Bible Camps

Bible camps and conference centers have played a significant role in shaping the spiritual lives of countless Christians. Today, Stephen Nichols traces the history of these retreats, reflecting on their unique contribution to the life of the church throughout the twentieth century.

Take a trip with me through the twentieth-century American Church. On this episode and a few more to come, we are going to be looking at institutions that were very large, dominating the landscape of, whether it was fundamentalism at the beginning of the century or evangelicalism in the second half of the century, of the American Church. And for this first stop along our way, we are going to look at Christian conference centers and camps.

Well, they began just before the turn of the twentieth century, but they didn't come in a vacuum. Their roots go all the way back to the camp meetings and the roots of those camp meetings go back to the Scottish communion season. This was a time in the life of the church where many churches would gather together for a week long of sermons culminating in the annual taking of the Lord's Supper. The first such camp meeting in America was in 1776, but these really took off along the frontier and the early 1800s.

Well, let's fast forward from there to 1895 to Winona Lake in Michigan. This was the year of the first Bible conference, and these days, dispensationalism was becoming more and more popular. So, much of the teaching at this conference was about prophecy. In the successive years, the Winona Conference grew in popularity, built hotels to accommodate all the guests, a rail line carried passengers direct from Chicago, and it was always packed over the summertime. Bigger and bigger meeting houses were built, including the Billy Sunday Tabernacle. In the 1910s, it spun off camps for teens. Also, in the 1880s, Dwight L. Moody held a Bible conference in Northfield, Massachusetts. It also soon spawned a camp and conference center and camps for teens and kids.

And then the camps moved far west. In 1905, the Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center was founded in California. It too had attendees flock on railroad cars, and it grew and grew and grew. Camps and conference centers sprung up all over. These camps offered a concentrated time of Bible teaching and a safe environment for family vacations and for kids. They tend to be in beautiful settings on a lake or in the mountains, or sometimes even having both a lake and mountains. They soon came to be called retreat centers, providing a place to withdraw from the bustle of the world and sometimes even the chaos in the world.

Well, there were hundreds of these. We'll just mention a few more. There was the Maranatha Bible and Missionary Conference in Michigan. It was founded in 1933. In 1956, Billy Graham spoke in Korea, India, throughout Asia, and Louisville, Kentucky and across the south. And he spoke at Maranatha. His presence there caused one of the largest traffic jams in that area, maybe even down to the present day. Another early camp is Pinebrook. It too was founded in 1933 in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. It was founded by Percy Crawford, the very first evangelist to appear on a television program. Crawford had a popular radio program, Young People's Church of the Air, and he founded this camp as a place for young people to gather back to Billy Graham. He and Ruth Bell Graham married at Montreat. There was a conference center established there in 1897.

In the 1940s, these camps began to come together and form groups. And all of this culminated in the formation of the Christian Camp and Conference Association in 1963. It's now known simply as Christian Camping International. There are likely one thousand of these bible camps, conference centers across the United States, and many thousands more across the world. I would venture to guess that even some of you listening to 5 Minutes in Church History attended one of these Bible camps or conference centers. They were founded at the turn of the century. They have been an evangelical institution right down to the present day.

That's Bible camps and conference centers, a stop on our journey through twentieth century institutions in the American Church. And I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.