Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 305 Cara Meredith - Church Camp, Conformity, and the Call to Something More
Today, I’m joined by Cara Meredith, author of the new book Church Camp. We’re digging into the ways camp shapes our faith, our friendships, and our sense of who belongs. We get real about the fun memories, but also the uncomfortable parts—who was included, who was left out, and what messages we picked up along the way. Cara and I talk about how camp can turn faith into a checklist—who’s in, who’s out, who fits and who doesn’t. But we also imagine what camp could be if it became a place of real belonging, where every kid was seen and valued, no matter their story. If you’ve ever looked back on your camp experience with mixed feelings, or wondered how those weeks shaped your view of God and yourself, you’ll find something here. This episode is about holding the good and the hard together, asking better questions, and dreaming about what’s possible. So join us as we go to camp.
A sought-after speaker, writer, and public theologian, Cara Meredith is the author of Church Camp and The Color of Life. Passionate about issues of justice, race, and privilege, Cara holds a master of theology from Fuller Seminary and is a postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. With a background in education and nonprofit work, she wears more hats than she probably ought, but mostly just enjoys playing with words, a lot. Her writing has been featured in national media outlets such as The Oregonian, The New York Times, The Living Church, The Christian Century, and Baptist News Global, among others. She lives with her family in Oakland, California.
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We're introducing kids or campers or humans at large to Jesus, but we're not saying and now you have to believe this certain thing. You have to be this certain thing. You have to act the certain thing. You have to wear this certain thing. We are just simply saying you are in because you are human, and as a human, you are loved, and you are embraced by Jesus, and that's what matters.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, today I'm joined by Kara Meredith, author of the new book church camp. We're digging into the ways camp shapes our faith, our friendships and our sense of who belongs. We get real about the fun memories, but also the uncomfortable parts, who was included, who was left out, and what messages we picked up along the way. Kara and I talk about how camp can turn faith into a checklist, who's in, who's out, who fits, who doesn't, but we also imagine what camp could be if it became a place of real belonging, where every kid was seen and valued, no matter their story. Kara and I both come to this conversation as campers and as counselors. Kara was a speaker at church camp for many years. I was a coach at basketball camp for many years. And for you, if you've ever looked back on your camp experience with mixed feelings or wondered how those weeks shaped your view of God and yourself. You'll find something here. This episode is about holding the good and the hard together, asking better questions and dreaming about what's possible. So join us as we go to camp. Here is my conversation with Kara Meredith. Kara, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on excited to talk about camp today.
Cara Meredith:Thank you. Excited to be here. Joshua, well, let's
Joshua Johnson:get into church camp your new book, which is great that you dive deep into, really, I would say, white evangelicalism and church camp, and how those coincide, and what was the good, the bad and the ugly in all of it? What, then, is your relationship with camp? And why is camp something that actually can help you? Unfold by evangelicalism? And what it is,
Cara Meredith:I was big in camp, so I started going to camp my first summer. I was nine years old. It was 1988 I'll let listeners do the math on that. And then probably eight years later, I started volunteering at camp. Two years later, so 1998 I worked my first full summer at camp, what the camp world might call a seasonal staff employee. And then after that, that was when I was in college. After college, I became a high school English teacher, and so I had my summers free, and instead of then working at camp all summer, I was camp speaker. So the camps that I worked in were most which were both denominationally and non denominationally affiliated. They were pro women. They were okay with women standing on the stage preaching or talking. So that was really where my camp experience took me. So camp, to me, was something that happened, if you count those camper years, really for the better part of 25 years of my life, leading up to about a decade ago, was when I finally left as
Joshua Johnson:somebody that's been involved in church camp for a long time. Why is camp something that you said, Hey, we want to look at camp, but really look under the hood of white evangelicalism. And why is camp a really good feature and focus for us to look at?
