The Role of Retreats

This morning I dropped my oldest child off for Oakcrest summer camp at a LDS “stake center”. There were hordes of 12 and 13-year-old girls about. My daughter had some trouble locating her stake leader, but eventually figured it all out and settled down on the lawn to chat with her fellow camp-goers. It looks like she’s going to have a fun week.

I am reminded of similar camps when I was a youth. There was the school-run sixth-grade-camp I went to, from Darnestown Elementary. One night I was woken up, convinced it was morning and that I had KP duty, then locked out of the dormitory with a leering, red-headed kid named Kevin sticking his tongue out at me. He turned off the lights, and left me screaming at the top of my lungs while pounding the door for Mr. Yoxheimer to eventually wake up and, grumpily, let me back in.

That Kevin kid was a jerk.

I am reminded also of the stark contrast such camps were to the religious campouts I went to as a youth. Similar to sixth-grade camp, there was no shortage of peer-on-peer cruelty. For instance, at Goshen Scout Camp, one of my camp-mates thought it would be funny to crack a rotten egg on my sleeping bag while I slumbered therein. Those kinds of shenanigans are painfully well-remembered. I learned what it meant to be the new kid in a school full of children who’d known each other all their lives. To this day, I sometimes have difficulty figuring out when someone is having a laugh along with me, or ridiculing me.

On the other hand, the religious camps had the trappings of traditional summer camp, with a relentless focus on drawing moral or religious lessons from each activity. I would be pulled aside regularly for one-on-one interviews in which I was pressured by an adult to talk about my most private experiences and have that used as a lever to get me to go along with whatever the doctrine du jour was. The one that stands out most, actually, wasn’t at a LDS summer camp: it was a Methodist summer camp that I attended with my girlfriend (we were trying to convert one another), where the counselors were aghast that I had no interest in “surrendering” to Jesus.

My logic at age 16 went something like this: “What’s the point of surrendering when there was never a war to begin with?” Using the word “surrender” to describe one’s relationship to a deity implies there was some sort of conflict that you’re giving up. If you feel you are living your life in harmony with your god’s wishes — despite a few failings — what need is there to surrender? Why not use the word “negotiation”, or perhaps “subsume”, or “obey”?

The camp counselor pounded me on this for around fifteen minutes, then gave up, saying “Well, I understand where you’re coming from, but until you are saved and surrendered to Jesus, you won’t understand.”

Similarly, I was pulled aside for a several-hour seminar on the evils of masturbation at Priesthood camp. In particular, the counselor focused on “mutual masturbation” — the male-LDS-1980’s euphemism for homosexuality — and cautioned us not to give in to peer pressure to do that while at camp. We were then pulled aside for individual interviews with our priesthood leaders, and the only thing I remember getting asked about was whether or not I wanked, at what frequency, and what mediation plan we should come up with to stop it.

The other facet of summer camp that was part of the mind-job was the isolation. This lack of outside contact provides a fertile ground to enter a reality-distortion field, where you can be convinced of many things. I recall another Scout camp where a boy had a broken leg for hours before they finally took him to the hospital, then only after they had him all put together again did they bother to inform the parents.

I understand that it’s nice to get away from it all and unplug for a week. But at summer youth camp you should be swimming, playing, and telling scary stories around the campfire, not being quizzed on your sexual practices, pressured into signing an instrument of surrender on the religious version of the USS Missouri, or hiding serious injuries from parents.

I have some concern that Utah, with a Greater-Reality-Distortion-Field surrounding it already, might amplify the weird and coercive influences I experienced as a child.

As I handed my daughter her blue information sheet to help her locate her leaders, I asked her if she had her cell phone. She replied, “No, Dad, we’re not allowed to bring our cell phone.”

I was briefly taken aback, and responded, “Sara, I don’t want to be a subversive influence on you, but please, remember who you are this week. Just because someone is an authority does not mean they are right. Some leaders and peers take advantage of summer camp to try to advance their own agendas. Have fun, but be willing to say ‘no’.”

“I’ll be OK, Dad” she replied.

And I think she will.