Summer Camp That's a Piece of Heaven for the Children, but... [View All]

[brooklynite]

Please, No Worshiping

HAMILTON, Ohio, June 25 - Fresh from a week at Camp Quest in southern Ohio, Alex Houseman can boast that his badminton game is a little better, his archery skills are a little sharper and he can now crank out tie-dye T-shirts on demand.

All that, and 12-year-old Alex got a rare chance to be around other children just like him - children whose parents do not go to church or any other place of worship, and who do not necessarily believe in God.

At the public school he attends in Boone County, Ky., he said, he has learned to keep quiet about the fact that his family left the fundamentalist Christian church it used to belong to, that his father now considers himself an atheist, and that his mother, if she believes in God at all, does not do so in a conventional way.

At Camp Quest, on the other hand, he was not worried that his fellow campers would judge him. "It's good to know there are other people out there who don't believe in God," he said.

http://nytimes.com/2005/06/29/education/29camp.html

Certainly don't think this was available when I went to YMCA camp.