Look at this video and images from the Rose of Sharon Summer Camp in Tennessee.
Please note that these were not selected excerpts chosen to make the camp look bad; these were publicly posted by a camp counselor who was overjoyed with what the camp was doing, and was trying to promote the camp to others.
All I know is that I’d never send a child of mine there. What a horror of a place.
Compare and contrast that with this video of Camp Quest, made with similar intent.
“Freedom to be who you are without judgment”…yeah, I like that.
Even scarier, the counselor who released the initial Rose of Sharon video was very surprised at the negative response it prompted on the net.
Chilling, isn’t it? She’s abusing children in the name of the Lord, who she loves so much. What you’re seeing there is the end result of generations of indoctrination, of the kind still being practiced at the Rose of Sharon.
Tells you pretty much everything you need to know, doesn’t it?
Abusing children seems to come with the territory. I guess when their feckin’ god is portrayed as being the ultimate authoritarian, & they do it’s work, this kind of behaviour is goddamn likely.
Yeah, it got publicly posted and they’ve been filing takedown notices everywhere it pops up since. I guess they only wanted believers to see what they do.
And what they do is have a room full of people, adults and children, bully a small boy until he says the word they want him to say.
Oh yeah, very spiritual and uplifting.
That poor kid.
It’s almost as if they realize just how horrific their behavior actually is.
Unfortunately, “hide it better next time” is the wrong lesson.
Not unlike the movie “Jesus Camp,” which is a virtual documentation of child abuse.
So much packed into this that is making my head hurt. Never mind that this isn’t exactly the King’s English:
-Errr…. “despitefully”??? Is that taking the spite out of something, or doing things despite not having done them or…?
-What does “use you” even mean here, who’s doing it, why is anyone doing it, and what is prayer going to do if not tell your god something it didn’t know?
-Did you briefly notice that what the bible supposedly says and what your feelings are actually have a lot to do with each other?
-Are there gods other than your god? Is this also just an extension of your own identity?
-Are there kinds of ignorance your god can’t handle?
-Why why you ask a god to do something which it supposedly says in the bible that it’s going to do, on the basis of which you are supposed to ask this very thing?
-Does your god routinely forget that you are talking to it in mid-sentence, so that you must keep addressing it?
-What are the ramifications of their actions?
-How does filling someone with a ghost (who is or is not god, can’t tell here) bless children, and what if they don’t have any children?
Inquiring minds (don’t really) want to know.
“Not unlike the movie “Jesus Camp,” which is a virtual documentation of child abuse.”
Yeah, that was awful. All the innocent children getting indoctrinated. It was truly a horrible thing to see
consciousness razor @9
You don’t know what “despitefully” means? I’m shocked and amazed that such ignorance is possible. Were you not paying attention in primary school? Just one more bit of evidence that you can buy them books, you can send them to school, but you can’t teach them if they don’t want to learn.
Oh by the way, if you do find out what despitefully means, could you let me know? I didn’t go to the right schools either.
It’s not all bad. Xians, making atheists since 33 CE. While a few kids might internalize the abuse and become monsters themselves, a lot of them will just walk away someday. Retention rates in the SBC of young people are 30%.
Anyone ever been to an Oogedy Boogedy xian church summer camp? I’m only familiar with mainline Protestant ones, and they were just summer camps with a little religion tossed in.
I just remembered the mane of the one I voluntarily went to as a sophomore in high school. Where we were emotionally and physically (though not sexually) abused.
It still exists. It’s still operational.
*curls up in a corner and hides*
And, as always, destroying God’s work is done by exposing it in full context to a wider audience. If only God created good works, he wouldn’t be so offended at having it held up to the light.
Raven, yes I have. And my therapist is amazed that I survived without PTSD. Hell, I’m surprised I survived without PTSD.
And “survived” is the correct word. There was no medical attention, there was torture, and there was lots of fear.
I’ve been to the mainline Protestant as well. I mention that simply to show that I’ve experienced both sides of that coin. The mainline can still be emotionally manipulative, but don’t cross into abuse so easily.
Hey, there’s a free trip to heaven on the end of these shenanigans and no Christian is going to risk missing out on that big adventure. In a hundred years from they’ll still be praying; still talking in tongues, and still sending their children to the camps.
conciousness razor
It actually is the King’s English. King James’ English, specifically. In this context ‘use you’ means treat/behave towards you. Despitefully means in a manner indicating that they despise you, more or less, or in a way that is contemptuous and/or injurious towards you. So to pray for those who despitefully use you means to talk to God about people who seem to be looking down on you.
Right, that was the joke. But I was thinking about the god-awful grammar.