Cara Meredith:I am a writer. I write different things, but one of the things I do is I write books. And so my first book came out in 2019 and then we had this thing that happened around the world called the pandemic. Really, I missed that. Not sure if you knew there was this thing called the global pandemic, COVID 19. So COVID happens, the pandemic happens. And my writing stalled, not only because life was really hard, but I think also because there was a bigger message for me, and it was a message of the both. And so from that, I had another book that I put together. It was a collection of essays that paired different words, different opposite words together, and looked at how both could be true at the same time. So got through the pandemic, I created this book, this book of essays. My agent takes it to sell to publishers, and publishers say thanks, but no thanks. We need a through line. We don't want individual essays. We want to hear we want you to go deep with one story. So I say that because, as I thought back. Work on life and on my own experience. That's where, when I looked at and thought about camp, I thought, wow, Camp is one of the most formative places for me. I am who I am today because of camp, so many of my best friends are from this exact place. And as I've gotten older, I don't like the word deconstruction in general, but as I've gotten older, I think there has been a spiritual evolution of sorts, a change that has happened, and that's when, as I looked back on camp, I also saw that there were some unhelpful parts, some harmful parts, that I deemed helpful for a long, long time. But as life went on, I began to see those through a different lens. So really, the book birthed from paradox and from holding the tension. So
Joshua Johnson:I want to go into the tension, and before we dive into some particulars of camp and what that was like as you were writing these essays, and you were thinking about both and and spiritual life and a our daily lives, our political lives, just every part of our lives. It seems to me, and I've heard a statistic that there is a small percentage of the population that could actually hold a both hands. They really just think through either or type of things. It's all black and white. Gray is very difficult for a lot of people, how do we walk into tension when we know that there is bad and there is good? And we could hold both at the same time and actually take what is, what is good in the middle of it, and then actually say, hey, this may have harmed you, and I'm sorry. And like, really wrestle with those things. What is like walking into the tension? Look like no
Cara Meredith:one has asked me that question before. Joshua, this is good. I think walking into the tension means holding an openness, holding or having an openness. It means embracing when we have been right and when we have been wrong. And again, I think this is to me, this is part of the gray, which is part of the mystery, but which is also part of God. I now call the Episcopal tradition home. I say that because my very last class in seminary, this was 15 years ago, but it was a class on Anglican theology, and I became a convert after that. I mean, I just was like, but it was, the reality is that I fell in love with a theology, and that there's a deep theology within the Episcopal or Anglican tradition that embraces the mystery, which to me, is embracing the both end and so even though there were so many people, I interviewed a wide variety, almost 50 people for this book, there were folks who absolutely wanted to just throw camp under the bus. They were like, burn it all up. And then there were folks who were like, there is absolutely nothing wrong with camp. Kids meet Jesus here. This is one of the most incredible parts. And I think there are, there are, or were, or there are folks. There are those of us in the middle who say, Yes, we can hold both. And for me, I acknowledge the good and I acknowledge the bad that I participated in, that I perpetuated. So I think there's a willingness to be able to hold or see both. I'm not sure how to how to answer that, but I think that's where I start. That's
Joshua Johnson:a good starting place. And so let's dive into some of that, the good and the bad, the tension of camp. My my camp experience, I would say we were on the periphery of of Christian camp. I went to a basketball camp every summer, and we, you know, it was a Christian camp, but we really didn't talk much about Jesus until the final night. And we talked a little bit about Jesus, right? Of course, it's the final night. You got to talk about Jesus. But we it was really value space, but it was really transformative for me. And I then continued as as a counselor, coach, teacher in the in those camps for many years and and I've had, like, some of my most formative experiences were in camp, but I didn't have, like, this particular church camp experience that you were talking about in the book. So take me into what you have seen as a, I would say, a typical white evangelical church camp. And where did it come from? What's the history of it, and what was like the the formation of these camps, and what was the the ultimate goal?
