EXPLORATION OF IDEAS: SOME CAMPS INTRODUCE KIDS TO FREETHINKING, ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUALITY
Written by Cathy Lynn Grossman

Ah, summer camp: Canoe. Swim. Climb rocks. Tell tales by the fire. ...

And - perhaps hear lectures on famous freethinkers at Camp Quest West, an hour's drive north of Sacramento, that caters to youth whose parents are skeptics, humanists, atheists and agnostics.

Or - at Belladonna Fairy Camp in Berkeley, Calif. - learn to perceive auras with clairvoyant counselors.

"We help children understand their individual spirituality and the entire rainbow of expressions and ideas," says Belladonna founder Jodi MacMillan.

Or - "discover the powers of Mother Earth spirituality" at Little Priestess Camp, setting up for young girls this August on a horse farm in Killingworth, Conn., says camp co-creator Kari Henley.

Clearly, a new breed of summer camp is springing up under the trees these days.

Unlike the thousands of traditional Christian and Jewish camps and vacation Bible schools that weave Scripture lessons into their programming, these are summer camps for future "nones" - campers whose parents answer "none" when pollsters ask them about their religious identification. Current surveys count 14 percent of Americans in this category. Make no mistake: A few hundred campers warbling freethinker anthems or future priestesses trying out their incipient psychic powers barely compare with the volume of summer camps with a traditional spiritual spin.

A survey of 1,000 camps in the Christian Camp and Conference Association found that 2.5 million people under age 18 will be attending Christian overnight camps for a weekend, a week or more this summer, according to Bob Kobielush, president of the association, based in Colorado Springs.

Millions more tots and young children go to vacation Bible schools - generally week-long day or half-day camps sponsored by hundreds of thousands of neighborhood churches.

Still, a growing number of "nones" want their youngsters to sample alternative spirituality or a more secular worldview for a week or so.

Aleta Ledendecker is a Montessori teacher and director of Camp Quest Smoky Mountains in Tremont, Tenn., a camp for ages 8-17 affiliated with the Rationalists of East Tennessee. "Campers leaving our particular camp have a heightened appreciation of critical thinking," she says. "In addition to the ordinary camping experiences like swimming and horseback riding, we spend time around the campfire in philosophical discussions aptly named the Socrates Cafe."

The cafe "is one of the campers' favorite activities," she says, because "the adults at camp listen to the thoughts of the campers without giving answers. The campers are encouraged to think for themselves and reach conclusions."

"This may sound like a small thing, but so often children are given answers that they are supposed to accept," she says, including belief in a higher power.

Taking a different approach is the Little Priestess Camp, launched by two veterans of women's empowerment circles, which aim to teach girls to "connect their bodies and their imagination and their relationships, to sensate, meditate, create and communicate," says camp co-founder Sarah Suatoni.

The Camp Quest network has added two new camps this summer, including Quest West where teens can toast their marshmallows and test conventional social wisdom about the Judeo-Christian world with their peers.

"All our parents sign a statement affirming the humanist manifesto, so they realize we are a camp that is secular in nature, and the majority of staff are individuals who identify as atheist or agnostics. We're not pushing secularism. You don't have to conform. You should just know the staff operates under these beliefs," says Camp Quest Ohio's registrar, Shawn Jeffers.

Humanist-oriented camps such as Camp Quest aren't exactly new, says Fred Edwords, director of communications at the Washington, D.C.-based American Humanist Association. Prior to the 1996 founding of Camp Quest, "the American Ethical Union, a humanist organization, had created a humanistic summer camp in 1946 called the Encampment for Citizenship," Edwords said in an e-mail to The Jackson Sun.

And in days before "humanist" became a derogatory term used to conservative pundits, "Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was an early supporter (of the Encampment)," Edwords wrote. "Martin Luther King Jr. was a later supporter."

The Encampment was inactive as of 2004, Edwords said, adding, "I personally think it would be great if this camp were to be reactivated."

Quest West director Chris Lindstrom, 33, daughter of evangelical Protestants, says she "became a freethinker at 20."

Last month at Camp Quest West, held at a former Campfire Girls facility, 14 teens and pre-teens joined in plenty of old-fashioned singing, dancing, field trips, games and goodies such as homemade ice cream.

