Romans and Christians: Bearing Witness and Performing Persecution in Bible Camp Simulations

Authors

  • Scott Magelssen University of Washington
  • Ariaga Mucek University of Washington

Abstract

Summer camp, for those who grew up campers, conjures utopic images of dips in the lake, evening campfires, and cool, tanned, college-aged staff with sandals and acoustic guitars. But Christian Bible camps have not always relied exclusively on the types of programming that generate good feelings. Blended with these idyllic associations, campers may also remember activities that elicited sadness, anxiety, and fear. This essay presents a history of the immersive role-playing field game called “Romans and Christians,” a simulation of the early Church in which Roman soldiers hunt down and round up illegal followers of Jesus Christ as they try to find and gather in a secret location to worship. We argue that Romans and Christians has its roots in survival-of-the-fittest immersive games like Capture the Flag, which Bible Camps adapted from Boy Scout and YMCA summer camp practices. Whereas Romans and Christians began with simulations of early illegal Christian activity in the Roman Empire, the 1980s and the Cold War brought a second phase of development in which campers played Christians in hostile communist invasions. By the end of the twentieth century, shifts in pedagogical philosophies and attention to emotional and physical safety largely ended large-scale field game versions of Romans and Christians, but the game is still found in youth group activities and overnight retreats. This essay draws on performance theory and personal interviews with camp leadership and staff to historically situate Romans and Christians in a larger scope of play and immersive simulations (“simmings”) as religious educative practices, analyzing how the game made use of performative motifs and dramaturgical elements to maximize emotional arcs.

Author Biographies

Scott Magelssen, University of Washington

Scott Magelssen is associate professor and the Director of the Center for Performance Studies in the University of Washington’s School of Drama, where he heads the BA academic program. His most recent book is Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning (2014). Scott edits Southern Illinois University Press’s Theater in the Americas series and hosts the website theater-historiography.org with Henry Bial.

Ariaga Mucek, University of Washington

Ariaga Mucek is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Washington and is studying drama performance, minoring in anthropology. Ariaga attributes her interest in anthropology to accompanying her mother, Associate Professor Maribeth Erb Mucek, on her research trips to Indonesia from an early age, and to her upbringing in Singapore where she grew an appreciation for studying cultures. Ariaga plans to further her education in performance studies.


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Published

2017-05-07