So it means “spitefully.” Okay. Like flammable/inflammable — I can deal with that. That’s one question down, many to go! It still doesn’t make sense why god would tell people to tell him things he already knows so that he’ll do things that he’s already going to do. Couldn’t he have us do something useful with ourselves, instead of giving us a bunch of busywork or filling out forms in triplicate or whatever this shit is supposed to be about?
The difference between the two videos is stark. I wish Camp Quest existed when I was a kid, because that looks like so much damn fun! The kids are excited. They’re filled with joy. They’re smiling (genuinely). They’re interacting. They’re free to be who they want. That’s amazing. I’m happy for those kids and their families.
@Raven #11:
I have. The first churchy camp I went to was Episcopalian, and was more of a mainstream summer camp with boring-assed twice a day chapel services and some bible themed craft time. The next three years I attended camp, my folks sent me to an evangelical one, complete with revival meetings, speaking in tongues, laying on of hands, and twelve year olds bawling their eyes out in front of their peers over what horrible sinners they were.
OK. I must have had a deprived childhood because I missed those camps.
They forgot the snake handling!!! For whatever it cost, they could have provided a few snakes. For kids, I wouldn’t expect them to use venomous snakes. Just practice ones, garter snakes, gopher snakes, water snakes, and so on.
It’s sort of sad though. My parents sent us to a variety of summer camps and they were fun. Swimming, learning to paddle a canoe, archery, crafts, identifying edible plants, riding horses, and so on.
I though they were doing us a favor. As I got older I realized that maybe they were, but they were also doing themselves a favor!!!
“Satan and his emissaries shared my internet post! The crafty bastards! They are discrediting God’s word, works, and glory through the wretched and dishonest act of looking at the things I post! Will their tricks never cease!!?”
“Vacation Bible School”, words I dreaded as a child. Still creap me out when I see them on signs at churches this time of year.
Anyone have a working link to the vid?
The NY Times has this in the Sunday Magazine today;
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/magazine/the-great-escape.html?ref=magazine
We were in the dozy postlunch free-play time…
It was probably the second week. I can no longer recall the church sponsor; to us, it was just “Bible camp.” Religion had come suddenly into my life, as it did for many of the other kids, when the Moral Majority led the charge of the Reagan Revolution. So there I was, somewhere in or near Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.
The camp was heavy on singalongs, obstacle courses and crafts. We learned how to build a fire properly. …
There were liberal doses of Scripture, too. But the notions of redemption, grace and original sin were too abstract for my heretofore-secular 11-year-old mind. I was baptized. I prayed. I tried to speak in tongues. But the religious experience occurring everywhere around me really didn’t take. I watched horseflies turn circles in the chapel, fighting the urge to sleep.
That day, after lunch, a dozen riders descended into camp on horseback. I’d been around the rodeo much of my young life, but there was something about the urgency with which they galloped across the meadow that unnerved me. The band broke in two around the pond. We all stood, wondering what was going on, as they fanned out around us.
We saw they had rifles and wore bandannas over their faces. There were children’s screams, an awkward laugh. The riders fired into the air. The scene shook with chaos, kids scattering. A smoke bomb sailed through the sky and fell like a white pennant as the horsemen surrounded us. I dumbly realized that we were trapped.
A pickup and large hay trailer idled in the open meadow. Two men leapt from the truck and shouted for us to climb into the back. It remains astonishing to me how readily we obeyed.
We pushed toward the open trailer gate and helped one another in. But when it was my turn, I thought, Like hell. I dropped to the ground and crawled under the trailer on my forearms. I waited, expecting to be dragged out, but in the chaos no one noticed my absence. I shot out from under the pickup and broke for the trees. Then they did notice.
Someone hollered at me or at someone else about me, the running boy. The unmistakable sound of hoofbeats from many yards away kept me from looking back. I sprinted for the woods. It was the most exhilarating act of disobedience in my life.
When I hit the trees, I scampered down a bank and into a warren of brush. Moments later, a horse bounded past me. My lungs seethed. Another horse came and went. Eventually, my breath and my heartbeat began to slow. After a few minutes, I hazarded a peek at the meadow. The men lashed a tarp over the trailer full of kids, and the truck made for the road.
The horses returned again and again. But as my adrenaline dissipated, I became dimly cognizant of certain counselors’ voices from behind their masks. With relief and disappointment, I realized that this was a part of the camp experience, some edifying fear-mongering, like the Christian haunted house I visited the Halloween before. The world receded from high drama back into a kind of coherence.
