“DO YOU WANT to go on a walk?” 

I was 16, on a youth group trip near Los Angeles. The specifics of why our Lincoln, Neb., youth group went to a Christian camp halfway across the country have blurred over the intervening years. But I remember when a girl about my age asked if we could go on a walk. I didn’t know her well, but she clearly had something she needed to get off her chest and must have figured my ears were as good as anyone’s.

We walked a trail on the outskirts of the camp, cheap buildings sprinkled across the desert, pockmarked with firepits, a basketball court, and a swimming pool with a handwritten “T-shirts must be worn at all times” sign duct-taped near the entrance. As we walked, she unloaded her raw feelings about youth group: In brief, where exactly did all these hypocrites get off?

We were already old enough to have seen plenty of youth ministers fall prey to scandal. And as for the youth group kids, were we really any better off than our non-youth group peers? Didn’t we have the same social hierarchies, and all the bullies, outcasts, and smutty gossip that comes along with them? The girl was having a crisis of faith, but it wasn’t about whether she believed Christianity was true; she doubted if anyone else really believed it. Gesturing dramatically to the entirety of our ramshackle camp she cried, “What’s the point of any of this?”