Jesus Camp & Suicide Hospital Stay
Griffin First Assembly
Griffin, GA
image from Pastor Randy Valimont
*See this post in video format here.
In a recent video, I briefly mentioned going to a Jesus boot camp when I was attending Christian college. If you missed that one you might want to refer to it to make more sense of this video.
Quick history – I grew up being indoctrinated into the Pentecostal Christian religion and I also attended a Lutheran school – I didn't really know anything about the outside world.
I was like, Bryce Dallas Howard in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, before she got out.
I wasn't allowed to have non-Christian friends or watch any non-Christian media, TV, movies, music.
Fast forward to me when I just turned 18.
I thought my only option forward career-wise... ha that's cute, career-wise... was in the church or to become a missionary. Quite a few of my friends from church were also going to this bible college in Griffin, GA to attend (get ready for it) Master's School of Ministry – no joke. It sounds like something from Harry Potter almost... Master's School of Magic.
Anyway, it's now called, SAGU Valor. After watching this video, if you are curious to know more about them or if you have any questions to ask them - here's a direct link! ;)
There was this peer pressure to go to this school and I did. In the first few days of being at the school that was also in a church, called Griffin First, we were told to sign a waiver or agreement giving our permission to go through their rigorous boot camp.
Think of it as the Bible College hazing experience if you will.
(Last I heard, this school no longer holds this camp.)
All of the students, there were 35 of us including me, were told we would be taken to a secluded location and go through their boot camp. We would not be told where we were going to be taken to or for how long, we also had no idea what we would be doing at this camp – but the pastors made it sound so fun.
Here were the rules when attending:
1. You were not allowed to ask questions, you were not allowed to speak.
Footnote: I'd actually like to go to a silent meditation place at some point but that is definitely not what I'm talking about here.
2. We were not allowed to bring cell phones or watches because the pastors didn't want us to know what time it was while we were there.
3. We could only bring with us one personal item
This could be toothpaste, but not included with your tooth brush, a single hair tie, it could be a roll of toilet paper – all of us students planned who would bring what. Also women were told feminine products didn't apply to this rule. So bring all the tampons and pads you want! I'm surprised they even let the women attend camp given our menstrual cycle impurity and uncleanness like in Leviticus (15:19);
19. When a woman has her monthly period, she remains unclean for seven days. Anyone who touches her is unclean until evening. 20. Anything on which she sits or lies during her monthly period is unclean.
21. Any who touch her bed or anything on which she has sat must wash their clothes and take a bath, and they remain unclean until evening.
In addition to this one personal item, we were also required to bring a backpack with a duct-tapped bag of sugar in it. The first years were supposed to have a 5 pound bag, the second years, a 10 pound bag and the third years, a 15 pound bag. This was a three year program because apparently that's how long it takes to still not understand the non-sense in the bible.
We later found out that the bag of sugar represented Jesus carrying the weight of the world's sins.
4. We had to follow their orders.
I know this all sounds great and appealing. Right? NO...
Quickly, before I get into the camp experience, I have to tell you about a night leading up to it. All of the students were in the sanctuary area with the pastors and the building was freezing – I remember seeing my friends visibly shaking because it was that cold. We were having an intense worship service, speaking in tongues, jumping around, waving our arms in the air, it was like a Benny Hinn crusade.
The pastors were also telling us horror stories of missionaries in the news who had been tortured and killed for their faith and we had to be willing to do that too.
Now, back to camp or experimental prison...
It happened late one night around 11:30. I woke up to the sounds of loud banging on the dorm rooms and my roommate was already up and frantically running around the room screaming, “This is it! We have to go now! We have to go!” I start panicking because I wasn't prepared with my bag of sugar so I jump out of bed, locate the duct tape and sugar and start taping. I'm rocking on the floor, wrapping my bag of sugar like a maniac. My roommate runs out of the room and the door just swinging open. I throw on some shorts, a t-shirt and some tennis shoes and head out.
