I attended a Texas church camp like Camp Mystic
My faith has changed, but I have never regretted my time there
I can’t stop thinking about the girls of Camp Mystic, the all-girls church camp that was ravaged by the flash flood that surged with little warning on July 4th. Twenty seven girls and staff have died in the devastating flood. Ten campers and one counselor are still missing.
The tragedy hits close to home. Thirty years ago I was also a girl at a Texas church camp. I spent every summer at Lake Cisco Christian Camp in West Texas.
The name was a bit of a misnomer because it was located several miles from the nearest body of water. Instead of a lake, we swam in an outdoor pool that smelled so strongly of chlorine it burned my nostrils and gave my best friend’s blonde hair a tinge of green.
The blue of that pool. The red dirt of West Texas. The pastel pink sunsets. The orange flicker of the campfire. The landscape of my childhood is painted with the colors of camp.
After my parents’ divorce, camp was a dependable and stabilizing force when life felt topsy-turvey. I was earnest about my faith, excited to sing and pray and learn more about Jesus.
Camp became the place where belief and commitment coalesced, inspiring me to get baptized at age 12. Under the stars of a broad Texas night sky, the camp director asked if I believed Jesus died for my sins. I said yes, and he dunked me under water, a symbol of my willingness to shirk worldly desires and follow God. When I rose out of the baptistry, water dripping from my hair, all the other campers and counselors were cheering, welcoming me like a long-lost sister.
Sisterhood is a big theme with the alumni of Camp Mystic. The camp’s social media is dotted with photos and videos of campers canoeing, performing skits, and listening to sermons on the stone amphitheater seats overlooking the Guadalupe River. In so many of the images, the campers throw their arms around each other, their suntanned faces stretched into wide smiles. Sunsets. Songs. Sisterhood.
In the offseason, Camp Mystic hosts reunions in major Texas cities. From the photos, it appears campers of all ages attend, proving that their bonds don’t end when camp is over.
Organized youth camping began in the late 1800s as a way to get boys away from the breakneck pace of city life and toughen them up in the great outdoors. In the 1900s, people began to embrace religious conferences and tent revivals, which propelled the popularity of spiritual youth camps for both sexes, according to Cara Meredith’s Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation.
These camps strongly emphasized religious experience and spiritual conversion, and mine was no exception. Campers were encouraged to be baptized. Every minute of the day was meticulously planned to include a mix of socialization, activity, and theology. The morning began with a devotional, followed by relay races or a game of softball or volleyball. Mid-morning we would head to the canteen for a snack before settling down for a Bible lesson.
After lunch, it was time for arts and crafts. Several years in a row, I made a cross out of nail art. The afternoon always included swimming, more silly games, and a sliver of free time before dinner and evening worship. Every night ended with an altar call, an invitation by the camp director to search our hearts and commit to a life of following Jesus.
When we weren’t told to draw closer to God, we were encouraged to draw closer to each other.
Unlike Camp Mystic, the camp I attended was co-ed and had its own traditions. On the next-to-last day of camp, each boy took off one shoe and placed it in a pile in the center of the softball field encircled by the female campers. When the camp director blew his whistle, the girls rushed the pile, grabbing a shoe of the boy she liked. The shoe’s owner would be their date to the banquet that night.
The summer after my sophomore year, I fought harder than I ever had before for one shoe in particular, the dirty high-top Reebok that belonged to my camp crush, Charles. We’d been going to camp together for years and wrote each other letters in the offseason. Charles grinned when I emerged with his shoe. My heart beat wildly.
But when I learned that Charles had a serious girlfriend back home that he failed to mention in any of his letters, I felt betrayed. I wished I’d thrown the shoe in his face. Charles was not the kind of person I could draw closer to.
It wasn’t the last time I would feel betrayed. A faith that seemed simple and idyllic in the controlled environment of camp became confusing and complicated in the real world, especially when I began to notice the people that my white evangelical community left behind – LGBTQ+ individuals, Black and brown brothers and sisters, immigrants, and the poor.
The ultimate duplicity from the spiritual leaders of my youth came in 2016 when 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, a man whose policy decisions and lifestyle were to counter everything I knew about the nature of Jesus. Like Charles’s shoe, I wished I could throw their words back in their faces, regurgitating the lessons they taught me and making clear the contradiction of their beliefs.
For years I thought that I would never again trust the type of unflinching faith I felt at church camp.
But recently, I’ve learned that a faith that evolves and shifts is healthier than a spirituality that stalls after high school. My faith is strong, not weak, for the ways it has changed over time. Just as I have grown beyond camp – so have my beliefs. As a Christian, I want to be known for who I include, not who I exclude.
These days I no longer belong to a spiritual community, preferring to worship God outside in nature rather than in a church building.
Still, I’m grateful I began developing my beliefs in the gentle cradle of church camp. I built a strong spiritual foundation to withstand the rocky terrain of human error. I’m comforted to think that the girls at Camp Mystic were at the beginning of their spiritual journey, connecting the dots between joy and Jesus, friendship and faithfulness.
Onward, Democracy Defenders
I am considering starting a pretty casual book club for Project 2025 Takedown readers as part of my mission to connect on a deeper level with all of you. I’m thinking about making the first book the one I referenced in this post: Cara Meredith’s Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Nights, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation. There’s a through line here between Evangelicalism, Christian Nationalism, and Project 2025.
I bet we could even get Cara to come on a Substack Live with us. What do you think, Democracy Defenders? Leave a comment and let me know!