Cara Meredith:Well, I write quite a bit about this, especially in the very first chapter, as you may well know. But if we can, if we can put it plainly, the point of campus conversion, the point of campus to convert, and it is to convert Yes, to a particular way of thinking, as far as a viewpoint of who Jesus is and of who God is through an evangelical lens. But it also is to convert to norms found within white evangelicalism. That's where. Can also it can be hard to define, because white evangelicals are not are not just defined by what they believe, but they're often defined also by their voting habits, by their cultural preferences, by a whole litany of things. Now
Joshua Johnson:we have, we have studies that say Muslims are identifying as evangelicals and because of their political stances. So it's just interesting that way. So it's true. Keep going, yeah,
Cara Meredith:yeah. I mean, you look at the 81% like the reality is that it's not just about voting a particular person into power. It's also about the values that are embodied within this belief system. So for me, the book is deeply theological, even if we're unpacking a whole lot of things along the way. But the book is laid out by the seven main talks that I gave as a camp speaker over the years, and that was at a number of different types of camps, from young life camps to again, denominational and non denomination non denominational camps. And I think all of those places, in all of those places, it goes back to, really, it goes back, you're looking at conversion, but it also goes back to particular message that is going to get a person, or persons, from point A to point B. And so if the point is conversion, then how do we get there? Along the way, we can, then we can then say, well, we get there by presenting the four spiritual laws. Bill Wright Campus Crusade for Christ 1956 he comes up with the four spiritual laws, which, which results in literally billions of people around the world converting to a particular brand or type of Christianity, and that that's where, you know, I always used to laugh at it, but that's where you have the two cliffs. If listeners could see me now, I'm putting up my two fingers, and you have, you have man on one cliff, it was never a woman, and you have God on the other cliff, and and God loves you so much and wants to, wants to be connected to you, but God cannot be connected to you, or he cannot be connected to you. It was always also a male god, because sin separates you, and that's when Jesus comes in on the cross. And so in the camp context, there was oftentimes a message that was presented over the week that was a truncated version of the four spiritual laws that oftentimes erred heavily on the side of penal substitutionary atonement theory, which was one particular way of viewing God, but it was also a particular way of viewing self that I argue was actually really harmful. And through that, I mean, there are so many other parts of camp, from a speaker's position and really from, from and through and with a lot of different camps. This is, if conversion is the end goal, then this is how you get converts. Is by preaching this message,
Joshua Johnson:so all the fun and all the games and everything, and it leads into nightly talks, leading people into this conversion experience. If you look back with a lot of talks that lead to conversion experiences, one time, conversion experiences a lot of times, don't lead to long, lasting authentic faith. Sometimes it's it is like, Hey, I had this mountaintop moment. And then they're thinking, Man, I don't know how this reaches my my everyday life. So it's not really there for me, discipleship, mystery, all those things need to happen so that we actually see God with us in our life. And what that what that looks like. So if part of that is like this mountaintop experience, is there a different way that you think that camp may may be structured that could be helpful to people to wrestle with things throughout their entire life, and not just have a mountaintop experience and but mountaintop experiences can be good too. So this, how do you wrestle with it in the middle of it, knowing that, hey, we only have a week with these kids, but then, like, follow up and stuff too, like all of that stuff is, is in the mind of people looking like, what's next? How do we do this? Is there a way to to shift? I
Cara Meredith:am a huge outdoor person. Outdoors person. I'm not sure if we put an S on that, but part of why I am an outdoors person is because that is where God meets me. And I know whether I step into the backyard, into my garden and I'm just out there, or whether I go on a hike, or whether I take my kids camping, or whatever it is. I know that I if I am out in the outdoors, then I am, I'm going to come into a space in which the sacred and the holy is there, and I'm going to be confronted by God. And so I think where, I think part of the tension that has happened with a lot of our camps, which is not true of every camp, but in a lot of our camps, I think because, because it's. What we think kids need, kids or campers, or whomever is there camps become, can so easily become programmatic spaces that are trying to entertain, that are trying to just be big and campy, for lack of a better word or phrase, they're trying to be, you know, the most explosive and the funniest and and the and that also then goes down into how God is presented, just in being or trying to be. The biggest of all, it's almost as if we forget that that God is already in that space, and that there need not be this convincing that needs to happen. So I think for me, an answer to your question. I think I do want to say there are, I think there are so many camps that are doing it right? I think camp is a gift in and of itself. So many places don't allow cell phones, you know, so and our kids are all getting cell phones younger and younger. So it's, it's one of those that cell phones are banned for the week. But if there can simply be an invitation to to to bask in the beauty that is in front of you, I think that's one of the things but, but that's one of the things that camp allows. It allows time and space to just be and to then not have to fill the gap with with with convincing, with trying to convince another of what they need.
Joshua Johnson:That's good, and that's helpful. I start, and I I agree with it. I think it's, I think it's a start. I mean, I'm just saying, how do we how do we do that? How do you shift a whole mindset, saying that it's my job to entertain, and it's my job to if I was the MC at night there, my job was to be the clown like it was. That was part of it, right? So my job is to entertain, to do skits, to do do things, to make sure that these kids can be engaged and entertain. So what is, then, the tension between engaging and entertaining and in a space of like holding holding space to encounter the divine in in a real sense, in a real thing, and it's not just a show, but it's, it's the real thing. What? What's the balance when you're you do have those tensions?