We were later told that being taken suddenly was because when Jesus comes back, you're not going to know, it'll just happen and you have to be ready. I was totes not ready for the rapture.
As I head downstairs to the front lawn – so many students were already there.
The pastors were screaming at them to do jumping jacks and burpees and to not stop until they were told to. This entire time, we also were not allowed to ever take our backpacks off. The entire camp experience, your backpack with sugar is now a part of your body.
As I joined my fellow students I realized I had been holding them up. We were all forced to workout until every student came to the front lawn.
Once everyone was there we were loaded onto a bus and told we were not allowed to fall asleep. Anytime a student would fall asleep or even start to fall asleep, the pastors would start screaming at them and bang on the bus windows and shining their flashlights in our faces.
Meanwhile my eyes are locked to the outside world trying to figure out our direction or course. I was also counting in my head trying to figure how long we were on the bus. And I fell asleep – next thing I knew, we pulled up to a stop at a secluded campsite/lodging area. No one else was there besides our group.
As soon as we got off the bus we were told to form into two lines and start jogging. The camp area had trails and we were running on uneven terrain – I'm not sure how long we ran, I only remember feeling like I couldn't keep going. I looked over at my best friend at the time, she was running right beside me, crying and saying that she couldn't do this anymore and then the pastors just screamed at her that she had to keep going. I started slowing down also and they got right in my face and screamed at me too.
Let me take a second to say just that alone is not a pleasant experience, I don't think anyone likes being yelled at or being forced to go beyond their athletic abilities. On top of this as a child I was sexually abused from the time I was around 4 or 5 to about 10 years old and even at 18 years old, having a man be close to me at all used to make me me extremely nervous and I found it to be threatening.
Now imagine grown men surrounding you, they're right in your face screaming at you.
I would do anything to get them to get them to stop screaming at me. I ran.
Afterwards we were led to our bunks – men were in one room and women were in another room. Our backpacks were checked and we were told to meet the pastors at 3 am the following morning... or by this point, later that day... who fucking knows.
Since we didn't have watches or phones we took turns sleeping but I don't think anyone fell asleep – you're in this intense environment, it's late at night, you know you're going to be up again soon anyway, and you don't know what's going to happen next.
When we thought it was around 3 am, we all gathered outside and stood in our uniform 2 rows and waited, and waited and waited. Eventually some of us sat down. Some students were too afraid to.
When the pastors showed up we started jogging again – we were later told they ran us straight for 24 hours. The only short breaks we took were when the pastors played strange mind games on us.
For example, something that took place is, we all stood in a circle and were given two minutes to memorize everyone's names in the order we were standing in. They gave me three tries and each time I couldn't do it, we were forced to do more burpees, running, jumping jacks, etc. After I couldn't do it, they moved on to someone else, then someone else until eventually someone did it. Again, this was I think the second week of being a part of this school, so we were all just getting to know each other.
Another example: one night we were again standing in a circle and told we were not allowed to move. At all.
We were not allowed to take our feet off the ground or shift them around in our shoes. Don't even raise your toes. Our feet were planted and they had to stay that way.
If you were caught doing so, you were out and forced to do more workouts.
After a few hours, people started taking a step forward. The last woman standing I think it was nine or ten hours later said,
“Jesus died on the cross for me, no matter how bad it hurt my feet or how much my feet ached I had to stand, this is the least I could do, stand for Jesus.”
Another night, after a full day of running and exercise, we were taken to a room with a large TV in the corner. There were pillows all around the room and the pastors told us to sit and watch this old documentary film. They told us we could not fall asleep and then they turned off the lights.
When someone started to fall asleep, we were all gathered outside and told to run up an down a hill and we couldn't stop until the pastors said so.
This repeatedly happened I think 3 or 4 times. Watching an old film, starting to fall asleep then being jolted awake by pastors screaming in our faces and then going outside to run up and down a hill.
