There is a lot to unpack in this...I'm not trying to criticize everything written.

A good question we all need to consider is "What is the gospel?" And by this, I mean, what is the gospel according to the Bible - the full canon of scripture. Then, we need to ask what does that mean for us today? In some of her own wrestling with this question, the author indicts many camp speakers (rightfully) who give a very shallow version of what the gospel is - but then, in her analysis/deconstruction, never fully arrives at an answer to the question - and therefore, is still stuck in deconstruction.

For what it's worth, some of her interviewees acknowledged that she asked very pointed questions to support her conclusions. It doesn't mean the experiences of these people is invalidated or not true, but this is an echo chamber more than an honest discussion - and I think it drifts more anecdotal than an honest assessment of how we have missed the message of the gospel and applied it to our discipleship tactics.

I was attracted to the concept of this book as someone who lived through similar experiences that are described in this text. As such, please note that my review is colored with this bias but also supported with a firsthand understanding of what’s being described.

The author does a good job of providing a basic understanding of some of the elements of Christian religious history in the United States (specifically early evangelical development in the United States). Although, as we move closer to more recent history, the author could be providing more clarity since some of the readers who will pick up this book may not have a deep understanding of Christian religious history in the United States. Because of this, further explanation of the changes that happened instead of merely referring to the fact they occurred would’ve been helpful. For instance, when talking about culture wars (specifically rising from the evangelical communities) that happened in the late 20th century and early 21st century, the author could have explained in slightly more detail or with more specific examples in order to introduce readers unfamiliar with that information into a better understanding of the context in order to help the reader understand the author’s following assumptions and concluded ideas based these moments in time and on the experts she references. This specifically created some confusion as the author attempted to define “white American evangelicalism.” I’m fairly well-versed in academic documents and theory and similarly in American Christian history, and I struggled at times to understand exactly what she was trying to express merely because it could’ve been a bit clearer or with more context. That being said, I find her conclusions very interesting, and I truly appreciate how often she cites and quotes sources to support her argument and her conclusions.
I would say that this text is best suited for people who have a connection with the evangelical church. I would not say it is suited for someone outside of that experience as it would be difficult to relate to.

Church Camp by Cara Meredith
5⭐️/5⭐️

You spent a week every summer there, climbing a spiritual mountain with the dearest of friends and experiencing the beauty and wonder of God in the forest...

For many, it's filled with treasured memories, laughing with cabinmates late into the night, seeking God, and promising to follow Jesus forever. But, for others, it is a place of deep hurts, wounds, questions, and doubt. This place is church camp! And now, especially for those of us who come from white American evangelicalism, it's time to deconstruct church camp.

In this book, Cara gudies us through a typical week at camp. Although I didn't attend a Young Life church camp, I did find my experiences from Old Faithful Christian Ranch mirrored in this book. I had to examine my experiences from camp, and see them in a new light. I had to confront difficult theological questions, and dissect how so much of my faith came from a very specific recipe of salvation that is baked from the ingredients of straight, wealthy, and white evangelicalism.

After reading this book, I'm left honoring the moments of camp where I saw the goodness of God which laid a foundation for a life of faith and following Jesus. But, I also must reconcile these beautiful experiences with the fact that church camp is manufactured and formulaic...its a business, an echo chamber of white conformity and penal substitutionary atonement, and transactional.

If you attended church camp even one summer of your youth, I recommend this book. It might not be easy on your heart. But at the end of this book, I think you will come away healed from wounds you may not have known you had from a week at church camp.

Thank you Broadleaf Books for the digital copy to read and review.

#bookstagram #christianbookstagram #christianbookreview #nonfiction #churchcamp #deconstructing #thenewevangelicals #exvangelical #bookreview

I did not go to church camp. Not even close. But I thought that camp culture is camp culture so I was interested in this book. I enjoyed knowing more about the experience that some of the currently scary folks have had.

As a former church camp attendee, so many stories resonated with me - the campfire songs, cry night, wearing us out with activities during the day so we'd be more emotional and "receptive" at night, etc. While none of the information in the book was surprising, it did help to see that others had the same experience, and religious trauma, that went with it. If I had a dollar for every time I got "saved" or "rededicated my life"...

This book isn't for everyone, but for those of use who attended camps, conferences, and the like, the messages here will hit home.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC!

