When I arrived in the Upper Valley in September 1986, one characteristic most defined me: naïveté. I hailed from a quiet suburb in Minnesota, whereas my first-year roommates were East Coast prep schoolers. Compared to my experience with alcohol—two Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers at a Robert Plant concert that summer—they were grizzled veterans. As evidence of my naïveté, I submit:

Exhibit A: I joined my roommates on the roof of South Mass one night, took my first dip of chewing tobacco, and hung on to the copper peak for dear life as the universe spun around me.

Exhibit B: A couple of weeks into fall term, my first-year trip group held a reunion at Hanover Hot Tubs (R.I.P.). One of the leaders, an attractive and confident senior, put her hand down the front of my swimsuit—in jest, I think? Horrified, I fled. 

I was underprepared for these experiences in large part because I was a Christian, my primary self-identity as a teenager. I’d grown up in a churchgoing family, of which I was the most zealous member. As early as seventh grade, I’d articulated a “call” to ministry, and, as a result, the adults in our church put me in positions of leadership. I was a Sunday school teacher, camp counselor, and confirmation teacher. After college, I planned to attend seminary and become a pastor.

I’d been told by a few well-intentioned people at home that my faith would be
assailed at Dartmouth. “Some of the religion professors are atheists!” they warned. So, when a representative of Campus Crusade for Christ approached me as I stood in the Thayer lunch line and invited me to a “freshmen guys’ Bible study,” I figured it was a God-ordained solicitation.

My church back in Minnesota was firmly centrist and did not comfortably fit into either of the two categories of American Protestantism, evangelical or mainline. In fact, when I got to the College, I was clueless that those categories even existed. I assumed that every church and Christian organization was as moderate as my home church.

I visited the Church of Christ north of the Green—the White Church—once. It was of the same tradition as my church in Minnesota, but I was discombobulated by the Lord’s Prayer that addressed “Our Mother, who art in heaven,” and the hymns with familiar tunes but unfamiliar words. The guys in Campus Crusade explained that the White Church was liberal and full of “unbelievers,” a term I’d never heard.

Weekly Campus Crusade meetings quickly became central to my life: Bible study, a meeting with my “discipler” (a Crusade staff member), and the Monday Night Meeting (MnM) in Blunt Alumni Center. I even bought a guitar and took classes at Collis, learning to play so I could someday lead worship at MnM.

But cracks began to emerge. Some of us went to a regional Crusade conference in Springfield, Massachusetts, where college kids from around New England were trained in evangelism and sent out into the world. I was dropped off at the Holyoke Mall for four hours of proselytizing, while others did the same at the Basketball Hall of Fame. I hated it. 

I kept meeting with my discipler every week in Collis. Tensions grew between us. I asked why he attended a church that did not allow women to preach. (I’d grown up with female pastors.) He expressed disappointment, bordering on anger, that I’d joined a fraternity. I argued that Heorot would benefit from my Christian witness, but he countered that I’d be tempted to sin.

Late in the term, the hundred or so of us Crusaders were sent out to evangelize the campus. We were instructed to knock on dorm room doors, say that we were taking a survey, and ask, “Are you interested in spiritual things?” Once inside, we’d produce the “Four Spiritual Laws,” a small tract that proclaimed, “Man is sinful and separated from God,” and explain that only Jesus can bridge that chasm. 

I walked out with a troubled spirit. At my next meeting with my discipler, I confessed that I hadn’t followed through on my mission. I didn’t want to evangelize my classmates, I told him, and I didn’t feel comfortable with the deception of pretending to take a survey. Our conversation did not end well.

When I returned from the holiday break for sophomore winter, we sat down again at Collis, and he said to me words that I will never forget: “The staff and student leaders of Campus Crusade have met, and we have determined that you have an unteachable spirit. There is no place for you in leadership of our ministry.”  

I was devastated. From the payphone on the fourth floor of my dorm, I called my pastor in Minnesota and through tears told him what had happened. He consoled me and assured me that my call to ministry was still intact in spite of my excommunication from Campus Crusade and that I could still go to seminary and be a pastor. 

Eventually, I joined another Christian group on campus—one that was less strident and more accepting—and developed a deep and lasting friendship with professor Edward Bradley, a Catholic. But for years, the rejection stung. I held on to it far longer than I should have, wondering if I was, indeed, unteachable. It was the first time I was hurt by my fellow Christians; it wouldn’t be the last.

I went on to have a relatively successful career as a pastor, theologian, and author. Eventually, my excommunication from Crusade became a punchline when I preached, a self-deprecating but funny example of the intolerance of Christians. 

But as the years went on, I kept getting hurt by the church. When my painful divorce and subsequent custody fight were litigated on the internet by fellow Christians, I’d had enough. 

Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.” I took his advice. I walked out of the church and into the woods. These days, I pursue a faith that is less encumbered by the pettiness and insecurities of my fellow humans, less circumscribed by slavish devotion to one doctrine or another. Instead, I’m drawn outdoors, to the challenges and gifts of wild places. God’s out there, somewhere, wild and unbound. It took me longer than it should have to learn that lesson, but I’m glad I did.                                            

Tony Jones is the author of The God of Wild Places: Rediscovering the Divine in the Untamed Outdoors. He lives in Edina, Minnesota.