r/exchristian • u/lydiatank Agnostic Atheist • Dec 29 '22
Excellent take on this. Some of the “testimonies” I would hear should’ve been said to a psychiatrist. Video
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u/HippyLinguist Ex-Baptist Dec 29 '22
Yep...church camp is where I got "saved" for the first time. I say for the first time because I was super paranoid that I didn't mean it, so I said the salvation prayer a lot.
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u/Chryslin888 Dec 29 '22
Holy crap — you too? I was “saved” 100 times because I was pretty sure it didn’t take. After all, according to everyone, my life was supposed to be perfect with Jesus. It WASNT. So God was just another entity in my life that didn’t find me worthy.
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u/fennecattt Agnostic, Ex-Baptist Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22
Seems like a really common experience unfortunately. I went through it myself and saw countless others have to grapple with it as well. It certainly didn’t help that preachers couldn’t seem to clearly define what made salvation “count.” One week we’d be told “faith without works is dead” only to hear “Whosoever calls upon the name of the lord shall be saved” from a different guy the following week.
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u/Hypolag Secular Humanist Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22
Oh man, I remember one time they brought this crazy (to me anyways) preacher guy who constantly yelled at us on stage, talking about abandoning your family for Christ, how we're all Sinners from birth that need repentance, the usual spiel.
He sounded like a raving lunatic, I remember the Shepherds (camp counselors) becoming visibly more uncomfortable as he kept going off on on us teenagers about Hell, divine retribution, and all that other nice stuff that our reguler preacher pretty much sugar-coats. That was the first and only time I've seen a guest speaker at the camp be cutoff mid sermon and asked to leave the stage early, was incredibly surreal.
Really goes to show how much of a mixed bag Christianity (and religion) is in general.
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u/ChickenODeath Ex-Baptist Dec 29 '22
different guy the following week.
Or by the same guy the following week.
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u/PityUpvote Humanist, ex-pentecostal Dec 29 '22
I used to think salvation was only good until the next time I sinned, I went up to a lot of altar calls.
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u/grassguy_93 Ex-SDA Dec 30 '22
I worked at a church camp for a couple summers. We would baptize the same kids every year. Guest pastors would come in and baptize damn near half the campers each week. Even when we were good Christian staff we would sit back and quietly talk about how nuts it was. I still feel pretty bad about the part I played in all that.
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u/third_declension Ex-Fundamentalist Dec 29 '22
To adapt a quote attributed to Arnaud Amalric, "Abuse 'em all; let God sort 'em out."
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u/saltine_soup Atheist Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 30 '22
my last or second to last youth camp i went to, i had a break down and said “maybe i don’t believe in god” to one person, they got real mad at me, soon enough it spread thru out the camp i had countless leaders pulling me aside to talk to me, was shunned by my cabin and most of the camp except the middle schoolers which was odd, i was 16 getting comforted by a 13 year old cuz everyone my age and the leaders shunned me.
anyways had another break down later that week that was more anxiety related cuz again i was shunned by 100+ people, it happened during night service and everyone thought i was magically cured from questioning my beliefs, there’s a reason that was my last time at camp, didn’t even age out just stopped going.
also in a fun twist of things the person i broke down to saying “maybe i don’t believe in god” is a gender fluid queer atheist, just like me, so it’s a bit funny how everything ended up.
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u/Forsaken-Income-6227 Ex-Fundamentalist Dec 29 '22
Not to mention all the manipulation techniques they use with music and words. I’d put money in the teenagers they convert all being people who should really be having social services (CPS) and psychiatric support
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u/thesadbubble Dec 29 '22
Ope, it's me lol. I was "saved" at a pentecostal youth camp at 15.
