ABSTRACT
Christian camping ministries have been part of the American religious landscape since the late nineteenth century when philosophical enthusiasm for nature and the romantic belief in its positive formative effects on young men led several educators and ministers to design camping trips for their male students and adolescent parishioners as part of their general and religious education. Historians of Christian camping credit a congregational minister, the Reverend George Hinckley, with creating the first church-related camp in Maine in the 1880s. Camping ministries also developed as part of the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and eventually most Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church created camps for their constituent congregations (Venable & Joy, 1998). Contemporary Christian camping ministries include both denominationally run programmes that primarily attract children from member churches and independent evangelical campsites that seek to attract primarily ‘unchurched’ children as a form of evangelistic outreach in their communities.