I also remember the pastors treating this whole experience like a joke.
When we ate meals – the only food we ate while we were there was this unflavored gloopy oatmeal and they loved giving me the biggest plate. You had to eat every bite on your plate and the longer it took you to do so, the more time your friends outside, who already finished eating their food, were forced to run and exercise. They were again being held up.
The pastor's reasons for doing this was if you're a missionary in a foreign country and you're given food, it doesn't matter if you like it or not you have to eat it. And it would be highly disrespectful not to eat every bite.
We were at the camp for 3 days.
When we got back to the church, I called my parents and told them what happened and that I needed to leave. My parents re-assured me everything was ok. I had moved out of state for college and that this transition was going to be hard and that I just needed to give it more time.
Then I went to the Christian counselor at the church and told her I was extremely anxious and depressed and that I needed to leave.
She said, not to listen to satan because he was obviously putting those thoughts into my head.
She said, "don't listen to the devil and his demons, listen to god."
I had no one to turn to. No one took me seriously. I'm now staying at this bible college involuntarily and no one is letting me out. I decided to pull a Hamlet. “That I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft.”
- Act 3, Scene 4, lines 187-188
I felt as if I had been backed into a corner and the only people surrounding me didn't or couldn't see I needed help.
I was completely surrounded by religious lunatics.
If I wanted to get out, I had to do something extreme, because they were extreme – I had to match their intensity level so they could finally see I needed to get the fuck out.
I packed a small knife in my backpack and went to morning prayer at the chapel. Each morning, we had prayer for 2 hours from 7-9 AM and you could go anywhere in that big space as long as you didn't fall asleep.
*Apparently, radical Christians don't sleep.
I went closer to the stage area, the front of the room in the first few pews where I was hoping someone would see me and stop me from what I was about to do and started doing.
I began cutting my forearm. And I kept cutting. And no one saw me do that.
I carved the words, “LOVE ME” into my left arm.
Unfortunately you can still, obviously see the scars. If you saw me in person, you could spot these scars without even having to stare. I don't want to show off my scars in this video because I feel like that's glorifying self-harm in a way. And I don't support that idea at all. I am not proud of this.
I pushed my sleeve back over my arm and just took that experience in for a day. And then I went to the pastors and asked if I could speak with them privately. I showed them my scars and they decided to move me into another dorm room with an older student so she could keep and eye on me.
That wasn't good enough for me.
During this time I had been talking to the Christian counselor and I told her I didn't want to live anymore. I told her I needed to leave and that if I couldn't I was going to either drown myself, slit my wrists or my other idea was running at full speed, head first into this giant tiled wall that was in the chapel's bathroom.
One Sunday morning, I began having a panic attack and I pulled one of the pastors aside and told him I was going to kill myself. He told me to wait right where I was because he was going to get help.
So, the second he started to walk away, I ran.
I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have a plan at that point.
There's this big pond outside of the church and that's where I found out later, people were looking for me – the Christian counselor told the people looking for me to check the pond.
Meanwhile, I ended up going to the women's bathroom and locking myself in a stall and I just cried and covered my mouth so I could cry quietly.
One of my friends found me and I was taken to the ER, then a suicide hospital.
I stayed there for a few days and called my parents again, pleading with them to come get me. And they did.
Later I was told from a friend at that bible college that 2 other students left just after I did and that the pastors were really hard on the rest of them to not leave. They said no one else is leaving.
And this is proof that religion can be dangerous.
I'm fortunate that the religion I left was Christianity.
The most I've lost from realizing I'm an atheist and being outspoken about it is relationships, friendships. People in the church just don't want to be my friend anymore.
I feel so much towards people who leave their religion. People in other religions where just them leaving and becoming an atheist has devastating results that are very extreme. That's horrible... people being treated so poorly simple by rejecting a belief.
I want to talk about this more. Specifically for women too, how religion affects women.
To be continued...
-Sarah