These were no bandits or kidnappers. The children in the trailer were hauled up some switchbacks to a nearby vista and given a lecture on what it was like for Christians in the Communist world. How kids just like them were, even today, rounded up for re-education. Christians weren’t safe in China, the Soviet Union and maybe even here in America one day, if they weren’t vigilant. Governments, they were warned, can commit horrendous acts against their citizens.
I heard all this later, secondhand. Back in the woods, the counselors’ worried voices began calling for me by name. They pulled down their bandannas and said it was time to come out.
A vital part of me wanted the raid to be real, to spend the night or week or months in the woods, on the run. But I stood and budged out of the brush, savoring the last of my great escape, the excitement, my imaginary persecution.
Very different from the church camp I went to as a teenager.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2009/07/29/ah-church-camp/
bcwebb and you finally ended up here
free at last
thinking pays off!
uncle frogy
This material should make it clear to everyone where the RW fundy nutjob hatred comes from for the abused little kids from central america. One wonders how on earth they can treat children in need like they’ve been doing these pass couple of weeks until you realize its how they treat their own children.
In all the fairy tales about Jesus that I’ve ever read or heard, I don’t think any of them dealt with such violence against children. These people are evil monsters.
Poor Nita in a fit of religious fervor posted what she thought were examples of a wondrous and joyous event: saving these children from a fiery hell. She reminds me of Miss Clack. She probably has little contact with the world outside her particular subculture and I imagine she was devastated by the reaction of that outside world. The general tenor of the posts were to comfort her. Soon, however, it comes to the attention of the hierarchy and the cover-up begins. But, as has been known for a long time, it’s awfully hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I also believe that she will receive a great deal of censure from that hierarchy.
more legal abuse as long as its in the name of their god.
I went to church camp quite a few times, Westminster Highlands in western PA. We did some bible reading, discussion and mostly had a lot of fun. This video shows nothing more than adults getting their rocks off by increasing the external validation they get by forcing kids to obey.
The last time that I sent any of my kids to a church-sponsored summer camp it was an Episcopalian one.
The two youngest girls had attended it before and had loved it.
That particular summer, the older of the two had been invited to participate in her best friend’s quinceanera.
I had already invested $80 into having a beautiful dress made for her and had bought the shoes and everything else that she needed.
Since the event was happening the Saturday evening before the Sunday pickup for the camp, we planned to pick up the girls early Saturday morning. The younger one was invited to attend as a guest and to participate in the mass beauty shop visit and preparing for the party with the other girls.
When I informed the camp director of our plans, she had a hissy fit. I picked the girls up early anyway, and they didn’t return the following summer. Now that I look back on it, I realize that the camp was almost lily-white. I wonder if part of the director’s bad reaction was to us allowing our daughters to participate in an Hispanic event with brown people.
We were also invited to the quincaenera, and we had a wonderful time. We always had the attitude that our children should be exposed to a wide variety of cultures and experiences as they were growing up.
Getting to do both of those experiences that summer seemed like a good thing to us and the the girls.
I went to mainline protestant church camps. We were not subjected to emotional and physical abuse, but we did handle snakes. Also frogs and turtles. We fished from the dock, messed around in boats, and played capture the flag. There was a healthy dose of religion, of course, but as a believer at the time I didn’t really mind that. It was mostly a good time. I feel badly that some kids are subjected to the kind of crap that these fundie camps specialize in.
Mind, some other parts of camp were actually fun. Cabins pranking each other under the noses of our counselors, scavenger hunts, I learned to play Frisbee football. But the church services, evening service in particular, I came to dread, because it was just generally expected that every. single. camper. in attendance at some point (or at multiple points) would go to the front of the church building and give a lengthy, tear-filled confessional of all their sins so that the whole camp could swarm them, touch them, and pray for them, then declare them healed/demon free/purified/whatever.
I don’t think that the camps I attended were particularly extreme, either, more somewhere between mainstream and that awful video. At the least we were older than those poor kids. Or maybe such events were so normalized for me that the time that memory has glossed over some of how strange and toxic it all was. Certainly camp was little different than life at home. :/
No. They do not. What they know is that they’re being plastered everywhere and being criticized and that it’s really, really bad to have video of kids posted everywhere on the internet being mocked and condemned. I don’t know how I can stress enough that they don’t think this behavior is in any way bad. It is impossible to describe now normal this is when it’s what you’ve been taught. I’ve been an atheist for over 10 years now. I broke all ties with church a couple of years after that, and it’s a struggle for me to be horrified at this video. My immediate, gut reaction is “Well, they’re being a bit coercive, and pretty heavy on the melodrama”, but that’s it, and that’s with my background being in more “mainstream” evangelicalism, not in all the speaking in tongues and being slayed in the spirit and whatnot. It still takes real effort for me to see that and not think it’s normal, to stop and reset my brain and realize no, this is not how it’s supposed to be. (and I first mistyped it as “resent my brain”, which also, yes) The one thing I can guarantee you is that they are not learning the lesson that this is a bad thing to do.
