Out of the Woods
The director of the first gay Christian summer camp on turning the political tide.
by Gwynne Watkins
November 16, 2006
This summer, two provocative documentaries about Midwestern church camps appeared on the festival circuit. One, Jesus Camp, confronted the frightening rhetoric that the Religious Right inflicts on children; the other, Camp Out, painted a hopeful picture of gay Christian teenagers at summer camp. It is telling that the first film got picked up almost instantly, while the second film is still seeking distribution. Jesus Camp is a political call-to-arms, reinforcing liberals' worst nightmares of the union of church and state. Camp Out is a laid-back character study, but its central revelation is perhaps more challenging: that under the ruckus of right-wing zealots, progressive Christians are quietly practicing the compassion they preach.
Camp Out's queer summer camp is part of The Naming Project, a church-based organization that provides unconditional support for gay and questioning teenagers. (Not something that's easily found in the Midwest.) The group was co-founded by 33-year-old gay pastor Jay Wiesner, who can be seen in Camp Out leading candid discussions about faith and sexuality. We called Pastor Jay at his Minnesota church to talk about his work with queer Christian teenagers — and how it could change the future of politics. — Gwynne Watkins
In the film, when you tell the kids "Welcome to the first gay Christian youth camp," one of them responds, "It's about time!" My thoughts exactly. Why hasn't this been done before?
In the past ten years, we've seen a lot of queer Christian things, and we've seen a lot of queer youth things, and we've seen a lot of Christian youth things, but to put all three words together — queer, Christian, youth — I think for many people that is troubling and scary. And there's a fear that if you're a gay Christian working with youth, people will think that you're "recruiting."
Looking at the camp activities we see in the film, it looks like what you were doing was kind of was taking the traditional Christian camp elements and recontextualizing them.
That's what we did; we basically recontextualized everything that we already knew, because all four of the counselors have gone through seminary training and all of us are queer-identified, so we simply wanted to create a camp that we wish we could have had when we were kids. And all of the worship services were wrapped around the idea of, you know, you are not a perfect human being, and we talked a great deal about sin, and then we talked about the idea of a god who comes and interacts and loves you and works with you to go beyond all of that and frees you from all of that.
As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking our readers are going to read the words you're using, I can see it being really hard for people to believe that you're speaking those words as something supportive.
That I'm speaking as a gay man who's been in a gay relationship for the past seven years? I know. And that is the struggle that I have gone through since I started working. But I don't want to shy away from this Christian language because I want to reclaim it, because it is powerful. And instead of using it as a weapon, I want to use it as something that is helpful. During our second year of camp, we were going to use Psalm 139, and one of our counselors said, "Well, we can't use that Psalm." And we looked at him and said why? And he said, "well, because Psalm 139 is what the anti-abortion people use". And I looked at him like, "So?" If we can reclaim this stuff, we can hopefully take away the ghosts that keep on haunting people.
In the film, you discuss the idea of allowing both sex and religion into your life without throwing one away. That struck me as a really radical notion, especially for a church group, and especially for one dealing with sixteen-year-olds.
It is a fairly radical idea to say that sex and spirituality have a common denominator or are interwoven together, which is something that I truly believe, because sexuality and spirituality deal with the two great intimacies in your life. And it's funny and strange and some people would never want to admit this, but sometimes when one is askew or out of whack the other becomes askew and out of whack. There is a pastor that has been quoted as saying that when somebody comes into his office and says, "Pastor, my sex life is terrible, my marriage is terrible, my relationship is terrible, I just don't feel like we're connecting physically at all", the first thing the pastor will say is, "So how's your prayer life?" And then when somebody comes in and says, pastor, my prayer life is terrible, I don't feel connected to God at all, the first thing the pastor asks is, "well, how's your sex life?"
By talking about sex so frankly with teenagers, were you concerned about like parents saying, you know, you're teaching our kids to be sexual?
No, no, no. No, first of all, if you noticed anytime that you saw our programming, we weren't saying "Hey kids, here's how you have sex! Have sex right now!" That's not what our camp is about; our camp is about spirituality and trying to figure how you fit in as somebody who is queer. You know their parents are supportive because their kids are at the camp.
It was fascinating to see these kids in the Midwest coming out at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, when they don't know anybody gay.
That coming-out process is such is such a faith-filled process; it's very much a born-again experience. When you come out, you are putting your faith in something other than yourself, faith that this is how you've been created, and you're finally admitting that this is who you are. For many years, many kids and adults say "I can't be this way", and finally that faith kicks in where it's like, you know what, even though my community might attack me, even though my church might attack me, I need to take this leap of faith, because this is the only way that I am going to be able to live a full life in this world. The ultimate hope that I have is that kids will be able to come out when they're supposed to come out, when they hit puberty.
So, the kids that you're working with now — how do you think they're going to change the political landscape in terms of religion and gay issues
I'm not sure yet. Right now, society needs a scapegoat, and the Christian right has taken the queer population to be their scapegoat. And I hope that God is merciful for the sin that they are doing, because honestly, they have done so much damage that there are times where all hope feels lost. So for these kids, growing up as they are, we hopefully are giving them the opportunity to take spirituality back so that it can be there for them and it can be a grounding and a positive thing instead of a negative thing. Perhaps that could be helpful in the whole political scheme of things. I think one of the reasons why people are rallying and crying out and getting all this propaganda out is because they know that they are losing the battle, that ultimately good will triumph. Because we have seen it over and over and over again. I think queer folks need to remember that it was just in 1967 when interracial marriage was deemed okay by the government, where before it was against the law, and people were still thinking that interracial marriage was against God. And they were using the same Bible verses.
The kids in the movie didn't see any contradiction being gay and Christian. It was like, this is who I am: I go to church, and I'm also gay. I don't think anyone was really talking like that ten years ago, at least not seventeen-year-olds.
No, definitely not. I think you're right. I think some kids today still are trying to figure out how to fit the pieces together. We've had kids who come to the Naming Project who start off life and they come out and then they're like, well, I need to just forget about this part of my identity so they try and become super-Christian. And then they realize, you know what, that is not the way that I can work, and so then they sort of shun everything that's Christian and they become super-gay, and finally they realize that if they don't become a whole person and really work with these things at the same time, they're always going to be unhappy and unfulfilled. And so it takes it takes a while sometimes, but kids today, I think, are starting to be able to say, "Yeah, I'm Christian. Yeah, I'm gay. What's the issue?" n°
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