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.

This is not the typical book I would choose to read. But as a former church camp kid, I was intrigued. The author took me right back to the days of shaving cream fights and bunk beds in cabins. As someone who has left the church i appreciated the reflection of the author. Looking back on the summers now I do see them in a different light and found this book to be very in line with how I feel.

For years, church camp defined huge parts of Meredith's life. First she was a camper, then a counselor, and then, as an adult, a speaker—she'd be hired to spend a week giving nightly talks to the latest crop of (mostly white, mostly evangelical) campers, spinning a progressive story that reminded them how pathetic and how loved they were, and with any luck by the end of the week there would be a new list of converts to report back to the higher-ups. But eventually, Meredith moved away from evangelical Christianity—and eventually, she started to question the things she'd always believed. Eventually, she started to question church camp.

"Church camp was such a *win* to me: I thrived in the camp environment, and camp, in turn, saw to my flourishing. But I was also exactly who white evangelicalism sought to promote: white and straight, I fit the mold. Outgoing and extroverted, I fought for my place as a woman, which camp rewarded me for when I proved I could *do* as the men had always done. But this was not the case for everyone. (loc. 874*)

Now: I should note that I never went to church camp. I am fascinated by religion, and particularly by certain iterations of it, but I was raised merrily heathen. My sister went to a YMCA sleepaway camp once, when she was about eight; she came away saying "JOY! Jesus first, others second, yourself last!" and so that was the end of my parents sending any of us to camp.** My point here is that I am not really the intended audience here: I read because I'm curious, but this book is really written for adults who were once church camp kids—maybe one summer, or maybe year after year after year, but readers who can hear Meredith's stories and conjure up visceral memories.

This book is structured around a week at camp and around the talks Meredith once gave. It's not about a specific camp—there are hundreds, and that's before you even get to the Vacation Bible School day camps—but about the messaging taught in these camps, or at least many of them. Jesus as superhero and God as benevolent father who happens to think you're pretty worthless. Cry night and purity standards. I struggled some with the structure—it took me a while to figure out why, but it's that Meredith doesn't tell her stories directly; she tells the reader how she *might* have told a story on any given night at any given camp. She might have told this story, she probably added that detail, campers probably reacted this way. It adds a level of distance to the writing; as a lover of memoir, I thrive on details and specifics, and I'd have found a walk through a specific summer at camp, specific campers, specific memories a bit more engaging.

I did value the research that Meredith weaves throughout, though, including the interviews with other once-upon-a-church-camp-kid folks. I'd have liked to know a bit more about Meredith's disillusionment with evangelical Christianity (before or after she had her kids and had to think about how the world, and how church camp, would treat them?) and a little more about how her views changed through the writing of the book, because at times my impression was that a lot of her understanding came about only through the interviews she conducted with people who were not straight and white.

But again: this isn't really a book written for me. If, like me, you're just too curious for your own good, this is one for your "maybe" pile or your "rainy day" pile. If church camp was once your jam, in any of its iterations, you'll probably see some of your experience reflected here, and it's much more likely to be a book for you.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

**I asked my sister about this, and she doesn't remember JOY, but she did say that she was scandalized by saying grace before meals...and also that camp was a good experience, 10/10. So I guess the YMCA did its job, and my parents did theirs.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf for the eARC!
I really enjoyed this book. I think Meredith has a way with words and exploring ideas that I've had swirling around in my brain but been unable to pin down for myself.
While I don't have a TON of camp experience, I was a camp counselor for a number of my high school years, and I went to a couple of YoungLife camps when I was helping out with a youth ministry.
This introduction felt like coming home - I could tell she knew what she was talking about - that she at one point held camp as a sacred place, but that she understood that there are things we didn't know then but that we know NOW that change the way we look at things.
There were a couple of places where I wish she had gone into more detail about what was bothering her or what changed her mind, but I think she asked a lot of really good questions.
Would highly recommend for any deconstructing (or deconstructed) Christians, or any Christians who wonder if the God we learn about at camp is really a good being, or if, perhaps, there might be a better way.
Maybe you can tell I'm still trying to digest this book, but I really, really got a lot out of it.

I appreciate that this book lends a nuanced perspective on Christian camps. It is not demonizing the practice right out the gate. That said, I find this book to be pretty unfocused. It lost me several times, as chapters seemingly bounce from one thesis to another. It reads more like an undergraduate's project rather than a formally published book. That said, I do think there is value in the perspective and story told.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

A necessary book on a multifaceted topic. Thought provoking reflections and suggestions.

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

I admire the important conversation that this book is participating in. As someone who never attended a church camp like those this book is referring to but did grow up in a Catholic/Christian context, I could uniquely relate to and/or understand the points made. As someone who is similarly asking questions about that context, it was comforting to read a book that acknowledged some thoughts I’ve had.

I loved that the author participated in many different interviews with a diverse group of people. Their unique experiences shared was a vital and enriching part of this book. The use of quotes from those interviews as well as other people/books was very well used.

My only real complaint with the book was that I wish it was broken down with more headings and perhaps bullet points within each chapter. At times the information felt a little overwhelming as a reader and that could have helped.

Who should read this book? Anyone whose attention has been piqued by it, whether because you’ve attended church camp, have been hurt by white Evangelical Christianity, or are an outsider of the experience intrigued to learn more.