@Carlie #33:
And how. I can almost guarantee that their takeaway here is not “what we are doing is wrong” but “we are being persecuted by sinners on the internet because Satan is trying to stop us from saving the souls of these poor children.”
The camp’s facebook page is noticeably absent now.
bcwebb @24:
Good grief. That sounds like a horrible experience. I can’t imagine the fear you and those kids had.
That was a story from NYT that bcwebb both linked and copypasta’d.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I always wonder why these people don’t think is this something Jesus would do? My impression was that he was not cruel, didn’t torture anyone. I guess they grew up thinking you can’t believe or be good if you aren’t scared or in pain
But karmacat, they aren’t torturing those children, they’re inoculating them against the evil influences of the world, and that isn’t pain or fear that you see, it’s resistance against the devilmagic leaving their bodies, followed by the godmagic euphoria of giving in to the Lord.
*spits*
“‘Yeah, it got publicly posted and they’ve been filing takedown notices everywhere it pops up since. I guess they only wanted believers to see what they do.’
It’s almost as if they realize just how horrific their behavior actually is.”
There should no longer be any functioning irony or bullshit meters. Those people are sick and evil.
First thing I noticed was those kids in the first article did not look at all happy, did they?
I went to a mildly churchy summer day camp when I was a kid – I think it was religious purely because my neighborhood church was putting it on. I don’t remember much about the preachy crap because it was mostly talks in the grass under the trees and I was paying more attention to the wild animals in the area and wishing the talk would end so we could go swimming.
Besides the swimming, the main thing I remember was the place had a lot of animals – about three or four small goats, a donkey, a couple of calves (one of which I firmly believe I saved from heatstroke), maybe a dog or two and some assorted barnyard fowls. As for the all the Jesus-jumping; damned if I can remember anything.
There was also some religious-ish crap at outdoor school in the form of a short song before meals, but that wasn’t required. It annoyed me though, since I couldn’t start eating until the ritual was over. :p
Oh, believe me when I say I’m well aware of that.
Holy shitty Asscrackers! Those kids look terrified!
Granted, I can only base my opinion on the pictures because I didn’t watch the video. If those pictures are any indication there’s nothing in that video any sane person would want to see.
I don’t know what it says about the trans-Atlantic difference, but if pictures like these were to come out of any summer camp I can think of here in Western Europe, regardless of its religious affilation … it wouldn’t be long before professional councillors would be quietly leadin those kids away while the police would be shipping off the people who comitted these atrocities.
At least, I’m still pretty confident that would be the outcome…
I went to a Lutheran summer camp one year. If anybody had gone there not knowing that, though, they wouldn’t guess that it was affiliated with a church. I don’t even recall being compelled to do religious observance.
Rose of Sharon, though, is in stark contrast to what I experienced. Summer camps are places where kids get used to being independent from their parents. That’s just child abuse.
As others have pointed out, the story I posted is from the NY Times today, by someone named Smith Henderson.
My level of church instruction was a few weeks of Unitarian Sunday school which was not exactly dogmatic or coercive. The folks dropped us off on their way to go sailing and the inconsistency led to its termination. I do remember making a dreidel but it was summertime. I remember cookies and songs. Not much else.
For me religion has been like an American watching cricket, vaguely interesting but not something that meant anything.
@bcwebb
This kidnapping thing is still being done. This story is from 2012. Note how the pastor says it’s the 14-year-old kidnap victim who is at fault.
And the result is not good, but better than expected: Church fined and pastor given community service for assault and false imprisonment. I hope he’s not allowed to do church youth programs for his community service!
This story (watch out, it’s got autoplay video) includes the charming details that the kids were kidnapped at the point of an AK-47 and an off-duty cop was one of the assailants. Apparently the cop wasn’t punished in any way for committing felonies in his spare time.
And also note that the pastor both says that they were definitely trying to terrify the kids and also that the one who complained was not scared so it was no big deal.
I guess I got off scot-free when I went to a Cub Scout camp one summer in the early ’90s. Even now, knowing all the bigoted bullshit BSA has been so adamant about defending the last few years, I remember it as a basically secular experience. And after seeing Jesus Camp a few years ago and now this, the Scouts have almost nothing on these people (unless speaking in tongues is a merit badge).
