Bible Camp and the Gospel of Certainty (PK Confessions)

In the summer, Southern Baptist kids go to bible camp.

By "bible camp," I mean a largish, out-of-the-way estate that hosts successive weeks of Southern Baptist evangelical mini-conferences. Churches from all over sign up to send their youth (plus various chaperons/adult volunteers) for this or that particular week. For six nights and seven days--Sunday afternoon through Saturday morning--they occupy a time-shared cabin (generally fully equipped with kitchen/bathrooms/rooms/bunk beds). Daily schedules take campers through recreational activities, individual skill/bible study classes, meals, and worship services (two to three a day, generally).

Being a preacher's kid, I attended bible camps throughout my childhood (camps are generally for middle- to high-school students). In Oklahoma, the go-to Baptist camp is Falls Creek. In south Louisiana, we went to Acadian Baptist Center (ABC).

The camps aimed mainly at evangelism--basically confronting young campers the Two Big Questions (Are you going to heaven? Are you leading others to the Lord?). The worship speakers would mainly be either missionaries (stories of spreading the word overseas, overcoming hardships, etc.) or revivalistic preachers (read: preachers who could capture and keep the attention of X-thousands of teens).

Evening worship services were typically the longest, about 2 hours or so of music and the sermon. The whole week's worship services lead up to Friday night--the final worship service--where the preacher pulls out all the stops. If he (and it's always a he) has a fire-and-brimstone in his repertoire, this is where he deploys it, pumping up anxiety about the Two Questions to generate a kind of mega-altar-call that (to my childhood mind) generally lasted for frickin' ever. "Just one more verse of 'I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,'" the pastor would say, and sure enough dozens more teenagers would clamber out of their pews and shuffle down the aisle to be counseled/prayed over by waiting adults.

Even as an easily bored child, I could tell that this was a Meaningful Event. I mean, the people moving down the aisles were often clearly moved, weeping openly and holding on to each other as they walked.

As I entered my teens, the questions I had about Genesis, about Revelation, and about everything in between multiplied. I also began listening more closely to these camp meeting sermons and lessons. I quickly realized, though, that one shouldn't go to ABC or Falls Creek expecting help thinking through, say, how an all-powerful and all-loving God could allow someone raised in a wholly other culture/religion to suffer for eternity in Hell after death.

Bible camps weren't so much about grappling with such questions. Rather, these camps mobilize the Gospel of Certainty, the idea that Christian faith is a matter of unshakable knowledge. Knowledge that the Bible is literally true, that the hell is real, that Christ saves, and that Judgment is coming. With these certainties in place, the only questions allowed are the Big Two: Are you Going to Heaven? (Yes! Though it couldn't hurt to rededicate myself...) Are you evangelizing? (Yes! Though I could do more...).

These were really the only topics that mattered. Every other realm of inquiry could and should be subsumed by one or both of those Questions. And heaven help you (literally) if your questions led you to a less-than-full endorsement of the pretexts for the Big Two.

See, doubt--doubt about the literal truth of the Bible's every word, doubt about the specifics of salvation, doubt about the workability of loving with all our hearts a God who threatens us with Eternal Torment and Flying Scorpions from the Pit--any doubt indicated a terminal weakness in our faith life. It was the devil (or, less stridently "the world") tempting us away from the saving power of the Gospel. Real Christians overcome doubt, quashing down or shoving aside troublesome voices from culture or from our wicked intellect.

Now, I have nothing against a strong faith. Nor do I subscribe to a model of Christian faith that consists of a paralyzing quagmire of confusion. But it was at camps like Falls Creek and ABC that I learned to distrust evangelical certainty.

What's to distrust? More tomorrow.

JF