Jesus Camp
Day: 301
After a day in one of the world’s excessively liberal cities, my family felt like it needed a little balance and I went along for the ride. We headed up to the Christian summer camp where my brother works and has worked for the last five summers. The majority of my family classifies themselves as Christians; but Matt and I land on either extreme end of that spectrum. He is a theologian, studying for advanced degrees in Divinity/Theology in Alabama and I am a wandering Agnostic/borderline Atheist; Needless to say that holiday dinner conversation is always lively!
After being put up in a cabin we all headed down for the nightly meeting on the lawn where Matt played drums and acted out skits about assorted biblical tales. Since it was the first night of camp the theology wasn’t being pressed as much as the idea of having a good week at camp (from personal experience as a camp-going teenager I know this is saved more for the end of the week).
My nieces sung along to both the generic camp songs and the worship and seemed to be enjoying themselves though; I sat on the back of the lawn reading a fantasy novel and watched the sunset. I do find the ideology a little scary, when it is packaged to children who’s minds are still immature to make rational choices on religion for themselves.
Facebook Comments:
Did you guys kill rattlesnakes as family too? No rattlesnake killings. : (
That’s a powerful image of the two little ones with the “Way of the Truth” sign in the distance.
I too find it disturbing that it’s deemed necessary to push such complex ideas onto the minds of such little ones. I see it in my home as well, where I pride myself in being a free thinker and want to encourage this in my kids, then my mother-in-law brings them bible story kids books.
My daughter is just impressed by the winged angels and such. I find it amusing though when she calls them fairies, and I secretly encourage it
I suspect I’m going to have a battle on my hands when they get to the “vacation bible school” age.