Jesus was the quarterback and Moses was the guard*

Via Joanne Jacobs, I'm happy to see that there's now a summer camp for freethinking youngsters. When I was six, I expressed a desire to go to one of the sleepaway summer camps like the ones I read about in children's books. My parents didn't have a lot of choices in Texas at the time and ended up sending me to one we could afford, a Baptist affiliated camp where weeping college student counselors distributed giant steel nails to the campers after a couple of hours of skits, passion plays, and guitar music. We also wrote prayers on slips of paper and nailed them to a giant cross in the middle of the woods. This was the place where (that fateful first summer) I tried to convince another second grader of the existence of evolution. You can guess how well that went over.

I went there for ten summers. The last summer I was there they were grooming us to be junior counselors the following year. When I relectantly revealed that I didn't believe they spent the whole week washing my feet and praying for me. The brief time after that was the closest I've ever come to believing in anything. But a short, intense period of brainwashing with no maintenance isn't always enough to take, and I remained a heathen.

* Actual line from song we sang at Baptist summer camp.