Church Camp
On navigating the pain of nostalgia, and denouncing the policing of girl’s and women's bodies
The prompt for this poem (another final semester creative writing class in undergrad) was to write a long poem. So yes, it’s long.
After dropping bags in the cabin and claiming a bunk, the dock is the first place I go. Bright gold glitters on the horizon and girls chatter and giggle, cherished lanyards decorating necks, bandanas tied on foreheads. I smile at the greenish Bay and seaweed strung along sandy beach. I was baptized in these waters, and they never stopped calling out to my soul. I remember the first time I saw this sunset. Standing beside a boy I’d befriended on the bus ride, we marveled together at the view. Later, my counselor told me to stop hanging out with him; she didn’t want me to “get distracted.” At camp, the beauty of nature is just as prominent as enforced rules about “purpling:” guys are blue, girls are red, “we don’t make purple.” The beauty of camp is just as strong as adults’ distrust of boys and girls and their sexualities. * A horn sounds, and us hungry teenagers bust open doors of the dining hall, rushing to receive greasy prey, claiming tables voraciously, like territory. When we sit, we quiet and eagerly await for the platters to be brought to us. First, a camp leader greets us and blesses lasagna, breadsticks, and lemon cake, that we may be nourished by them— and us campers quietly hope the prayer also applies to midnight cabin snacks. We feast, chat and laugh as TobyMac plays in the background. * Water and soap hosed out onto black tarp. I’m in my bathing suit, a two-finger width strap tank top and swim shorts (‘cause modest is hottest, and at camp it’s also required). I’m unsure if I’ll take the leap. My cabin buddy Grace convinces me, and I slip and slide. Later, we grab socks filled with flour— colored red, blue, yellow, pink— and throw it at each other, creating murals on our bodies. My cheeks covered in robin’s egg blue and shoulders sprinkled with green, I dance on the grass, swaying my hips. No one calls me a distraction. The flour covers enough of my skin. * Bodies push together as we wait for doors to open, sweaty from adventures on the field. Middle schoolers press faces to glass, and adults inside smile at them. When doors open, teenagers wildly stampede into the theater, again grabbing seats like territory (we all know the first row is best but it’s only for the seniors). The clock on the screen says two minutes left. Family Force 5 blasts from the speakers, and I again start dancing, pulling and pumping my hand back and forth to “Chainsaw.” Everyone gets out pens, pencils, journals, Bibles— some settle in with pillows or blankets. The clock says one-minute left. I leaf my fingers through pink Bible pages and smile at a few cabin buddies— Cassandra, Alyssa, Rachel, Abby. The clock says 10 sec— everyone stands, everyone starts yelling the numbers— 9… 8… 7—the worship team comes out, gets ready— 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… The drums start to boom and the crowd goes wild, hands held high. The lead singer backflips. * During the final song, tears fall from my face as music pounds throughout the space, the singer belting about the love of God. I wrap arms around Olivia and Sarah, all of us puffy-eyed. I never wonder if this is too much. If there’s a reason behind the lights and the loud music and the framing of all of it as “mountaintop experience.” I see teens fall to their knees and I praise God. Nothing compares to this, being in the theater surrounded by sweaty bodies and tears and the Holy Spirit. Nothing makes me happier. ************************ I always told my counselors I’d come back as a volunteer, but I never did. In the interview, I’d be told “You’re going to be counseling young girls. Will you encourage them to be modest and keep them from flirting with boys? We don’t want anyone to get distracted…” I couldn’t say yes to that. I couldn’t tell beautiful young women, “Don’t make your brothers in Christ stumble,” as if their bodies were rocks on a trail or an exposed wire, dangerous unless tossed to the side. The beauty of that campsite and its bodily delights could not outweigh the cost of turning girls’ bodies into shamed objects. No matter how the waters still call me, I won’t dare dip my toe in. * I imagine myself coming back to those waters of the Bay, somehow on my own terms, no questions asked of me. I run to the end of the dock and then jump. My body plunges, letting feet touch mushy, algae-laden ground beneath. I hold my breath for a moment, burying my old evangelical self in waves, letting dirty water cleanse me and remind me of the goodness this camp gave me, and allow me to let go of the rest. And then I sprout back up, breathing freely in the sun.