Cara Meredith:No, I think that's a great question. And perhaps you and I can meet collaboratively afterwards to come up with with a list of what can be done. But I think it's, I think our culture, and I love that your podcast is called shifting culture. I think there is a belief in within our culture, and whether that's just for parents and teachers and caregivers or for the entire culture, but for our this generation of our children, that they have to be constantly entertained. And there's, there's a different word for that. But so, for instance, one of my children, he's 10. One of my boys just broke his leg two weeks ago while we were camping over spring break. Not exactly the best thing. Yeah, thank you. It was our family's first break. It was a very big deal. He has a big red pass. Now I got to sign mom with a heart around it. I felt very glad, very happy that he let me do that. But for Theo, my son, there's not a whole lot he can do right now, besides just lay on the couch. It's really easy for me as a parent to simply let him be on a screen the entire time, because what else I feel kind of bad. What else is he supposed to do? He can't throw the football, he can't play baseball on his team. He can't, he can't do anything, but I can let him not be on a screen the whole time, and I can let him figure out what he can do when he is not being constantly entertained. And so it, it can almost hurt. It almost hurts him for me to take away the iPad, and then he's like, oh, wait a minute. I can play my trumpet and make up new songs, which are horrible, by the way, but I support it because he's just, he's just blowing air into this gold I'm
Joshua Johnson:glad you support it. My parents wouldn't let me practice the trumpet. I got kicked out of fourth grade band because I did not practice. And now I don't know how to play an instrument, you know. So Joshua, good job. Way to support it. Send
Cara Meredith:you ours at the end of the school year, and you can learn because I don't want to hear it anymore. Thank you. But I mean there, just as there are, you know, just as there is this undergirding belief that we need to entertain our children, our children being all of our children, what would it look like in a camp setting to do the same, to just let kids figure that out, and to figure out the trumpet that's lying right there beside them, and to just, you know, like, again, I take my boys camping and I see what happens when we get into the woods. I mean, granted, broken legs happen, but also they don't get screens when they're there. And pretty soon, they're making new best friends to campsites over or they're riding their bike until, you know, nine o'clock, until it gets dark. They're, they're burning their marshmallows as black as they can. You know, I mean, they're, they're figuring out fun because they're being given an opportunity to simply enter in and embrace we
Joshua Johnson:need to create spaces where kids are bored. I.
Cara Meredith:Be bored exactly, because then good things are going to happen from it. Yes, that's
Joshua Johnson:good. So when you were looking back and you were saying, okay, maybe all of this good stuff that I thought was was really good, hey, maybe there was some stuff that was was malforming me. It wasn't forming me in a way that actually is was helpful. What? What were the threads? What were the things that you started to pick at that really started it like this? Oh, maybe that was the malforming thing. There were,
Cara Meredith:there were a number of malformations, if we, if that's a word, I think for me, it started with people. I began to look around and see who was not there. Within Christianity, there's a, you know, we oftentimes use the phrase of who's sitting at the table or who is welcome at the table. And so for me, I began to see that. I began to see the exclusion that was taking place, in particular toward women, toward people of color, and toward the queer community. I began to see that in the threads of of people that I loved, the two people that are that this book is dedicated to, were both people that were their names are Michael and Sarah, and they are two dear, dear people to me, one of whom is a person of color, the other person, the other of whom is white, they both came out later in life, and the reality is that for both of them, the camps that they worked at kicked them out because they were not straight. And so that was where a lot of this started for me, there was also a deep theological starting place that I really just began to wrestle with, both the message I had always believed, but also the message I was communicating about who God was and about who we as humans were. And I do not think that we need to be made to feel like horrible human beings. One of my chapters that's on this is titled dirty, rotten little sinners. And I just don't believe that that is who God sees us as so if we're talking about human depravity, I think there are other ways that we can look at God and about how God looks at us that doesn't make people feel like pieces of poo. So I think I'm not sure how, how much your listeners want me to cuss on air, but yeah, so I think the starting point, okay, who is the word we're gonna use? Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:makes me it makes me laugh. Now, if we're in these spaces, white evangelicalism, we've made God a little bit into our own image, made Jesus into our own image, instead of being in the maid, in the image of God, where we're transposing it, what were aspects that you've seen that go, oh, that actually doesn't actually look like Jesus, God, that looks more like white Westerners?