Cara Meredith’s "Church Camp" presents its titular location as a microcosm of evangelical culture, but—like a week at camp—it simultaneous feels overstuffed and underbaked.

I’m not really sure who "Church Camp" is for—it’s superficially analytical, anecdotally reflective, and apologetically preachy. It’s a problem that plagues many books of its ilk, even if the author proudly suggests that it’s meant to be a little of everything. As a sociological interrogation, it’s too shallow to offer much to readers without camp experience. As a memoir of a changing faith, it’s too familiar for evangelical or exvangelical readers to get much out of it. Finally, as a theological argument, it never reaches more than a tentative link between camp and broader evangelicalism.

Each of the book’s chapters is cleverly modeled after a day at camp, but with all of the competing goals noted above, the reading experience often feels just as exhausting and and sweatily didactic as a skit in the middle of summer. Because it’s hard to believe that a week-long event can be such a formative part of someone’s identity, Meredith’s interviews don’t feel particularly revelatory. When she presents stories of queer campers or staffers being rejected, she treats it as a life-defining shock, eschewing analysis in favor of performative surprise.

This approach also precludes the author’s interrogation of her own complicity in evangelical subculture. Every gesture toward reflection is cut short by an affirmation of liberation theology, antiracism, or queer Christianity, and while these might all be good things, Meredith’s presentation of them often sounds like obligatory self-preservation—"Hey everyone, just so you know, I don’t think of Jesus as a white man. I'm not that kind of Christian," she seems to say.

There’s not a hint of irony when Meredith suggests that her critique of camp culture mirrors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s critiques of America. Similarly, when she suggests that Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” reflects Sontag’s view of summer camps, it feels egregiously inaccurate and embarrassing, the kind of slice-and-dice quote usage one finds in a college freshman’s essay. Having read much of the other writing that Meredith references, from Christena Cleveland’s "God is a Black Woman" to Kristin Kobes du Mez’s "Jesus and John Wayne" to Thich Nhat Thanh’s work, I have to say that this is a recurrent issue—most of the outside voices here are meaningless or misconstrued.

Even so, it feels like there could have been a solid version of the book. Its central premise is resonant—what does one do with spaces that help us as much as they harm us? Unfortunately, it’s a question better addressed in the comfort of one’s own home than in Cara Meredith's "Church Camp."

Skip this one.

Illuminating, depressing, and terrifying. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this one ahead of publication.

I did not experience church camp growing up, so found this to be an eye-opening read! I am sure it is validating for those who went through a similar experience

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC. I was eager to read Church Camp because I am also a "survivor" of 6 summers at church camp. I broke with the Baptist church at the age of 16 after seeing abuse and hypocrisy at the hands of church leaders and members. Cara Meredith's exploration of several church camps across several denominations leads to the uncovering of the business model and the psychological model used at the camps to ensure that a majority of campers are brought to Jesus. That is how the success is measured and, in turn, the church and the camps become financially successful through more funding. My experience in the Independent Baptist church and summer camps had be committing my life to Jesus at the age of SIX. When I think back to the pressure and scare tactics that would cause a six year old to commit her life to anything, I am appalled and I'm appalled that these abuse and pressures continue throughout the religious "industry." The manipulation of young mnds should concern any parent who wishes for his or her child to live a mentally healthy life as an adult The fact that Ms. Meredith was able to keep her faith in God and not lose it completely like I did in my teens is a miracle in itself.

As someone who attended church camp from 4th grade until the year before college, Church Camp was instantly recognizable—the songs, the push of conversions and "witnessing", the...whiteness of it all. My church attended Falls Creek, a notorious Southern Baptist-run camp in Oklahoma. Every year, we would load up the old blue and white church bus with no A/C, drive for hours, and spend 5-6 days living in a large cabin at the top of the mountain. We had the best view of the camp, and while it was all innocent for me, the rumors of sex, sexual abuse and other 'sins' were spoken aloud, not whispered.

Cara Meredith delves deeper into these camps and the negative effects they have had on attendees. The push towards 'purity', the push to convert non-believers, the lack of acceptance of anyone a little bit outside of the norm.

I don't know that this book is for everyone. It does ramble a bit and not have a REAL continuous thread. It does seem that Meredith has an axe to grind and that's totally fine! I do too, but this could have been a longform article and said the same things.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Great read for anyone who has had uncomfortable experiences or vibes from evangelical Christian churches. I was impressed with the structure of the book and also the research that went into it.