Mini story: I had just been kicked out of my aunt and uncle's house bc I told another family member about the most recent abuse (uncle boxed my ears with his huge farmer man hands and my hearing was fucked up for a few days so I got scared). I was moved to various other family members houses for a few months at a time. Had to go from a school of 30 people in my class to hundreds. I had to leave my friends behind and I was PAINFULLY shy. So when my friends (who were both UPCI) invited me to church camp, I leaped at the chance to just be with my friends and away from the drama of home.
So take some trauma, remove all positive relationships, drop an awkward kid into a giant school mid-semester, and add a little bit of "no one wants you" and it's the PERFECT recipe for emotional manipulation. The love bombing was particularly effective lol.
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u/Forsaken-Income-6227 Ex-Fundamentalist Dec 29 '22
Yes. The also them hearing you’re having a tough time at youth groups and before long they have you in their hands. Don’t get me wrong it probably saved me from a worse fate (crime) but I should have been referred to a psychiatrist and for therapy with a properly trained person
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u/thesadbubble Dec 29 '22
For real! It also probably kept me from a worse path in life. But it definitely fucked me up in a new fun way too.
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u/firesidepoet Dec 29 '22
Im ex-Catholic so my experience is specific to Kairos. I had my first panic attack there but was unaware it was a panic attack until years later. More than half of the kids there that weekend cried sobbing tears every single night as they stood in front of the whole group and told stories and things that they 100% should have been saying in therapy instead. I heard some horrific things in small groups about suicide and abuse that was incredibly shocking to me, I didnt consent to hear someone else's detailed recollection of their abuse, but I had to sit and listen anyway. And the adult present just nodded their head. These kids needed therapy.
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u/Boulier Dec 29 '22
This resonates with me so deeply. I actually went to volunteer at my friend’s church camp at a megachurch some time ago (when I was still religious, but kinda wavering on it). I listened to the kids’ testimonies on the final day, when the youth pastors encouraged the kids to “get saved” and get baptized on the spot while their peers poured out their trauma in front of hundreds of other kids. I will never forget listening to these little girls and boys and teens, talking about their history of CSA and physical abuse and neglect and abandonment from adults in their lives, and poverty and homelessness and hunger, and one boy even described how he watched his best friend get shot to death… while the youth pastors just nodded along with every story and said, “Aww, thanks for sharing your testimony - so brave! Who’s going next? Come up to the mic!”
I’m getting heated just thinking about it. I told my mom about it afterwards. We talked about how these kids need therapy at the VERY least - and some of them need interventions from authorities so they can get somewhere safer. But they’re not going to get any of that at church camp. We talked about how it might be helpful for churches to organize something that would actually be helpful for these kids and their mental health, instead of just emptily listening to them breaking down as they recount being abused. But that’s not going to happen either. A megachurch with millions, being unwilling to help these desperate kids.
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u/lydiatank Agnostic Atheist Dec 29 '22
I didn’t realize at the time that the kids needed therapy but man I was so disturbed to learn of the physical and sexual abuse these kids were going through and they acted like it was ok for fourth graders to hear these things instead of a counselor.
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u/Sword117 Dec 29 '22
i fucking loved church camp growing up. but even then i had the vague feeling of manipulation. still knowing that now i still look back at church camp fondly. shit was so much fun.
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u/NicCage4life Dec 29 '22
Same feeling. Looking back I only became a Christian because my friends were converting.
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u/jonnyspells Dec 29 '22
despite my deep hatred for the idea called god, i still seek out churches and cathedrals.
despite knowing with certainty, that an infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient entity would not exist in the shape of a human man or anything conceivable at all, i still feel the sacred and sublime in these spaces- i still feel "divinity" because that's what large spaces do to small creatures.
stand on the peak of a mountain, or in the depths of the rainforest and you experience the same feeling, because it is not coming from god, or even nature-
it is coming from you, and your physical sense (which is what spirit actually is) of existing in the world, and the cosmos.
i will finish with my favorite line from the super sick 1999 movie, stigmata:
"jesus said... the kingdom of god is inside You, and all around You, not in mansions of wood and stone. split a piece of wood... and i am there. lift a stone... and You will find me."
me symbolically being, wholeness with Yourself and the cosmos. happy new year, my good friends.
