![]() Welcome to Christian Boot Camp. Plus. . . Niall Ferguson will make you love soccer. Trump’s tourism czar says foreigners believe ‘bullshit’ ideas about America. Why Olivia Rodrigo should believe in love. And more!
Josh Code reports from Christian Men’s Camp. (Animation by The Free Press)
Welcome back to the Weekend Press! Today, Niall Ferguson will make you love soccer. Kat Rosenfield on the cowardice of Olivia Rodrigo. River Page has two drinks with Trump’s tourism tsar. Will Rahn on Steven Spielberg’s new alien epic. And more! But first: Josh Code reports from Christian Men’s Camp. When I first saw a promotional reel for 252 The Weekend, a retreat organized by the New Jersey megachurch Transform, I almost mistook it for a trailer for a new season of Survivor: dramatic music, stone-faced men staring into fire, men carrying logs, men climbing over walls and crawling under netting. And I wondered: Is this actually about getting in touch with God—or is it just a chance for dudes to be dudes? There’s much talk that a religious revival is happening in America, especially within Gen Z, but some have questioned whether the newly holy are authentically interested in God, or just superficially attracted to the ever-multiplying influencers and apps and podcasts that are springing up to make Christianity hot again. Does packaging religion to appeal to a certain set of people make it any less meaningful? That’s the question I set out to answer last weekend, at 252, which I attended alongside 580 men, most of whom were from suburban New Jersey—where a man can’t exactly roam a ranch on horseback or even pump his own gas. They were locksmiths, electricians, landscapers, jujitsu fighters, auto parts sales associates. They were also, it turned out, men who hadn’t cried in years, had never heard their fathers say they were proud of them, and had no idea how much they needed a weekend like this. Together they danced, sang, prayed, and competed in a field day for grown-ups. One boy’s name was engraved on a sword. Men kept saying “iron sharpens iron.” A couple of them got baptized in iron tubs, but the Holy Spirit was often hard to discern. Nevertheless, there was something profound about it all. Because the obstacle course, the bench press, the sheer testosterone of it all, gave the men permission to be vulnerable. After all, it’s okay to cry when you’ve just benched your own body weight 28 times. —Josh Code |