I Found God at Queer Summer Camp

I left the evangelical church when I came out as a lesbian. Then I found faith again in the place I least expected.

The last thing I expected after processing intense religious feelings at queer summer camp was to then write an intensely personal essay about those feelings and the trauma that had preceded them. But the words started pouring out on the plane ride back to New York from camp, and didn't stop. I told my writers' group, which included (and still includes!) then-Narratively editor Lilly Dancyger, about the essay, she asked me to send it to her, and we ended up working on it until it was spit polished to both of our exacting standards. 

Professionally, this Narratively Classic, originally published in June 2018, found me an agent. A barely-edited version ultimately served as an entire chapter which is the emotional climax of Act III of my own memoir, Heretic; because of this, I think Lilly gets credit for editing a chapter of my book. But personally, the number of readers who have reached out to share their own harrowing faith experiences over the years has been truly moving. This essay, both content-wise and the experience of publishing it, has been so much about community. We are, none of us, alone. 

—Jeanna Kadlec

Illustrations by Sophia Foster-Dimino | Edited by Lilly Dancyger

When I signed up to spend five days at queer camp, surrounded by 400 other queer people in the mountains of Ojai, California, going to church was the last thing on my mind. Jesus might be a queer witch, as one camp friend said, but my faith was a hollowed-out relic of a past life, left in the dust with a straight marriage and the dozens of friends and family that stopped speaking to me when I came out as a lesbian.

Yet, for all that I don’t consider myself a Christian anymore, here I am, in the middle of church, which is really just a bunch of queer folks who got up early on Sunday morning to read scripture and poetry in a small dining room.

“Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew. I look around the room and see gorgeous queers with piercings and undercuts and bra straps sticking out, drinking mimosas and talking and laughing and finding room for doubt and praise and prayers, all at the same time.

I was not prepared for this.

I registered for A-Camp, an exclusively queer camp hosted by Autostraddle, the internet’s leading independent media company for “girl on girl culture,” for the most obvious reason: I liked a girl, and she was going.

That particular flirtation fizzled out long before camp started, but our conversations piqued my interest about camp itself – a community that springs up in the woods, magically, for five days a year. A space where everyone just knows that everyone else is somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. For me, a femme-presenting lesbian who refuses to get an undercut or a septum piercing, or to wear most types of clothing that would register as legibly queer, the idea of being someplace where I was immediately seen, where I wouldn’t have to come out to someone new for a whole five days, sounded nearly utopian.

One of my dearest friends signed up to join me. I had other friends from Boston who were going, and a whole host of queer Twitter who I had never met in real life descending on the camp as well.

The schedule was released a few weeks ahead of time and included something for everyone. Among dozens of workshops, there were dance clinics (yes), crafting events (no), Disney Princess singalongs (hell yes), and a Dana Fairbanks Memorial Tennis Tournament (hard pass). There was a Shabbat on Friday for Jewish campers. Also of note? A Gospel Brunch on Sunday morning, hosted by Al(aina), one of my favorite Autostraddle writers, described as a service for those who were faithful, seeking, and “running from” the church.

I reconnect with my Boston friends, and it doesn’t take long for one of them – Erica – and I to end up on the subject of religion. Our conversations always go there. After all, we’re both in the “running from” church category.

“We probably aren’t the only two people at camp who are ex-fundie,” Erica says. “There are definitely more of us. We should put a meetup on the board.”

I scribble a quick note: “Ex-Religious and Fundamentalist Lunch Meetup – 1:45pm Saturday, Cabana,” and pin it to the “Missed Connections” board, where lunch meetups for Saturday are springing up.

By the time I walk into Klub Deer, the unofficial dance party of A-Camp, that night, the religious meetup Erica and I are hosting the next day is forgotten. After all, God isn’t a part of my vacation plans. Sex is.

Deer is spoken about in hushed tones, a “you have to see it to believe it.” But it’s just a party in a big room, really. Deer is held in the one room with a stage, the room large enough to fit hundreds of folding chairs for the performances that take place every night. It has high ceilings and an ugly brown carpet. Picture the lobby of a big Midwestern church. But dim the lights, pump Janelle Monáe through the speakers, and add hundreds of queer bodies pressed up against each other and suddenly, it’s a queer nightclub – which is its own kind of holy.

There’s a woman at Deer who I recognize from some workshops I’ve attended. She’s femme presenting (not my type), with glasses (totally my type), but she has this energy, a rip current that carries you under with a smile on your face.

We’re dancing and before I know it she’s kissing me, saying all kinds of things to me that make me blush, and she keeps playing with the harness I’m wearing. She doesn’t know what to do with all of my lingerie, but she bites her lip and the look on her face is, well...