Jesus Camp

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I grew up going to a Catholic church, and I attended a religious conference the year after I made my Confirmation. Everyone called it “Jesus Camp.” These conferences happen all over the U.S. (they originated in Steubenville, Ohio), but as I read this piece for class, I was reminded of my time at “Jesus Camp” during adoration the first year I went. 


The priest was bringing the Eucharist around the entire sports/performing arena and music was playing, and that in and of itself was a different experience than the adoration that I experienced at my home church where we sat in silence and stared at the Eucharist on the altar. My group was sitting in one of the last sections of the arena, and while we watched him weave in and out of the rows throughout the rest of the center, things started to happen. 


Kripal writes “...the sacred is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that is, the mystical (mysterium) as both fucking scary (tremendum) and utterly fascinating (fascinans).” (page 9)


Young people were speaking in tongues, passing out and being carried out in stretchers, screaming, crying, and connecting with loved ones who had passed. There was a lot to watch, listen to, and experience. 


I was freaked out but also in awe. My friend Caroline who was sitting next to me suddenly said that she had heard from our childhood friend who had passed suddenly the summer before. At this moment, I definitely felt both the terror and bedazzlement that Kripal described. How was all of this happening? We were not certain that we knew where these manifestations were coming from because none of them seemed natural at all. We could only hypothesize that it was God who was controlling all of it, which still didn’t feel very concrete.

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausFebruary 15, 2022 at 7:30 AM

    We should talk. I am fascinated by this phenomena, too, and there's a good bit written about it, and of course the documentary movie "Jesus Camp." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp. Have you seen it? I think it's a bit biased and sensationalist, and yet it also reminded me a bit of the kinds of activities and programming we did when I was a kid at Reform Jewish summer camp. Making me feel "Freaked out and in awe", as you put Tanya Luhrmann, an anthropologist and psychologist, who spoke at Wheaton a couple of years ago, writes perceptively about American evangelical Christians' intense experiences of God's presence like this, in the books When God Talks Back, and more recently How God Becomes Real. If this is a topic that really interests you, I'd recommend choosing one of these books for your final project.

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