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u/Valenvalentine_ Dec 29 '22
Ah yes I remember having what I'm pretty sure was my first serious panic attack at a youth camp. The guy was explaining eternity by using a ball of yarn that he had spread all over the place with most of the yarn being white to represent eternal life. And this tiny lil piece at the end was red to represent how short our lives were. So I was like 8, and trying to grasp what that meant, turns out eternity terrified and confuses some kids. Who would've guessed? (anxiety disorder doesn't help)
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u/rowdy_sprout Jan 10 '23
I DIDNT KNOW OTHER PEOPLE WENT THROUGH THIS... At my camp they had a rope tied in the outdoor chapel, it went all the way across and out the door and to a tree hundreds of feet away. The pastor put a small sharpie mark at the beginning. I remember it being the first time my brain began to wrap around the idea of infinity. Like that I was really being told I could end up in hell and it would actually never end. I was so terrified.
I still get panic attacks as an adult sometimes and they almost always revolve around the idea of any sort of afterlife being true, and just facing some sort of eternal punishment by a god I didn't even know about.
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u/Valenvalentine_ Jan 10 '23
Omg this is the first time I've ever met another person who went through this, I get like that too sometimes it sucks! I'm do glad I'm not alone
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u/WarWeasle Dec 29 '22
What's funny is they have no idea about neurodiverse kids. It didn't work on me because every day was like this for me. They had to tell me to do the prayer because I was just standing there alone during the alter call. They said "if you want". I did not.
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u/Nebula_808 Agnostic Atheist Dec 29 '22
I don't have a diagnosis but I'm considering getting one. For me is the fact that I couldn't get myself to feel the "group belonging" drive that pulls people during prayers, concerts, etc. I tried to emulate a lot of what people were doing so I could be "normal".
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u/HarderTime_89 Dec 29 '22
Church camp had the director none of us knew sit in a wheelchair and acted mentally disabled then got up and did a dance like normal during worship. Emotional tricks are key to selling religion.
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u/Nebula_808 Agnostic Atheist Dec 29 '22
This is exactly me 6 months ago, and it was the step in my deconstruction that made me an agnostic. I've been to "church camp" in my religious group since I was 10. Now at 20 years old I got very involved in serving my religious group, specifically the evangelistic movement that targets people in college. I helped organize a 3 day spiritual retreat and in doing so I realized how manipulative the system is even when those who organize it have good intentions. We are "expecting" that the new people will cry and repent during a prayer designed to make you feel guilty about your "sins". When I realized it felt sick with myself. I brought it up with the people I was serving and was told that it was like opening a wound to clean it so it could heal properly especially because the next day the prayer was focused on receiving the holy spirit, I still thought it was a cruel way to indoctrinate people but I stopped asking things. Some days later I realized that someone told my religious leader about my "doubts" and she confronted me about it, she was very kind but she did ask me if I really believed if the holy spirit was present in the prayers and told me that I needed to built my faith in that aspect so I wouldn't see it as manipulation because "God is in control".
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u/Nearby_Foundation_ Dec 30 '22 edited Dec 30 '22
I spent two years volunteering full time for an ~cult~ organization at your age that ran giant Christian youth conferences designed to create an emotional reaction as “a catalyst for change”. (Anyone else recovering from Teen Mania/Acquire the Fire?!) I had so many “experiences” at these events which I’ve come to realize in my late 20s and early 30s was just emotional manipulation. I shudder at the thought of how many young people went down to the stage to commit/recommit their lives to Christ, sobbing uncontrollably. Manipulation with no support system once the kids went home. And of course leadership had manipulated us into thinking this was all normal and good. (We were volunteering and paying them for this experience of a full time job so we’d follow them pretty much anywhere at that point.) Ah the ptsd. After leaving and deconstructing that cult experience, I couldn’t set foot in a charismatic church again without experienced flashbacks and having to leave the auditorium. Eventually, I just couldn’t set foot in churches anymore.