This was a struggle for me, because this is a book written to people who have moved from evangelical Christianity to progressive Christianity. I wanted deconstruction, and while this did write a lot about the issues with the way Church camp works, it did still talk in a very Christian way. I realized over halfway through that this was not written for me.

Thank you to Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As a non-Christian person who grew up in a very Christian area, this book was a very interesting peak into the lives of many of my peers growing up. I am very interested in the way that Cara discusses how church camps were used as a tool not just to build community for kids, but also to connect to an individualized view of Christianity. Very interesting!

This book explores a really fascinating topic, but its audience is extremely niche. I was initially interested because I also attended church camp growing up, but even I couldn't relate strongly to a lot of the content since my experiences didn't fully match those of the author and her interviewees. I enjoyed learning about the rationale behind some of the thematic elements of church camp ("cry night" etc), but found myself bored by much of the lyrical prose attempting to reconciliate with a more "woke" version of Christianity. It reads like a very well done thesis, but not a widely marketable book.

I am a bit young for Cara’s demographic as a “zillennial” but I am easily a part of the generation that was failed by “White Evangelical church camp”. I didn’t spend a week away at a traditional summer camp, but I experienced the cry nights, the emotional highs and lows that came along with grueling labor, games, and then a sermon each night. I was subjected to slightly different forms of emotional manipulation, but the effect was still the same.

When I read the description of Cara’s book, I had this sickly feeling wash over me. Church camp specifically was an area that I had not dug too deeply into. Partially because I think I have blocked a lot of those memories out, but also because I am still not quite ready to confront the damages that those weeks did to me as a teenager.

Church camp taught me about love bombing, work ethic, judgement, class systems, cliques, hatred, and manual labor. I don’t want to make it all sound bad, but it did leave its mark on me, and not entirely in a way that I would deem “good.”

Cara explains church camp in a way that makes my experience feel validated. My experience was very similar to the summers that she described. And honestly, it was refreshing to see someone acknowledge that these environments can be damaging.

Cara’s experience on the other side was fascinating to read. Whenever I have thought about the speakers that I had listened to at camp, honestly, there was a significant amount of mistrust. I always wondered what their intentions actually were—were they intentionally trying to manipulate me? To read what they are being taught to teach as speakers was both frustrating and disheartening, but it also allowed me to see the humanity side of it. Cara wasn’t intentionally trying to manipulate her students, her goal was ultimately to get them to see Jesus. But she wasn’t going to do that by toying with the people who were learning from her.

Cara has a way of showing where she was wrong when she was younger, what she thinks about it now that she has grown, and what she thinks Christians as a whole should do differently when it relates to church camp.

In a sea of mistrust and frustration towards the church, Cara has a way of seeing both sides and blending it to be a teaching moment. Something that I imagine was difficult to do because so much of her identity was intertwined with church camp.

absolutely transformative back to my church camp days. I appreciate Cara's weaving of memories of this formative place alongside her current struggles and how she interprets those experiences now.

Oof what a book. There were a ton of lines in this book, especially early on, that I noted to journal through. Many that put many of my own discomfort with evangelical theology and its type of evangelism into words. It's important to note that while this is part-memoir, the author's deconstruction did not lead to a loss in faith. She is still a Christian, just a different sort than she was when she was working at the church camps.

This was a thoughtful and incisive look at white evangelical church camp that I hope spurs on more conversations. As Meredith mentioned, it was harder to get interviews from BIPOC former campers for whom camp was a traumatic week rather than the "best week of their life."

This book is organized like a typical week at church camp:
1. Welcome to Camp!
2. God the Mostly Father
3. Superhero Jesus
4. Dirty Rotten Little Sinners
5. Cry Night
6. Side Note, Rose Again
7. Now Go and Live the (White) Way of Jesus

For me, most of my own highlights were in the first half of the book. The second half was rough, and I found myself rushing through just because I was feeling triggered by my own evangelical church trauma. If you grew up in white evangelical culture but was in any way marginalized, I think you might also really enjoy the labeling in the first half and then need a bit of time to rest from Day 4 and onward when Meredith discusses the manipulative parts of evangelical Gospel messages. It is affirming to hear someone else say that yeah, they really are just trying to hit a KPI for salvations, but it still sucks. Also very helpful to see someone point out that white evangelicalism is trying to convert you to white, cishet, able-bodied Christianity and it excludes those of us who are not.