So much of being an exvangelical, at least in my experience, is holding so much joy and pain at once, in the midst of the same memories. This poem is meant to highlight the fact that there were so many moments during church camp where I felt so alive in my body, but sometimes in the same breath, the same moment, my body was denigrated to be an object of danger, of sin, of shame. There were the beautiful sights, the delicious greasy food…and of course, there was so much movement and dancing. I think dancing was something that made my autistic soul so happy (dancing is one of my stims), and thankfully the flavor of evangelicalism I was in was not against dancing, so long as I was not shaking my ass too much. I have a memory I hold so dear of a friend telling me at church prom (yes, I went to church prom, but I also went to regular prom too, ok?), referring to me as I joyfully danced in my purple jumpsuit, that “Jesus loves that.” Whenever music was on, whether it was the just-for-fun Family Force 51 or the worship band, I would dance (to the worship music, I would do more swaying/foot tapping/moving my hands). In youth group I often felt so awkward, like I didn’t fit in (probably due to my neurodivergence and internalized homophobia), but when I danced, everyone around me went wild with encouragement, and my anxiety eased. It was a form of connection that didn’t require knowledge of social cues or of correct belief.
It was at church camp where I had the most fun and made the deepest friendship connections (or at least I thought that at the time…some friendships have endured but others dissolved quite easily), but also where purity culture ideas were strongest, because the counselors needed to keep us in line when we (most of us) didn’t have our parents around (I cannot even imagine the pressure for the folks who did have parents or family at camp). It was where I had my most intimate experiences with God, where I wrote so many prayers in my journal, where I first encountered Jesus and decided I wanted to follow him. It was where I was baptized by a youth pastor who…I don’t even want to know what words he would use to describe me now, if he knew about the confident queer woman I have become. The night I was baptized, as I fell asleep, I went through the names of all my cabin mates and then the name of everyone else I loved, praying for them, naming the struggles they were going through, and the hopes I had for their lives.
I remember the vulnerable storytelling that went on in cabin groups, and the clandestine dance parties (phones/tech were not allowed; like “female” skin, they were a distraction) that happened when the counselors weren’t around. I remember the times I shared my poetry. I remember hanging out with friends on the dock, looking at the sunset or the starry night sky. I think about the testimonies shared at the bonfire that would happen after the final sermon, many puffy eyes and stories of “getting saved.” I think about my friend writing in pen on my arm the Bible verse Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
Said friend is happily queer now, as are many of my friends from youth group. It makes me so happy when I see friends from camp flourishing as their full selves, but I also mourn all the shit that we had to go through. We should have been able to have fun at church camp without our bodies being shamed, without feeling like we couldn’t become just friends with someone of the opposite sex, without feeling like we were being watched, expected to be the Good Christian Girl. It is honestly a dream of mine to rent out the campsite my church used (they actually rented from a secular nature/science-based campsite) so that all us burnt-out GCGs could have fun swimming in that kinda gross Chesapeake Bay water together, baptizing ourselves on no one else’s terms but the God who created us, Christ that redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit that sustains us.
Did you go to church camp? What are your most vivid memories from it, or what memories came up for you as you read this? When did you feel alive in your body and being at camp and when did you feel disconnected, or objectified by bad theology?
Seminary life update: I have really been enjoying the readings for my God, Gender, Sexuality class (a chapter of Radical Love by Patrick Cheng totally blew my mind, talking about God as a top), but I decided this week to switch to auditing the course (so I will still attend class each week and do some readings, but none of the big assignments). I was at two credits over full time and turns out that although I could handle that in undergrad, I can’t handle that when I also have a part-time job. Now I will have more time to focus on the bigger assignments for the classes required for my degree (there are no required electives for my degree), so that feels good.
Here is me dancing to “Chainsaw.”