Cara Meredith:Well, I think I saw this most, heard this most with the people of color that I interviewed, and as I note in the book, the easiest, the easiest people to find to interview were white, straight males. The second easiest were white, straight females, and then poor identifying people. And finally, people of color. And to me, that also shows the harm that happened. So in that way, I think a lot of the conformity happened the a lot of the conformity that white evangelicalism invites folks into is a conformity that looks and believes a certain way. It's a conformity of assimilation. There was one young black man that I interviewed, and he had I found him and invited him to do an interview after after reading something that he had written online, but of the cultural and theological assimilations that he was invited into, this is what he writes. I'm just going to read a short paragraph. I lament the idea I needed to buy Chocos use multi color highlighters from my Bible and listen to white Christian music to feel like I was a part of what God was doing. As a black kid, I felt forced to sacrifice the parts of my blackness I loved and the parts I didn't even know existed to have a seat at a table which was built on white normativity. I do not like comfort colors T shirts, but that's what I wore because young life told me that's what I should like. My blackness was once used as the punch line of the skit because my area director said there would be nothing funnier than a large, angry black man come only coming in and tackle, tackling someone. So I think that within this, yeah, there. I think that the conformity and the assimilation is real. And, yeah, and I think it's something we need to lament.
Joshua Johnson:I remember a few, I think it was few years ago. I was teaching in Brazil, and I was teaching on on something, and found in Ephesians and and I remember afterwards, this, this. Pastor came up to me and says, I've How come I've never heard this like, this is the first time we've we've heard these things. And I actually had to apologize. It's like, I apologize for my white evangelical brothers that have transported something that wasn't actually in Scripture, but it was just culturally part of what they knew. This is the thing that I think we have to do some work to be more self aware in our own awareness. Because oftentimes, I think that at camp counselors and people at Camp pastors, people, they don't know what they don't know. And I think most of them are really trying their best, and they're just regurgitating information that they have heard. What is What do you think that work looks like for people to say? Maybe I don't have everything figured out. Maybe as everything's not as certain as I thought it was, what can I start to do to help me, like, lift the blinders off?
Cara Meredith:That's a big question, and that also might be one that you and I need to meet after this podcast episode to come up with a huge list. I don't know if there is a way in which this can be forced. I think so much of this is time for me, for instance, my experience of marrying my husband, who identifies as Black, who is the son of a civil rights icon that was really big invitation into wrestling with and identifying my whiteness and privilege. And so for me, 1516, years ago, when we met. I need to figure out when we met and married, and do the math at some point. But for me, that was, that was really the start of my own journey into issues of racial justice, but also, again, owning my own privilege and my whiteness in the same way when it comes to and that would be, that would be, I should add a journey that I am still on, that I will always be on, because mine is a learned experience and not a lived experience. In the same way when it comes to our spirituality, when it comes to our belief systems, to Christianity, I don't know if we nest, if there necessarily needs to be, if there has to be a catalyst for that. Maybe the catalyst is just like a, you know, an inkling inside. And maybe then it's a matter of, okay, I'm gonna start reading books that challenge me. I remember when I was in seminary, we had all of our main books, and the reality is that those, those main books were all, for the most part were written by white men, and then we sometimes had alternative titles, and those would be the titles that were written by people of color or by women. So so maybe it's a matter of looking at our bookshelves and I'm saying, Okay, who do I need to be learning from that is not is here that literally, they're not on my bookshelf, so we start reading and listening and learning to others. I think for me, there was a big unpacking that happened theologically and and this was one of those. I again, I don't like the word deconstruction, but I think it was my own deconstruction process, or at least how culture might define a deconstruction process in which it just things just weren't sitting right with me anymore. And so for me, I process through writing. That's that's how I process sometimes I process verbally, but I process through writing. So I began to write through these things and to question and just to, just to go, to let it be a question too, because I think the world I was in for so long, you didn't question things because it was so black and white. You either believed and when you believed you were in, or you didn't believe, and when you didn't believe you were out. So so what did it mean to still be a part of that, but to also let myself question and wrestle with that, that didn't sit right within me.
Joshua Johnson:I think one of the things there, I mean, a lot of people have been talking through bounded sets and centered sets, centered set where Jesus is the center. And no matter where you are, if you're facing towards Jesus, that's fantastic. You could be really close to Jesus, like facing away from him, and you're not even even going towards them at all. You're going the other direction. But it looks like camp there is like, Hey, here's the here's the bounded set. Here's the line on, you know, on cry night, we're gonna get you in to this, this bounded set. Now you could be a part of the family of God, and now you're in. How has that been perpetrated and thought about in camp? If you look back on what it is of here's a line, and the people, some people are in, some people are out, and we treat people differently, whether they're in or out. I
Cara Meredith:define this at least in the book. Like whether or not it makes sense to other people, but I define it as a caveat of belonging, where oftentimes there's a message of Jesus. The message of Jesus is proclaimed and is taught from the front and in the reality is that is that Jesus is the most beautiful part of the Christian faith, like Jesus is why we call ourselves Christians because Jesus died and rose again, and we have life after life after death, like N T Wright would say. But I think within a camp setting, there is oftentimes a bounded set of Christianity that is presented, but it's presented through the lens of Christ and of who Jesus was. So what does it mean instead to invite, like you're saying, to invite people into a belief system about who Jesus is that is unbounded, one of the one of the things I also that I write, I say, when Christ is the well, everyone is in and no one is out, artificial boundaries, sometimes disguised as caveats of belonging are thrown out the window, or for purposes of Camp speak off the second platform on the high ropes course, you know the one right before that unwielding set of unstable bridges. This time when a camp speaker introduces campers to a man who is the biggest gift of all to the tender pioneer whose generous, wild inclusion paved a way for the rest of us to be equally generous and wild in the love we show other people. They actually mean it. So we're introducing kids or campers or humans at large to Jesus, but we're not saying and now you have to believe this certain thing. You have to be this certain thing. You have to act this certain thing. You have to wear this certain thing. We are just simply saying you are in because you are human, and as a human, you are loved, and you are embraced by Jesus. And that's what matters.
Joshua Johnson:That's beautiful. And I think that means it's then, hey, I'm in this beautiful well, and now it's a process of life, like, I get to, like, go on this journey. And, you know, our Christian life is, is really a pilgrimage to God. And so instead of, I think what we have done, especially at Campus, if the goal is conversion, the goal is like, one decision, you're in, you're done, right? You get your get out of hell, free card, and you're you're set. Then just do whatever you want the rest of your life. You're You're good, but we got you
Cara Meredith:Yeah, or you're good, until next summer, when you do it again and you recommit your life to Jesus for the 37th time. Yeah, yeah.
Joshua Johnson:Which happens over and over again at camp, right? What then is, is a camp for pilgrims. What is, what's the camp that looks, looks a little different. What you're calling people to right there, and what you just read, what is a camp like that? It is
Cara Meredith:a great question. There are several places in the book that I highlight camps that are proclaiming a different message, that are valuing a different thing. I think again, about my own family, I identify as white. My husband identifies as black. Our two boys identify as mixed race, some days and some days, they identify as black. I don't know if they will ever identify as white, not only because of the color of their skin, but also as and because of how society identifies them, but for them, when I think about the conversations we have around the dinner table, it is a conversation that is wild and crazy. I'm always a little scared when someone comes in, because you never know what's going to come out of their mouth, out of their mouths. But it is a conversation that is a compass that can be encompassed by their spiritual identities, by their racial identities, by who they are, intellectually and emotionally, by and physically, by all the different parts and facets of who they are and what makes them them. And so how, then, in leading to your to the an answer to your question, how do we encompass and honor and celebrate all the many parts of who we are. Part of why I have a hard time thinking about sending my own kids to the camps that I spent so many years at is because I don't know if they are going to be honored for for who they are and celebrated for who they are, if they are going to walk away feeling like the only way that they can be loved. And this is, this is an answer of both spiritual and racial complications, if they are only going to feel loved if they believe in a certain if they believe a certain message and look a certain way, then then that is, I have done a disservice to them. The camp has done a disservice to them. So practically speaking, I think there are a ton of camps that are doing it right, that are honoring kids and campers in those ways. This is not a Christian camp, but there is. There's a camp I found along the way. It's a Jewish camp for kids of color, and it takes place every summer in Marin County, which is no. San Francisco, here in the Bay Area, but they bring in Jewish kids, some of whom are spiritual and andor religious, some of whom are not, because Judaism can oftentimes be encompassed by both. But they bring in these kids, and they they celebrate both their religious and cultural identities as young Jewish children, and they celebrate their identities as children of color, and they merge the two of them together. So this camp has which Jewish camping is a whole, whole other conversation, because it is a thing for our Jewish brothers and sisters, but they are doing something different, and the kids who are going there are having life changing experiences. So I think that's part of how we start, is by honoring the wholeness of who person is.
Joshua Johnson:I think that's such a great starting point, like we could, we could see people for who they are, and not think of a program. And I think that's just in every aspect of our lives, is so easy to think program and programmatically in everything that we do, and it's so much more difficult to see people for who they are and try to meet people where they're at. It's just more difficult, like practically speaking, it's harder to do that. So I commend people for doing that, and it's a good hard work that they're doing. As you started to interview all these 50 people, did you see any any common themes as you were interviewing people, of things that came out of their answers? I
Cara Meredith:would say the two questions that probably got the biggest response. There was a question, and I openly write about this in the book, but I say true or false, and I recognize also, I'd say this is probably a leading question, but true or false camp was made for white, straight, rich kids. There was an outstanding number of people who absolutely agreed with that and and the reality is that I think that is seen not only in the cost of camp and who has been showing up. It's seen in then in the racial disparities that take place, both within staff, but also of campers. And it's seen certainly in the in who is there and who is not there. And so camps because of their because of their standing as nonprofit organizations are allowed to discriminate also against kids with different sexual or gender identities. I think the other piece though, one of the questions I asked, I said, What was the theology communicated or that you perceived at camp? And this was where, and I did. I tried to interview a whole bunch of folks, both people who were from, people who were still in the camping world, who said, My God, this is the best thing that has ever happened to the world, all the way to those who were like, burn the place down. And threw in a couple of expletives along the way. But when it came to the theology, this was also one of those that there was an overwhelming response. Here are just a few of them. Jesus saved you from an angry God. You were saved from going to hell. Another one, you're dirty, but don't worry, God loves you so much that he killed his only son. A third one, Jesus loves me, but his dad thinks I'm a piece of poo. There's another word written in the book, but I'm not sure if your listeners are listening to this while driving in the car with small humans and another one, I'm a wretched sinner, and I don't exist, and I cannot exist without God. And I think about those statements, and there's more that are listed in the book, but I think about those and about what that communicates about who God is, but also what that communicates about who humans are. And to me, it's no wonder that wide swaths of those who previously identified as Christians are deconstructing by the day and are, are are not finding God within themselves or within their belief systems. They're not. There's not a there's fit. No longer exists between the two.
Joshua Johnson:If you talk to these, some of these people that are then deconstructing, if you don't like to use the word, although the word has been used a lot in this conversation. We can use the word, but if we we talk through like, then what it what actually holds people like, if you have have talked to people, or talk to people and go, Man, this church camp experience wasn't great. You know, I want to burn it all down, or my faith, there wasn't much to it. I don't find God in here. Is there anything that is that is holding people in the in the midst of a place where they do feel unmoored and they feel like, Hey, I don't know what's what's up anymore. I don't know what. Right and wrong. I don't know what's up and down. I just like, what is it? Is there anything holding people? And is there, like, a common theme that you've seen in the midst of people wrestling with these things that they're being held with? That's
Cara Meredith:a good question, to which I say, to all of your questions, you're a very good question. Asker Joshua, just like to point that out. I think I have a hard time answering this, because I think it is different for everyone. I think the pandemic did a number on our churches and on our belief systems and and maybe that's just something that I'm seeing on the west coast, but I don't think that we are the same people, not just the pandemic, but also the racial reckoning that's happening in our country also, you know, I mean just all these different movements that have been happening over the last 20 years. Theologian Phyllis tickle, she, she had a, she has a book, I think it's, it's a 2008 so it's almost 20 years old now. But her book The Great emergence, which is, which is about the the fact that every 400 years, starting with Christ, every 400 years, there is this reckoning, there is this there is this laundry basket being turned upside down and over with with that which was the face of Christianity that is then dumped out and made anew. And she writes or wrote them, we are in that season right now, which she calls the great emergence in which everything is being flip turned upside down. So is there something that is holding these people? I think for those who, who who continue to find solace in or with God and or with the church, I think there is sometimes solace in other faiths or forms of spirituality that are more open to their belief systems. So for instance there, I think a lot of folks are finding home in a lot of folks who maybe were in that previously are finding a home in post evangelical environments or in Protestant environments. I know for me, I found a home in the Episcopal Church, which is wildly different in some aspects, from what I grew up with and from this world that I was encompassed within, and also it's the same, I think for a lot of people, though there, as people deconvert And are leaving Christianity by the by the 1000s every single day, they don't necessarily step into new environments. And so I don't know what's holding them, but I do think they are forever searching and looking, and that's and so what does it mean to notice that and to hopefully create spaces where people can still
Joshua Johnson:okay? Kara, I want to end in the camp conversation with something, some camp experience that was really life giving for you. It could be as as a camper or as a counselor. What was really life giving
Cara Meredith:again, Joshua and his questions, the image that comes to my mind. So for two summers, the two summers after my freshman and sophomore year of college, I went and worked at this camp, and I was a ropes course instructor. And we would, we would, we would, there was a team probably of five or six of us, and we would go from the different all these different elements. There was the ropes course itself, you, but you could also be the the low elements instructor and the climbing the climbing wall instructor and the zip line instructor. So you would just rotate every single week to these different places. And when we were on the high ropes. Course we would we would don our our harness. We would have our harness along with a big, long rope and our carabiners that were attaching us. And we always had to have someone up in the trees who would just be dangling from the trees to help kids campers when they came through, because there would always be that scary person, or there would always be that person who was really scared. So for me, I think there's that image of of kind of being held and of dangling, but also of helping others, and of the confidence that came from that I wasn't necessarily super scared to go up there. I thought it was pretty fun to just hang and dangle from the ropes at the top, but you there had to be an element of trust. And so I think for me, just the confidence, also that camp instilled, but the desire to help and and then being just being acknowledged and being celebrated for exactly who I was in that moment, but also just overall, I think that was something that camp gave me that I'm just so grateful for.
Joshua Johnson:That's beautiful. It's a beautiful image. I love the picture of that and what that means, and that says about community and who we are and with one another, and especially in this, this world of America, when it's hyper individualism and it's all about me, I think that that's a beautiful picture that you just presented. Kara, I have a couple of questions. We're one. What hope do you have for church camp, that for your readers, people would pick it up and read? What do you hope that they would get from this?
Cara Meredith:Yes, I hope that they laugh. I hope that they feel deeply. I hope that they wrestle with the mystery, and I hope that they walk away longing for something better and realizing that something better is possible.
Joshua Johnson:If you could go back to your 21 year old self, what advice
Cara Meredith:would you give? Ask? More questions. Yeah, good
Joshua Johnson:advice. Very good advice. There
Cara Meredith:you go. I feel like these are rapid fire, so I don't need to, I don't need to add anything. But no, that's fantastic with that. Yeah, fit with the implications of that.
Joshua Johnson:All right, anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend?
Cara Meredith:Well, my husband and I are very, very behind, but we have been reading or we've been watching, excuse me, bridgerton. We took like a, like a year pause, but we we've been picking it up just even this last week, and we're like, oh, this is so good. I just read this book. It's very big and fat. It's titled, here I am by Jonathan Safran Foer. He's the one that wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This one, I feel like this one, all of the like funky theology nerds who are drawn to, for those of us within the Christian within Christian spaces, who are drawn to the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition are going to find resonance with this book, which, which honestly follows, follows part of the story of Abraham. So, but it's completely fictional, set in New York City, modern day. So, yeah, I just read that. I don't know if I would say that I loved it, but I did finish it. I was intrigued. So
Joshua Johnson:Congratulations on finishing here I am. That's a that's a feat. It's always nice when he when he finished a novel, it
Cara Meredith:was a lot of pages. I stopped at like, 200 I was like, this is a commitment from the free little library. Big one, it's good.
Joshua Johnson:How can people go out and get church camp? And where would you like to point people to? How could they connect with you? Yes,
Cara Meredith:church camp is available, or will be available on April 29 wherever books are sold, I would encourage you to go into your local bookstore and order it, just because I always love supporting local, independent places, but you can also find it online, wherever you like to buy books. You can connect with me. I'm on substack. Carameridath.substack.com otherwise I'm on most of the internet spaces, and in those places I am. Kara Meredith writes in most of those places,
Joshua Johnson:perfect. Well. Kara, thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to you. I really enjoyed getting into camp experience what it was like, the good, bad and the ugly of it, and how maybe we could reimagine something different. Thank you for actually accepting some of these, like heavy, deep, hard, practical questions that I threw at you because they were, I think they're good, something that we should wrestle with. I really think that as we're we're thinking about how, how we entertain, how we try to make God in our own image, how we have made people who are in or people who are out, we want to make sure that people look like us. All of those, those issues I think, are really good to deal with that we have to start to uncover what is behind those and really get to the what, what Richard Rohr says, the really real underneath everything. And when we do that, I think, hey, this world can be beautiful and camp can be beautiful. So thank you for wrestling with those things with me, and thank you for this conversation. It was fantastic. Thanks. Joshua, you