But instead of traditional end-of-camp competitions, Quest West featured a skit showdown with each team challenged to come up with "their own religion - one that everyone can believe in and that will be good for all for all time," Lindstrom says.

Smiling down on their dinner hour was a rotating portrait gallery of famous freethinkers, props for mini-lectures featured at all the Quest camps.

"A lot of kids don't know Susan B. Anthony was a very outspoken atheist, or Thomas Jefferson was a deist, or Nehru was agnostic. The point is that you can think differently about religion and still make significant contributions to the world," Lindstrom says.

These chats are one of Quest veteran Chelsea Pavey's favorite parts of the camp experience, along with the singing of songs such as John Lennon's "Imagine" or a German folk song that translates, "My thoughts are free," she says.

"I always cheer when Ted Turner (the media mogul who regularly denounces religion) comes up with famous freethinkers because he's from Atlanta, like me," says Pavey, 20. She began attending the original Camp Quest in northern Kentucky when she was 10. She worked this summer as a counselor at the same camp's more recent location in Hamilton, Ohio.

"I've never faced much prejudice," says Pavey, "but I hear stories from my friends and campers who say they've had people make fun of them or tell them they are going to hell, or they're devil worshipers. They get teased and taunted.

"But not here. Here, we think alike about religion, even if we have diverse backgrounds."

That's exactly what mom Jil Sinon thinks as she prepares to send her daughters, Carlee-Jo, 10, and Savannah, 8, to Little Priestess Camp next month after they've finished vacation Bible school at a local evangelical Christian church in Madison, Conn.

"My kids loved Bible camp. Carlee-Jo wants to volunteer. They sing songs like 'Jesus Loves Me,' but I don't think they realize this is 'so' religious. They just think it's fun," says Sinon.

"Now my girls will go to Little Priestess camp because I know (co-founder) Kari, and she's just such a spiritual person that I think it will be fun for them to try other avenues. They're very adaptable children."

Sinon grew up with a Jewish mother and Protestant father and married a Catholic, but she now claims no religious denomination for herself.

"I'm not sure what I believe. I believe in spirits. I believe in souls. But I'm not sure I believe the Bible is written by God and is true," Sinon says. "I'm more agnostic. I just believe if you are a good person and live your life as a human being who is kind to others and to animals, it's not such a bad thing not to belong to a church where people tell you how to behave."

Cultural anthropologist Frank Pasquale calls Sinon an "educator," one of several varieties among the "nones."

"Educators" systematically encourage their children to seek a broad understanding of human religious and philosophical thought. They'll read the Bible, the Koran and the Upanishads (Hindu) text and let the child choose," says Pasquale, a research associate at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Other niches he sees:

"Modelers," who don't talk about ideas so much as show desirable, ethical, loving behavior in action. "The kids may have no interest in Western or Eastern philosophy, but they see service, social responsibility and community involvement are important things."

"Reasoners," who focus on critical thinking and independent judgment. "They don't want to talk about religion pro or con, but they want their child to think soundly."

"Affirmers," who explicitly teach a non-religious or religiously critical point of view. "They may call themselves humanists or ethical culturalists, but they espouse positive alternative ways to think and act about life other than religion. These are the types who are sending their kids to Camp Quest."

He debunks the current media fascination with "seekers" and the idea that everyone is looking for the meaning of life in some format and hoping, if they are parents, to share this with the next generation.

"Lots of people are actually indifferent on fundamental metaphysical questions, on the nature and purpose of existence," says Pasquale. "But they're still very devoted to community service, happy as clams and raising some really nice children without obsessing about 'What is well-being? How do we act and why?'"

And camp is one more way they do this.

MacMillan says many parents of her Belladonna girls "have strong roots in traditional religions, but their girls may have expressed an interest in alternative spirituality or magic or a special sensitivity to the world."

But instead of play-acting tales from the Bible, these girls try divination skills such as scrying ("looking into water to develop your third-eye ability," MacMillan says), learning to visualize the fairy realm and move freely in "Fluttering 101."

"I heard one Belladonna mother call the camp 'West Coast Bible school,'" she says.

Jackson Sun columnist Jason Tippitt contributed to this story.