My first thought was “Jesus Christ!!” Then I realized that was what the kids were repeating, over and over.
I too went to a mainstream protestant church camp, in the 9th grade. I don’t THINK any of the girls actually went home pregnant, but it was certainly a possibility.
consciousness razor:
Thanks. I got so wrapped up in it that I forgot there was a link.
Alex the Pretty Good:
The video is really short: 31 second in fact. I can’t say I recommend watching it bc you already know how fucked up it is.
I clicked on the video and it takes you to a site called Live Leak, which allows people to share the video on social media. They may have to give up trying to get people to stop reposting it.
More information from PZ’s link, in case anyone hasn’t checked it out:
“They forgot the snake handling!!! For whatever it cost, they could have provided a few snakes. For kids, I wouldn’t expect them to use venomous snakes. Just practice ones, garter snakes, gopher snakes, water snakes, and so on.”
I remember handling snakes at Boy Scout camp. It wasn’t any sort of official activity, and it was just these small non-venomous snakes. We’d found a spot by the creak where they lived, we’d pick them up, toss them in the creek and watch them swim back out.
These people know that without the kids, their belief system is doomed, doomed to whither away, to evaporate and vanish. They are desperate, kids will believe anything a trusted adult tells them. Do these people go through a police check for working safely with children or are they magically assumed to be safe with children because they’re ‘men of god’? Ongoing and recent evidence would suggest that of all vocations, men of god need a more rigorous check than any others.
I am so proud to say that my daughter is in that Camp Quest video.
What a contrast between camps.
It is so obvious that the xian kids are just parroting what they’ve seen. If they keep passing speaking in tongues down the generations, the behavior just continues.
Without child abuse there would be no fundamentalism. It’s basically the Stockholm syndrome. The abuser becomes conflated with god, who is both “loved” and feared. The child abuse may result in enlarged amygdalas, the effects of which are permanent. This is how right-wing authoritarians are made. To learn more about right-wing authoritarians, read Bob Altemeyer’s free online book on the subject (it’s an eye-opener!):
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
Will someone please overdub this in Arabic and repost the video – the right-wing nutcases are sure to promote it as evidence that Muslims are taking over America.
I have vague recollections of one or two summers where the whole family went to a religious camp, Camp Koinonia, as part of a church group. I don’t recall a lot of heavy religion but, then again, this was United Church of Canada, essentially Presbyterian, and pretty liberal.
The one thing that I can remember clearly was during a group sing-along of “Have you ever seen a…?” I contributed such bon-mots as “corkscrew”. Quite scandalous, what with me being the minister’s son and all. It’s always the quiet ones…
@robster (#55):
You’re not saying that evangelicals have an agenda, and are trying to recruit children, are you??? :P
No reason to use Arabic. Just some gibberish that, to an poorly-educated person, or to someone suffering from a cases of confirmation bias and bigotry, “sounds” like Arabic, will suffice. And be even more amusing. Splice in a few images of people dressed as the nutcases expect
MuslimsArabs to look for additional giggles.(Actually, since the nutters would probably try to hunt down and threaten (or worse) the people in the spliced-in images, splice in cartoon images, not real people.)
bcwebb @24; The one I went to did something similar. We were high school age, but even in Texas most of us didn’t know the difference between an AR actual gun and paintball gun.
They didn’t chase us down on horses. “Just” herded us into three separate groups and told us we’d been sold as slaves.
Thank you for sharing. It helps knowing I’m not the only one who got out of one of those situations.
And….headdesk. I totally missed that that was from the NYT.
*sigh* at least the stories are getting told.
@46 nutella
That reminds me of a big scandal around here (one county over), ten years ago (2004). Lots of similarities … except, it wasn’t a church youth group, it was an army boot camp; and the legal (and job) consequences were a bit stronger.
For those who can read German (or are willing to try an online translator), here is a “ten years later” summary (with pictures): http://www1.wdr.de/themen/panorama/coesfeld104.html
Must you always belittle Tennessee’s great achievements? The Rose of Sharon Camp is in Burlison, just north of Millington and Atoka, not far from where I live. It is a special sweet place to go (on Candy Lane), and all the kids look forward to being able to cry their eyes out for Jesus when they receive the blessings of the Holy Ghost. I’ll bet your Camp Quest kids don’t even know what it’s like to receive the Holy Ghost. It’s every bit as joyous as in the movie “Jesus Camp”.
Anyone who has children knows that you can only judge how happy they are by how much they cry. The 19 kids in the Duggar family provide perfect examples of how happy normal kids behave.
Thank God none of my kids were infected by the Holy Ghost.