The Navigators, the evangelical group I was in, is mentioned on page 13, but not much beyond that, I'm guessing because it's primarily a college parachurch organization. Young Life and FCA were mentioned much more.

Meredith has done her reading and cites some excellent writers and theologians, in addition to the former campers and camp staff. As a person of color, I especially liked her quote from pastor Jared Stacy who pointed out in a 2021 blog that evangelicals focusing on "just preach the gospel" was a way to reject social justice because hey, if only Jesus matters, you don't need to worry about earthly things like power and change. I love a book that has a good bibliography, and this one has about 17 pages of endnotes.

For me, this book was helpful for labeling. I think this is a good resource for those deconstructing their evangelical childhoods and for those who want to understand. I'm not sure you'll necessarily feel inspired, but at least you won't feel crazy or alone.

Thanks to Netgalley and Broadleaf for this ARC.

I was really excited to read this book. I grew up in white evangelicalism, albeit in the UK rather than the US. White evangelical culture has its differences here, but many aspects have been somewhat exported from the US to the UK, and ‘church camp’ culture is definitely one of those aspects.

Reading this book as someone who experienced a lot of the culture described here was deeply validating. I’ve been in a ‘deconstructing’ period with my faith for over a decade now, and I’ve read many works and memoirs on experiences with white evangelicalism in that time. I will say that this is probably one of the books I’ve read that has most validated the extremely weird and complicated feelings that come with growing up in a faith and then later coming to realise the harm that the toxic theology you’ve been exposed to and perpetuated has caused to yourself and other people. It’s extremely hard to explain or convey how you can be almost nostalgic for places that were actively harmful for you, because they were also somehow places where at one point you felt deep joy and belonging. I felt this book and the author really well explained and validated that feeling, and it was an emotional read.

I also want to say this book is extremely well referenced and researched, and I found some great new resources and reading material in the footnotes. If you’re expecting purely a ‘memoir’ this is not what this is book is, but the deeply researched and well thought out explorations of why white evangelical church camp culture is the way it is (and also what we could do instead!) are very important.

I do think this book is a little ‘niche’, in the sense that I think someone who hasn’t experienced white evangelicalism would be quite lost reading this. Having said that- for those of us who did experience and grow up in that culture, especially those of us who have trauma associated with it, this will be an important, emotional and validating read.

Thank you very much to Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

Church Camp by Cara Meredith is a book that could be used to garner deeper discussions as to the how and why of evangelical church camps and their impact on the faith of campers and leaders alike.
I flew through this book and resonated with much of message. Will it be read as eagerly by someone who does not resonate with its message? Unless that reader is open to seeing another point of view, I think it will just create great ire.
Cara organizes her thoughts into each day of camp and its intended goal. The end seemed to be a little stream of consciousness but the general theme is understood.
I really appreciated Cara's ability to process things without throwing the baby out with the bathwater and how she can still hold valuable something she has great issues with. I wish the book had explored other types of church camping but that is not the purpose of the book. It is really a framework for the author to share her faith journey.
If you are a parent of a past camper or went/ worked at church camp yourself, if nothing else you will resonate with the memories reading this book will evoke, positive or negative.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I did not have the same experiences as the author specifically to faith-based camps growing up, but I was able to draw so many parallels from other conferences, mission trips, and other events that my church participated in. I frequently had to pause, put the book down, and dwell on the author’s idea because it was so simple, yet spoke the cold truth. Oftentimes I found myself thinking, “finally here are the words that I couldn’t put together myself to describe this feeling that something is not right here.”

Some of the points that stuck with me were the fear-based tactics to increase “conversion” numbers instead of focusing on conversions of love, the tracking and reporting on conversions themselves, the influences of capitalism on these camps, and the lack of inclusivity and diversity of anything other than the normative white evangelicism.

I also appreciated that the author was critical but still emphasized that we can do so much better, we need to do better, without damning the faith as a whole.

Sometimes I had a hard time understanding the authors train of thought or point they were trying to make, like they were moving on too quickly without fully discussing the thought. At some points I liked the storytelling narrative, and at other points it felt repetitive and I wanted her to move on.

Overall a read I would recommend to others who experienced camps/mission trips/conferences/etc in the evangelical faith.

Thank you to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC.