goodness."" --Shannan Martin, author of Start with Hello and The Ministry of Ordinary Places ""I spent many childhood summers in the colorful, complicated world Cara Meredith describes so deftly in this thoughtful and searingly honest book. I remember the gooey s'mores, the starlit hikes, the cheesy skits--and the powerful, quietly insidious culture of white evangelicalism that undergirded the whole experience, especially for those of us who attended church camp as children of color. Meredith doesn't shy away from this insidiousness; she exposes and dismantles it. She describes a religious subculture bent on priming and converting children to the cultural norms, beliefs, and assumptions of white American evangelicalism. Most importantly, she shares her own journey of an evolving and nuanced spirituality--one that allows her to remember church camp as a sacred place that formed her in so many beautiful ways, even as she also grieves over the God it misrepresented, the culture it perpetuated, and the children it harmed. This is a searching and necessary book--a testimony to the power of telling hard, healing truths about the places we have loved."" --Debie Thomas, author of A Faith of Many Rooms and Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories ""If I could trade attending church fifty-two times a year and attending church camp for one week per year, I'm pretty sure I'd pick camp. That's how powerful camp experience was in my spiritual and human upbringing. But it would not be the kind of camp I grew up with. It would be the kind of camp Cara Meredith points to in her book Church Camp. This book tells the truth about what's wrong with conventional Christian camps while celebrating the undiscovered promise camping holds for those who dare to seize it."" --Brian D. McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian? and Faith After Doubt ""It's rare to find a book that's capable of holding the tension of the both/and when it comes to the sacred, but Cara Meredith has accomplished just that in her newest release, Church Camp. As a former church camp kid, I experienced a flood of memories upon reading, during which I found myself both laughing and nodding in agreement. This book will not only help you reminisce about the past; it will spur you to dream about what the future could be."" --Jonathan Merritt, award-winning columnist and author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch