MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Amy Julia’s Live, In-Person Workshop on May 3: Reimagining Family Life with Disability
• Free resource: 5 Ways to Experience God’s Love and Practice Peace
• Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

WATCH this conversation on YouTube by clicking here.

ABOUT:

Cara Meredith is a speaker, public theologian, and development director who found home at a church camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After serving in various roles, she continued as a speaker for two decades at camps up and down the West Coast. With a master of theology (Fuller Seminary) and a background in education and nonprofit work, she is also the author of The Color of Life. Her writing has been featured in national media outlets such as The Oregonian, The New York Times, The Christian Century, and Christianity Today, among others. She lives with her family in Oakland, California. CONNECT with Cara on her website (carameredith.com) or on Facebook and Instagram. 

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Note: This transcript is automatically generated and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Amy Julia (00:05)
Amy Julia Becker, this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. For some of us, Christian summer camp is where we felt most at home when we were kids. But for campers at white evangelical church camps in particular, camp also might have been the place we inherited at worst a toxic

and at best an incomplete image of God and of each other. Author, speaker, public theologian, Cara Meredith joins me today to talk about her new book, Church Camp, Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation. We explore our own experiences of Church Camp. We’re going to talk about the way we talk about Christianity, the way we pass our faith along to others, including our children. We are going to talk about reconstructing faith.

and deciding whether church camp is the right thing for your own child. If you are indeed like I am, someone who might be thinking about sending your kids to camp now in 2025. I also wanna mention before I get to this conversation, I have an in-person workshop, Reimagining Family Life with Disability. That’s happening in Bethel, Connecticut on May 3rd. And we will provide a link in the show notes and would love to see you there.

I’m also providing a link in the show notes to a free resource called Five Ways to Experience God’s Love. One of the things that has been a tremendous gift to me as an adult, which relates to this conversation with Cara Meredith, has been recognizing the love that God has for each and every one of us as beloved creatures. And I would love for you to have some ways to experience that as well. So please check the link in the show notes for a free resource if that resonates with you.

And now to my conversation with Cara Meredith.

Tara Meredith, welcome to Reimagining the Good Life.

Cara (02:11)
Amy Julia Becker, so excited to be here.

Amy Julia (02:15)
So I should probably tell listeners that Cara and I are friends. are both actual friends, but also like writing friends and have kind of grown up together in this world of thinking about faith and writing and culture, race and privilege, all sorts of good topics. And we are here today because Cara has written a new book. This title of this book, I’m just going to start with the title. We’ll get to the subtitle in a minute. Title is Church Camp.

And Cara, thought maybe this could be like a way to introduce yourself to the audience by talking about your experience, like what is church camp, but also your experience with church camp, like your history with it.

Cara (02:56)
Yes.

Well, church camp and this particular facet of church camp, which we’ll talk more about too, but this particular facet of church camp, which was within white evangelical or evangelical church camps, was something I spent a long, good, while, good part of my life in. I started going to camp when I was nine years old in 1988. So listeners can do the math there.

And I stayed really for the next 25, almost 30 years, not just as a camper, but then I started working at camps. I was a volunteer and then I was a summer staffer, meaning that I was a ropes course instructor for the summer, or I was the program director.

And then after I finished college, I became a high school English teacher, but I still wanted to stay at camp, although I didn’t want to necessarily be there for the whole summer. So then I became a camp speaker. And that really took up the last 15, almost 20 years of my life in camping. I still had other jobs. I was never a full-time year-round employee, but…

I spent my summers as a camp speaker, going to different denominational and non-denominational camps, as well as Young Life camps and speaking. And that’s what I did. So those were some of my identities in the church camp world of which hundreds of thousands of children and perhaps some listeners as well, spend their summers now. It is a huge part of American culture, camping in general, but religious camps in particular are a huge part of our culture at large.

Amy Julia (04:39)
So let’s start with what you love about church camp because obviously there was something that drew you back over and over and over again well into your adult years and yet this book also is uncovering some of the reasons that you now have a lot of hesitation about church camp. So, but I thought we’d start with just what you love. Like what, kept you going?

Cara (04:58)
Yeah. As I say in the book, camp is one of the dearest places to me. It is one of the most formative places for who I am now. I would not be who I am if it weren’t for church camp. So many of my best friends came from that place. And for me, church camp

was a place of belonging, but it was a place of identity. It was a place of fun and silliness and goofiness. It was campy. It was full of God and spirituality and Jesus and was just the most beautiful place that I felt like I could be my silliest, goofiest, most spiritual self as well. So it was a place that rewarded me as an extrovert.

It was a place that I thrived and it was a place that I found a home in for a long time. I didn’t always love the food. Sometimes camp food is good. Sometimes it’s bad. I loved the songs. One thing I lamented in this book, I wanted to start every chapter with a song, but I am not a millionaire and I cannot afford the rights to so many of the songs. But singing, I mean, that was something we did.

throughout, I mean, was like we started the day singing and we ended the day singing. So those are some of the things I loved. And I hope that readers, when they read it, they also hold the tension of the both-and, including a lot of those positive parts.

Amy Julia (06:33)
Yeah, I would imagine for some readers, this book is going to be like a big relief because they have are going to feel seen and named in terms of both what you said. Like, yeah, that was a place where I felt a lot of belonging and that was a place where I felt whether it was exclusion or like this was oversimplified or I felt manipulated or whatever else. I think there’ll be others, though, who because of just having really, really fond memories of church camp who might be like.

I don’t understand like what is going on here because then this takes us to the subtitle. The subtitle is, so we’ve got titled Church Camp, subtitled Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation. So obviously there’s some things that you feel, you know, maybe you don’t love about Church Camp. And I think that word betrayal might be a good one. And I wanted to ask if you could talk about like what…

What do you see as betrayal embedded within church camp, but also like that word in particular, because there’s a deep emotion underneath the word betrayal, at least in my understanding of it. And it’s not, again, it’s not just like a rational critique. It’s like a heartfelt, really hard thing to feel betrayed. I don’t know that we can be betrayed by someone or something that we don’t already love. So.

Could you just speak about the subtitle in general, especially that idea of betrayal?

Cara (08:00)
Yeah, we went back and forth on the subtitle a lot. And I will say just from the outset, before I get to the betrayal piece, there is a lot in the subtitle. I wanted it to convey both a lightheartedness and a heaviness, because I think that’s actually part of the reality, not only of this conversation, but of the book and of paradox as a whole. So you have bad skits, which are so often a

part of this campy environment. You have Cry Night, which I unpack in the book that was an almost universal experience for everyone that I interviewed. I interviewed almost 50 people for the book and whether it was called Cry Night or some other name, there was always some variation of that. And then you have again how white evangelicalism betrayed a generation. And I love how you just defined it in saying that you can’t necessarily have

a betrayal unless it really is of your heart. And so for me, when I think about that betrayal, there’s a betrayal that happens or happened in that happens now, certainly, but also happened then not only to a number of people, but also to the institution as a whole. So a lot of this book was birthed out of the harm that I saw happen and or starting to happen that really had been there all along.

but that was happening to three people groups in particular, to women, to people of color, and to the LGBTQ community. At the place in which there should be the most belonging, there was oftentimes exclusion. And it happened in different ways to, again, the aforementioned groups. But to me, that is a betrayal of who God is. It’s a betrayal of the person of Christ that is so often proclaimed.

from the front of the stage that children, campers, kids, humans in general are being invited to give their lives to and walk alongside to put this invitation to belonging out there, which is an invitation of the heart. And then to say, but you can’t actually belong, and I’m putting my hand up here, but you can’t actually belong unless you believe these things, unless you are this thing. So I think that’s part of where the betrayal

happens or starts for me when I think about the book.

Amy Julia (10:23)
Can you give like a couple of examples, maybe a story or two, either from your own experience or from some of the interviews you did? You mentioned three different groups, so whether with one of those groups or all three, I just would love to kind of flesh out a little bit of what you’re saying there.

Cara (10:37)
Yeah, I mean, I can go down the list. So for women, this was in particular in chapter two. The reality is that camps, a lot of these camps, as they fall under the evangelical umbrella, oftentimes there’s a message that’s proclaimed from the front and it’s an invitation to believe in or to follow the figure of God. So we might introduce people to the Trinity.

campers to the Trinity. But the way in which God is proclaimed is 100 % male, is oftentimes solely as a father figure. And for me, as someone who, I do still believe in God. I do still, I am still part of the Christian tradition. I’m on the other side of the pond now as an Episcopalian, but I do still find a home in the Christian church.

I also believe that God is not nor should God solely be constructed by male terminologies, that it actually does harm. So in a camp setting, if we are limiting God to this one particular facet, we’re not only limiting who God is, the image or idea or person of God, but we’re also then limiting the people, the listeners who are hearing it. So we’re…

we’re effectively saying there’s only those who are most accepted in this environment are those who are like God, which is to say men or males. think that’s where we get patriarchal values are very much a part of it. We could also look at complementarianism that denotes certain roles for men and women, for boys and girls, those who are most celebrated, most valued, and those who are then not. And it also really plays into

purity culture. That comes out quite a bit, which purity culture is hugely detrimental to women in particular because of what women or girls are asked to do.

Amy Julia (12:40)
Some of my listeners, I’m guessing, don’t know what purity culture is. And so there some who are going to be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and others who are like, what is she talking about? So you just say a little bit there as well. And again, for anyone who’s interested, you’ve got more on all of these in the book. But.

Cara (12:56)
Well, let me just read you a paragraph in the book if that’s okay. Whenever purity culture rears its supposedly innocent blemish free head, women are made to feel responsible for the sexual thoughts, feelings and choices men make. And so must dress, walk and talk in just the right way so as not to inspire sexual thoughts, feelings and actions in them. So you have within this purity culture, a movement that really

came into being within evangelicalism in the 90s. There’s an invitation into purity, but there’s an invitation that comes at the expense of women. And it shows up at an in camp. I think those are, I think that’s just within the women’s side when it comes to queer or LGBTQ identifying people.

because camps are religious institutions, they’re effectively allowed to discriminate. And so they can discriminate both against campers and against staff members. So there were multiple instances of people that I interviewed and of stories certainly that I found online, but of queer identifying people who were kicked out, who were not allowed to come. And then when it comes to people of color, the reality is that church camps were…

started, church camps started in the late 19th century. You had these movements of getting young white men out of cities, out of urban environments, into the woods. And the reality of that happening 150 years ago, the reality of that is that church, church camps have continued, religious camps have continued to benefit people who are white. And even though

I would say almost universally, most church camps have policies that do not allow discrimination toward people of color. This particular facet of the church camp environment, which is not to say camps overall, but within religious Christian camping, nearly 85 % serve and or are served by those who identify as white. And to me, when I look at that, that shows us that there’s something that’s

that’s awry, that’s off a little bit. And that’s not even to say, that’s not even to bring in some of the stories of racism and discrimination that are oftentimes experienced by people of color in these environments.

Amy Julia (15:27)
Yeah, so there’s all of you know, again all of those things that Are both in terms of a history as well as a more recent lived reality might go into that idea of betrayal because of the other realities of christianity as a religion that says Love is at the core Everyone belongs Welcome, welcome, welcome. And honestly, I think church camp in particular is trying

to at least my understanding of it, provide a pretty basic message that is meant to be accessible to people who have not heard about this, what is called good news about Jesus before. So that was one of my questions because I think this is, guess, backing up in the subtitle to the cry night idea, because one of the aspects of your book that is laced throughout, but also I talked to some other people who’ve.

had church camp experiences and asked them about this? Like, did you feel manipulated essentially by the way the message was conveyed? I mean, again, my very handful of people I happened to talk to were like, yeah, absolutely. And that I will say, as someone who went to church camp, I did not have the experience of emotional manipulation, but I do think that is a common one. So I’m curious about that experience, I guess, but also about how we…

do explain the Christian faith in a way that holds onto the simplicity, but also like a deeper nuanced truth or invitation. So I’m curious just how you think about, you know, the way your book is structured is like this basic message of, you know, God, sin, Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, or how, you know, some formula essentially of like how to get to know the basics of Christianity. And it’s not a bad thing to give people a primer on like,

Here’s what you need to know. And yet that can also kind of go awry. So how do we talk about Christianity or explain the Christian faith in a way that is both simple and true?

Cara (17:30)
Yeah, I’ll start with cry night and then I’ll I’ll get to that point. this was one of the so I think we have to go back to the origins. So I talk about this in the very beginning of the book in Chapter one, the reality for so many church camps across denominations and those that identify as non denominational and parachurch organizations. The reality under this umbrella of white evangelicalism is that the point of church camp is to convert.

The point of church camp is to see conversion. And that is not something I would have stated or even believed 20 years ago when I was deep in the trenches of it. I would have said, well, we’re introducing kids to Jesus. And of course, we would love to see them come to know Christ on the other side. But the reality is that everything that is preached from the front, everything that everyone else does is to complement this idea of

introducing and hopefully converting children or campers or humans to the Christian faith. This is what donors are most attracted to. This is what donors give to. This is why camps count numbers at the end of every week and then give those numbers to donors at the end of a summer camping season because that’s what they give their dollars to. So in that you have this idea of how do we get from point A to point B or maybe it’s point A to point Z.

which is to say to conversion. If we want to get to conversion, then we have to have a message that will convert. And so there were so many folks that I talked to. And this again was, I was like, I just interviewing the same people? But I wasn’t. I was interviewing folks from a wide range of traditions, those who saw absolutely nothing wrong with church camp and those who wanted to burn it all down.

those who had incredible experiences, those who held the tension of paradox. And within this, there were so many folks who just said, well, the reason why this universal message that is not only of Christianity, I would say, but of evangelical versions of Christianity was preached is because it is the one that works. that’s where you have Bill Bright, 1956, Campus Crusade for Christ. He introduces

or creates what’s called the four spiritual laws that I’m sure at least folks from more evangelical denominations will remember. But it’s when you then have the tract that was handed out and you had God on one side and man, it was never a woman, but man on the other side of two cliffs and how desperately they wanted to get together, but sin stood in the way. And the only way that sin could be remedied, that God and man could be together was through Jesus on the

And so with that, the way that story was also told, and the way I would say that it was made most convincing in order to convert was through a theory called penal substitutionary atonement that errs heavily on the side of a wrathful, angry God that needs to be appeased for the death of his son. And from that, that’s where you oftentimes get

what some may now see as emotional manipulation, as group think ideologies, as emotionality at large, where for kids or campers at a week at camp, we’re going to use this particular theory to introduce Jesus because we know also that it’s gonna have a response. But from that, I think there’s scarring that happens along the way.

I think that it is not, to then get to the second half of your question, the only way to introduce God. So for those who might be theology nerds, and I know you and I can be theology nerds. Yeah. But for me, I remember one of the most eye-opening times in, I don’t even remember what theology class it was. It was probably a systematic theology course, but was realizing or learning that there was more than one atonement theory.

Amy Julia (21:26)
Definitely in that camp.

Cara (21:45)
There was more than one way to describe, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of ways to describe what happened or to theorize about what happened to Jesus on the cross. But within evangelicalism, the one that is most readily employed is the one that works and is the one that gets the most converts, which is penal substitutionary atonement. And I would argue it’s not the only way.

So I think as far as what we can do or what we can say, I think first we just say, well, what would it look like instead to not have that need to count heads of those who dedicated their lives or rededicated their lives or said they would get baptized or whatever it was? What if we just let God be God in an environment like this? There’s so much power. You and I spend a lot of time outdoors. Half the times that we speak to one another.

One of us, we’re walking, we’re walking outside and we are basking in nature. And to me, there’s, when we do that and when we let ourselves be enveloped by the beauty of that which is around us, which Christians might call creation, we don’t actually need to do very much because God is already doing the doing. So what would it mean in the same way to simply let kids

go and be in these spaces in which they are separated from screens, in which we are just opening up this place, which is already so full of beauty, and saying, just go and encounter God. I think then it doesn’t have to be about convincing. It can simply be about giving the message. What would it look like instead to simply say from the front of the stage, God loves you. You are God’s beloved every single night.

What would it look like to employ a Christus Victor, right? That’s what the Lutherans, what ELCA tradition, that’s what they believe in. They’re just like, Christ is the Victor and that’s all that matters. And here it is. So there are so many different ways that the gospel can be presented and it doesn’t have to be presented in a way that makes kids or campers feel horrible about themselves. Like they killed Jesus and the only way they can right this wrong is to

pay back the debt that God paid for them. There are other ways.

Amy Julia (24:13)
Yeah, I remember actually it’s funny because again, I had pretty positive experiences with church camp, although again, in a different kind of realm of the church on some level than what you’re talking about. And I remember one person saying to me, know, there are multiple ways in which we can come to understand God’s love for us. And sometimes that is through the path of sin. Like we recognize our own.

shortcomings and then we realize God loves us and that’s kind of this overwhelming, I can’t believe it and I’m so grateful. The other way is just to be like, God loves me? Well, that’s wonderful. How great. And he wasn’t saying, and therefore, if you feel that way, you don’t have any questions about sin in your life. But also that there’s not, it was the first time, I guess, that I was kind of introduced to that idea of there are multiple ways in which we come to understand truth about who God is.

And I think the other thing that I appreciate about and appreciated when I first learned to your point that like there are multiple ways to understand what happened on the cross is that actually part of that is because God doesn’t work in formulaic ways. We can’t put the work of God in a box or in a tract or in a set of laws and that there’s actually a mystery to that. And so we can with humility give lots of different explanations and say,

just as Jesus did with parables. Well, here’s one way to think about it. And they’re all kind of giving you angles on something that is like deep and mysterious, but it doesn’t mean that they are like, that God is therefore completely inscrutable or unknowable, but actually just that there’s a real multiplicity and mysterious expansiveness to who God is. And that, think, as you said, it’s not that that could not be presented in some compelling invitational way.

but it would be a lot harder to, maybe it would be harder to mass produce, to say, here’s what I need you to do, week after week and day after day, because it’s under just a bigger umbrella. And I wonder, maybe this gets to our next question. So one of the things that you mentioned is that often in the camp narrative, there’s a lot of emphasis on the cross with less emphasis on the resurrection.

And I wanted to ask you about that. And I thought it might have something to do with this sense of mystery, but maybe there’s other aspects of that story that you feel like, yeah, kind of works better in the camp context from the cross rather than the resurrection. I don’t know. What do you think?

Cara (26:49)
Yeah, I think for me, this was part of my, this conversation of the resurrection was actually part of what started to turn the wheels in my mind away from, I’m starting to mix metaphors, but away from that which I had been enveloped by and that which I had enveloped within the camp world.

But I remember reading N.T. nerding out on theologian N.T. Wright at one point. And I mean, so many of his books are about this. he in what is it? Surprised by hope, think. His phrase, he just says the resurrection and Christianity at large and what this whole thing is about, it’s about life after life after death. The resurrection is the most important part. And yet so often within Christian narratives,

The cross trumps everything else. Here we are, you and I, recording during Holy Week, which for those who are a part of the Christian tradition is the high week of the year. In a couple of days, we’re going to have Good Friday, which we would say, Christians might say, Good Friday is the cross day. It is one of the saddest days of the year. I have not always gone to a Good Friday service because a lot of times it is emotionally heavy.

And yet the reality is that Easter, which comes two days after Good Friday, trumps Good Friday every time. Like Easter then becomes the most important part. So oftentimes within a camp context, it’s because the cross, which we might say Good Friday, because the cross is the most important part, because of the system that we’re buying into, the theory that we’re buying into.

about how this has to be proclaimed becomes the most important part. The resurrection becomes an afterthought. It’s a side note to the bigger thing. And to me, that’s where, mean, literally as a camp speaker, I would give this big emotional camp talk. And the reality is that kids will come to know Jesus. A lot of times because they were sad, they felt bad about what Jesus had done. They wanted to say thank you. But I would forget.

to even mention from the stage until the next night. BT Dub, by the way, he’s not dead anymore. Like he rose again. Like again, that being the most important part. So within this conversation, and I’ve forgotten the thread now, but here’s one more quote. If death is a beaten enemy, and this is NT Wright.

then God is doing more to transform an unjust world than merely handing over a single admission ticket to the biggest, longest, and most ethereal show of all. So it becomes bigger than that one night. It becomes bigger than individualized versions of Christianity. It becomes global and collective because that’s what the resurrection does.

Amy Julia (29:59)
Yeah, I think one of my biggest kind of, I guess, critiques as an adult when I look back on my church camp experience and I also worked for a pair of church ministry that I still really love and I’m grateful for, but was an overly simple understanding of Jesus and Jesus’s work on the cross that really came down to the individual. And so I’m like all for a personal relationship with Jesus.

I like having one. would like to offer said relationship to many other people. And I think that it does so little to actually honor the story of the whole Bible, but also the story of God’s work in the world, which is sure individual in love and care and

cosmic in proportions. it’s so funny to think back to, you know, an opening night at camp where you’re talking about creation and yet you’re going to hone in on just like a 14 year old, you know, being a jerk to his parents as like what sin means in the world when it’s like, actually, actually, sin is the power of suffering, death, disease, everything evil, like the worst things that have ever happened in all of human history.

And maybe the fact that you were mean to your parents or your sister or whatever hints at that. Maybe. But like, please tell me there’s more going on when we talk about the work of Jesus on the cross, that it’s not it is overcoming the power of sin and death. Like, that’s unbelievable. It’s so big in its proportions. then to your point about the resurrection. Sure, this is about life after life after death for you. But guess what? God’s care and concern extends.

far beyond you. I don’t know. think for me that invitation when I finally realized, yes, I was being invited personally, but I was being invited to something that was so much more than me personally. And there was a mystery to that, but also like a beauty and then again, an expansiveness and really a tremendous wonder to the idea that God would continue to be at work in and among.

all of us and for us in this really big way. So I’m curious for you, like as you look back, I mean, that’s me sharing some of the ways, I wouldn’t even necessarily say my beliefs have changed as much as have like just really grown, you know, like there’s just been this tremendous expansion. And I’m curious to ask the same thing of you, like whether beliefs for you have changed, whether some have stayed the same as you kind of look back on this journey through the.

the wilderness or maybe not of church camp.

Cara (32:46)
Yeah, no, mean, my beliefs have morphed and evolved and changed. And also, I am who I am. And I am all the ages I have ever been, as Mylon Winkle once wrote. For me, spiritually, there has been movement from, as I previously mentioned, from more of an evangelical understanding of who God is to

to finding a home in the Episcopal Church and an understanding under the Anglican umbrella, which those are two wildly different ways of viewing God and of viewing Christianity at large. For me, the very last class I ever took in seminary, I don’t know if you know this, but it was a class on Anglican studies. And I would say that I was actually, I was on my way out at that point, but I hadn’t yet fully embraced it or realized it.

I wasn’t working in an evangelical space anymore. I used to be in full-time ministry with an evangelical organization. And so six months after I left working for this organization, I took this course and I remember just going, my gosh, I finally found what I’m looking for. You know, like it was one of those that I was like, this is what I believe. This is what makes sense. I remember the mystery, the embrace of mystery had never been a…

part of what I had understood as more black and white simplistic versions of faith, of right or wrong, of good and evil. And there was such gray to be enveloped that I appreciated. I oftentimes have, when I was writing this book, I thought to myself, well, is this just another deconstruction memoir? And the reality is that I hate the word deconstruction.

I think it’s overused. I have my own feelings around this, but I also recognize that there was a tearing down and a building back up. So maybe this is my reconstruction memoir. But I am a different person from who I used to be. And like I said before, I also hold with tenderness.

who I was and that which I believed and that which I proclaimed and was complicit in and When I’m when I’m falling asleep or when I’m scared It’s one of those that like some of the same songs that I sang like, know 30 years ago now are the songs that that begin to sing over me like right I start singing in my head as the deer and I’m sitting there going I don’t want to sing the song but it is the song that I sing or see key first like

sing Siki first right now. And yet that is the lullaby that plays over me because that is how God met me in song when I was 10 years old. And that is how God now meets me as a 46 year old woman. So yeah.

Amy Julia (35:53)
Yeah, and I really appreciate that. And I think that is one piece of all of this that is tempting for us as humans is to think that it’s only worthy of our attention and participation if it’s completely right. And there’s so much, in fact, everything we do as humans that is right.

Cara (36:16)
In fact, everything.

Amy Julia (36:21)
And I and I do think it’s important for us to remember the ways in which God works in messy, broken people who are also quite beloved. And that includes everyone who was, you know, speaking at cry night or who was, you know, there’s just, think, tremendously good intentions and desires, even amidst very fair critique of some of the outcomes as well some of the motivations, you know, on the the front end of that. And I think it’s important to name those things.

but also to name, and I’m sure again, for many listeners, they’re either like really happy memories of being at church camp or the equivalent, or even just like deep gratitude for what happened in our lives and in our stories. I wanted to end by asking actually a question for you as a mom, because there’s early on in the book, call yourself the girl who once called church camp the greatest place on earth.

who is now the woman who doesn’t know if she can send her own kids there. And I just wanted to ask you, you can speak to this however you want, whether it’s specific about church camp, but or more broadly, like, what is it that you want to pass along to your children when it comes to matters of faith? And how do you want to do that, especially if it’s not by sending them to camp?

Cara (37:39)
Yeah, no great question. When it comes to matters of faith, I want my children, I have two boys, I want my boys to know that they are loved beyond a shadow of a doubt by the God who loves them, who loves them for exactly who they are as they are. We are raising them in the Christian tradition. We are raising them in an Episcopal church.

They do go forward when we show up to church on a Sunday morning, which is not over Sunday morning. They go forward and they put their hands up at the altar for bread and for wine. And the priest blesses them and they receive that. they may not, they may have big doubts and questions and yet that is also exactly what I want them to have.

I realize and I recognize how so much of the environment in which I was raised, which is to say this evangelical environment, because it was an environment of right and wrong, of black and white, of certain versions of faith, of what you needed to believe in order to be most loved by God, that there were almost caveats of belonging that came with the Christian faith. And to me, I want the opposite.

I want belonging that is built on nothing except for the simple fact that God loves them. As far as that particular quote, part of it, I still have not sent my kids to camp. We had this thing around and across the globe called the pandemic. I felt like I…

Amy Julia (39:18)
With

camp plans, I mean.

Cara (39:20)
It did kind of get in the way, but it was one of those that that would have been a prime time to start sending my kids to camp in those years. And yet we didn’t start because we couldn’t. And now on the other side, they don’t necessarily have a desire to go to camp. But it’s also one of those that the reality is that a lot of the camps that are the biggest and brightest and funnest, if I can make that a word, are

these camps that fall under alignment with what I’ve written about. And yes, I could have conversations with my kids before and after camp as far as what we believe and just putting that firm foundation there. But I also recognize for my children who are mixed race, who identify either as mixed race or as black, that this may not be the best environment for them.

And that is something that their racial identity is just as big a part, if not sometimes more a bigger part than their spiritual identity. And I don’t want or need that discounted or stomped upon. So that’s also part of my own reckoning is just realizing this may not be the best environment for them. If they are one of…

you know, 15 % of kids of color, is that really the best environment for them to be in?

Amy Julia (40:51)
Yeah. And I also think, you know, one of the, as you said, well, I wonder how much the experience and, know, some researcher can probably tell me this, but of that more regular and less fun and less spectacular experience of standing at the altar rail or sitting in the pew or hearing your mom sing Siki first in the background.

But those things do shape and form our children, even if they don’t have these dramatic moments very often. We don’t want to discount the very ordinary work of God in our very ordinary lives. Well, Cara, thank you so much for giving us this time and also for the work that has gone into both researching and writing this book. Again, I’m really sure there will be listeners to this podcast and readers out there who are very, very grateful.

that you wrestled with this topic. And again, yes, it’s about camp, but it’s also about, think for anyone who, has come of age within a religious system that has a lot of certainty that feels maybe like it shouldn’t have been quite so certain. but who also wants to hold onto that sense of the deep love and mysterious welcome that God offers us. So thank you for doing that work.

Cara (42:15)
Thank you, my friend.

Amy Julia (42:20)
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. Again, I would love to see you at the in-person workshop for Reimagining Family Life with Disability happening in Bethel, Connecticut on May 3rd. I’d also love for you to take advantage of the free resource, Five Ways to Experience God’s Love. You can find both of those in the show notes. I’m excited for the rest of this podcast season. Got some upcoming conversations with Emily Hunter McGowan.

In Miroslav Volf, we’re going to be talking about faith and family, as well as about the cost of ambition. You can always send questions or suggestions my way. My email is amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. I would love for you to continue to share this and other conversations with other people and rate or review it so that more people know that it’s out there and get to be a part of thinking and talking about these matters.

Thank you, Jake Hansen, for editing this podcast. Thank you, Amber Beery, for doing all the things to make sure that it happens. I hope that this conversation helps all of you to challenge assumptions, proclaim belovedness, and envision a world of belonging where everyone matters. Let’s reimagine the good life together.