The summer after Kivawood, I ended up at Circle-C Ranch. Circle-C was a Bible camp, and the emphasis was on developing "soldiers of the Lord." Partly, this emphasis was evidenced by the military-type room inspections, and the fact that we had to stand in formation by the flagpole at 6 every morning.

There was a contest held every night at the Circle-C, wherein each cabin would relate some wacky "spontaneous" thing their counselors had done within the past 24 hours. Although they didn't say so, our counselors clearly wanted to win.

The first bit of hilarity occurred on Monday afternoon. Our two counselors came outside, began singing "I Could Have Danced All Night," and made a feeble attempt at a waltz. It was not terribly funny—too sad to be funny, really—but their intent was obvious. One of the slower-witted girls said, "hey, we should write something about this for the contest!" Gee, you think, Amy? Cause I thought maybe we could write about how these two humorless ladies slurped their breakfast cereal like horses at a trough (which they did). But I kept my mouth shut about this, as I did about so many things at that age. And anyway, I liked writing, so I volunteered to write up an account of the event.

Like now, I had difficulty with public speaking, so when it came time for our group to describe what our counselors had done, I jammed the paper into another girl's hands and let her read it. What I didn't count on was the fact that this girl was mostly illiterate. She stumbled over every word, and stopped dead in her tracks when she reached a word like "incredulous." I had to whisper the pronunciations to her, and even then she mostly got them wrong. As the prize for unscripted wackiness was awarded to some other cabin, our counselors gave me a look of such fury you would have thought I'd assaulted their grandmothers. This was my first failure as a writer, my first realization that when people asked you to write something about them, they mostly expected you to write puling, sycophantic crap. I also learned to take responsibility for my work; I guarantee that if I had read the piece aloud, the result would have been very different. At the very least, people would have known what I was talking about.

It's important to note that this was an ultraconservative camp. I've been to a lot of Bible camps in my day (my dad's a minister, after all), and many of them were downright hippie-ish. At one in particular, we might have elaborate, nonjudgmental discussions about theology, and love feasts in which we'd feed each other grapes and cheese and crackers. We also did a lot of activities whose purpose was to instill trust. Most of these were harmless, but on one occasion there was a trust walk that went horribly wrong. A trust walk is where one person is blindfolded and his partner has to lead him around by verbal commands. "Turn right, keep walking, keep walking, stop. Duck just a little bit, there's a tree branch..." That kind of thing. At one point during one of these exercises, my partner led me into the street, apparently without looking around. I heard the sound of an approaching car, and all of a sudden the guiding hand on my shoulder disappeared. "Run!" my partner yelled, and I heard her footsteps slapping off across the pavement. I tore my blindfold off and started to do as she instructed, but by that point the car was already screeching to a halt to avoid me.

As you might expect, this was rather more injurious to my trusting nature than helpful.

But I digress.

Circle-C Ranch was by far the most conservative camp I've ever attended. We had to memorize Bible verses and recite them twenty different times each day. We had witness sessions in which people shared their evangelism stats (how many people saved outright, how many assists, etc). And one night we had a speaker who preached about the evils of rock music.

This guy went into great detail about how all the popular bands were instruments of the devil. He then began a laundry list of bands that were not popular at all, and a lot of us simply snickered at this. I remember that one kid got up and asked about Stryper. "Surely Stryper isn't an instrument of the devil," he said.

(For those who have the good fortune not to remember, Stryper was a Christian glam band with huge hair. They looked a lot like Poison in the "Look What the Cat Dragged In" era. More to the point, Stryper was not one of those borderline Christian bands who sang ambiguous lyrics that could either be about one's love for God, or for the biker guy down the street. They referred to themselves as "hardcore Jesus freaks." Bible verses were emblazoned across every album cover, and they even threw Bibles into the crowd during concerts.)

Despite all this, the speaker responded that, yes, unequivocally, any group that sounds like or resembles a Devil Band is working for the devil. Therefore, Stryper was working for the devil. This was the point where many of us stopped listening, and pledged one another that we would buy the new Stryper album as soon as we got back from camp. I did it, too. Just to spite him. Although after listening to it, I realized the joke was most definitely on me.

I'd like to clarify something here: It wasn't that we didn't respect this guy's opinion. It's just that he clearly had no respect for us. The world is not so simple that some thirty-year-old white guy in a good suit can tell you exactly what you should and shouldn't believe. And in my opinion, any person or church that tries to discourage you from thinking is bad, bad news. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into trouble at various camps and spiritual workshops, all because I asked some question I shouldn't have. Here's an example. At Circle-C, during a discussion on Satanism and Satanic symbols, I pointed out that there was nothing inherently evil about an upside-down cross, given the fact that St. Peter was crucified upside down. It was all in the meaning we assigned to these symbols, wasn't it? This comment was greeted with the most withering looks you can imagine. The leader gkared at me for a few moments, her eyes blazing fire, and then kept going without even addressing my comment. In retrospect, I'm surprised she didn't make me wear a scarlet "H" on my clothing for the rest of the week (H for "heretic"). At the time, I was young enough to have been utterly baffled by this reaction. I hadn't been trying to start trouble, after all—I just thought the emphasis on condemning specific symbols was sort of fruitless. But it quickly became clear to me that in certain circles—Circle-C, for example—thinking just wasn't encouraged. And seriously, what kind of God would want you NOT to think about stuff? It seems to me that if you simply accepted what people told you about a given religion without reflecting on it, then any relationship you might have with God would be meaningless because it would be the result of coercion, rather than choice. I don't think that's an unreasonable standpoint. But the folks at Circle-C beg to differ.

Anyway, it's appropriate that after the lecture on rock music, a girl got sent home for wearing a "Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet" t-shirt and refusing to change it.

I envied her terribly. And not because of the t-shirt.