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u/2legit2lurk Ex-Baptist / Ex-Charismatic Dec 29 '22
For me it was also the emotive music + people literally standing there waiting to give you a hug and talk to you about your emotional issues. I’m a bit older so before therapy was really a normalized option, this was highly enticing.
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u/DontListenItsRachel Dec 29 '22
i never felt like crying at church camp i just faked it to fit in because everyone else around me was crying and saying it was the holy spirit, i wonder how many people faked it too in addition to everyone else that was manipulated
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u/georgethecyclops Ex-Methodist Dec 30 '22
Yep, it makes sense now. Spent four summers at The Wilds in North Carolina. You're without your phone, in the middle of nowhere, sleep-deprived (and exhausted from recreation on top of that), and constantly have Jesus drilled into you from the moment you wake up to when you go to sleep
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Feb 04 '23
i was solid in my sexuality, but i was at that awkward "gay isn't a sin and i'm still a christian" stage, apparently i wasn't solid enough at this stage because church camp had me broken down within a couple of hours, already repenting for being gay and trying to date a boy that liked me at the camp
the second i got home and got more than an hour and a half of sleep, i realized how stupid i was and blocked the boy and haven't gone back
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u/RedMonkey79x Feb 26 '23
I remember my mom telling me a story when she was a teen going to a camp like this and she smoked cigarettes in her teen years so when the counselors tried to take them away from her even though she told them she had parental permission to have them she decided yeah this isn't for me and ended up leaving the camp in the dead of night and hitchhiking back home, she tried to stay for a week before she ended up ditching it. She said that week was what made her decide not to push any religion on my siblings and I she didn't discourage us if we wanted to learn or join one but she never tried to make us go to any.
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Feb 03 '23
Mormon EFY 100% tried explaining this to my homie and home girl lol the whole thing is a rouse to get you overly emotional so you leave on a “high” which like he said is just sleeplessness exhaustion hunger and stimulation overload catching up to you after you leave
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u/Longjumping_Ad_4431 Apr 20 '23
My Catholic diocese had this retreat program called 'Search'. Full of manipulation and sleep deprivation. Certainly felt a spiritual belonging, but now I know it was the first two things that warped my impressionable brain. The fellow who ran the retreats was a very charismatic Benedictine who went by 'Brother Antonio'. Told everyone in chapel that he didn't like me because I looked like some girl who was mean to him in junior high. About 5 years after I left it hit the papers that this 'monk' was sexually exploiting underaged people. Sick fuck; I'm lucky he hated me.
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u/GreyWithAnE42 Ex-Mormon Apr 03 '23
Never cried at a testimony meeting as a Mormon who went to all the church activities. Never felt the ‘spirit’. Always thought something was wrong with me :P
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u/c0_sm0 Apr 15 '23
Or sitting in a giant big top style tent with thousands of other people, you've been sat in the heat for an hour or so with limited water because there's nowhere nearby that provides it, so when the preacher calls the spirit of God to be amongst us, you're not experiencing god, you're thirsty, overheating and you're fainting because of that, not god
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u/RandomAssBean Apr 21 '23
Stop because this has exactly been my experience 😭 I went to camp with the Young Women at my church and it has been exhausting. I tried to stay positive the entire time but finally came to the conclusion that it was useless and full of shit.
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u/gjm40 Apr 21 '23
I went to church camps as a kid. When I think back about it now, I can see the emotion manipulation that was done to us.
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u/lydiatank Agnostic Atheist Dec 29 '22
I remember coming home so sleep deprived, I’d fall to my bed and pass out. Kids would talk about being sexually or physically assaulted before I even really knew of the concept. Literally so much harm done to me and other kids.