When children go to summer camp it is traditionally several weeks of fun, educational experiences and lasting friendships develop. United Church of God has several summer camps around the US and elsewhere. Like most of the COG camps, they tend to be indoctrination camps where church law is taught and reigns supreme.
Imagine you are sitting there and one of the ministers is speaking and he says this to you:
I literally saw the future of the United Church of God at camp—you campers and young adult staff. As a camper now (from ages 12 to 19) you already are a very important part of God’s plan, since He calls youth as 1 Corinthians 7:14 describes: “For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy” (New International Version). Compass CheckWhat if you are a child sitting there with one parent or no father. Imagine sitting there feeling you are unclean, just because some idiot minister used a quote from the bible to try and make you feel special.
Yes even the somewhat liberal UCG uses mind control to keep its members. It is more subtle then the LCG, RCG, or the PCG but its a big part of their agenda of control.
ReplyDeleteI lost my virginity at one of those UCG summer camps.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was one of the original Radio Church of God SEP campers, some of the kids were from broken homes, or poor families from the inner city or farms. Their tuition and transportation was paid for by the members of the local Spokesman's Club or by some of the more well to do church members.
ReplyDeleteEspecially in Texas we were given academic tests, athletic tests, and generally observed and records kept. There were disciplinary reports. It was clear that we were being cultivated. We were led to believe that camp was a special opportunity, but I don't recall anything from back in the day like the stupid sermon quoted above.
I believe most church brethren in the local congregations thought of the kids as exemplifying church values in our attitudes and behavior. But, there was a high percentage of rebel outlaw types, and misfits. The administration did, though, carefully select the Imperial students who were there with us. Even at their young age, they were clearly already part of the church establishment.
Probably, some of those basic factors haven't changed. The church mother ship of those days had approximately the same number of members as the larger splinters of today. But it seemed that more was being accomplished with much less. The broadcast was more highly visible, and there was a sense of growth with important parts to be played working towards the final countdown of the end times. There was not yet a repetitive pattern of failure of the prophecies, and the founders were all still alive, and their later tarnishment was yet to be revealed.
I can't imagine what the church camps of today might even be like during an era when the end of Armstrongism's rope has been reached, and members have basically tied a knot and are hanging on. The whole scene and aura has probably radically changed. And the surrounding world. Just this past week, I googled one of the local Minneapolis rock bands that was getting radio airplay in summer of '65 when I was at Orr. The High Spirits had done a "whitened" version of Bobby Bluebland's "Turn on your Love Light". Latest videos on youtube reveal that the lead singer has gone trans-gender. Who would ever have seen that coming? I had thought that that was one of the things the Germans were probably going to do to Laodiceans, not something some people would be voluntarily choosing.
BB
4.01 AM
ReplyDeleteA young woman I met from Canada at a F.O.T. told me she lost her virginity inside the church as well. She claimed that there was more pressure to sexually comprise inside the church than the outside. I believed her.
In fact when I started attending services in the 1970s, most of the single women were going study with men on the outside of the church. The were ongoing rumors that many of these women had lost their virginity.
Cant say I could blame them, if the young men in the WCG were anything like many of the ones I knew - a bunch of neurotic, uptight, humorless dorks. That was bad enough, but then you factor in the clucking hens of the congregation desperately trying to scandalize every possible interaction for their own amusement (hence why you have to be careful with "rumors). Why would any relatively sane young woman (presuming there were any present, many I knew were just as uptight and deranged) want to take on all that added difficulty and drama?
DeleteCAMPFIRE SING ALONG TIME! --- Sing to the tune "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" (A letter home from camp) 1964
ReplyDelete- Alan Sherman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjiWS__Mp0
Hello Daddy, hello Mommee
Im at camp here with ..., U-C-G...
Camp is for our... formal training
And they say we'll have some fun ...if it can stop raining.
I went hiking with Linda Travey
She ended up with... expecting a baby!
You remember Susie Skinner
She got E-coli sickness...right after dinner.
All the ministers dislike... the haters
Said they'll feed them... to the alligators!
And the director... wants no one queer
So he told them all... to simply disappear!
Now I don't want this... to up and scare ya
But my bunkmate... she's go chlamydia !
You remember Jeffrey Hardy
He got caught or-gan-izing ... a huge Pot party.!!
The quote from Compass Check reminds me of a UCG podcast of a minister addressing a summer camp. The podcast address was worded in such a way that I doubted if the younger campers had any idea what he was talking about.
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ReplyDeleteOne WCG minister mentioned in a sermon that in one congregation that he helped to pastor he "had to counsel with about 40 youths who were engaged in ongoing fornication."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous on November 18, 2017 at 4:01 AM said...“I lost my virginity at one of those UCG summer camps.”
The WCG splinter groups seem to be full of absent-minded people misplacing their virginity and not being able to find it again.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 4:01 AM said...“I lost my virginity at one of those UCG summer camps.”
In the PCG it was once announced that each year a girl had come back pregnant from their summer camp.
ReplyDeleteDavid Pack said that in Roderick Meredith's Global Church splinter group the youths would run off into the bushes to fornicate at the summer camps.
Shoot, the worst we did at camp in the '60s was sneak off to secluded areas to have a cigarette. One of the years at Texas, some of the campers got in trouble for making out, but nobody I know of out and out fornicated.
ReplyDeleteBB
I met a Tea-Tephi at a regional camp once, heh. Somebody named their kid after a figure of disputed historical provenance in USBIP. Well, it was the late eighties, so Id say Tea-Tephi was a better name than the overpopular "Jessica".
DeleteIn Packs case, his jealousy was probably translating to exaggeration.
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