My Weekend at a Christian Man Camp

What happened when I brought along questions about God, brotherhood, and life after death

I wanted to share a new piece on Men’s Health that's super close to my heart. In the fall, I went to Ohio to report on a Christian men's retreat thinking I’d write about masculinity stuff. I did, in fact, write masculinity stuff. However, I also ended up writing about my dad, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2022.

Lately, I’ve struggled to feel like I’m on sturdy ground, both personally and professionally. This story really helped me work through some of the challenging questions and emotions that have been coming up for me. I’m feeling a bit lighter already.

It’s a long read — about 4,000 words — but the opening is below. I hope you enjoy it.

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I WAS TOLD that He would come.

We were a few hours into Man Camp—an evangelical men’s retreat in the Ohio River Valley—and this promise was part of the level setting that Tyler, our ball-capped and rosy-cheeked group leader, thought we needed to hear. “You shouldn’t expect to shift all your perspectives on life in 48 hours,” he said with the buoyant enthusiasm of a radio DJ. “But you should definitely expect God to show up.”

I saw nods among the dozen and a half other faces lit by campfire. Our group consisted mostly of first-timers in their 20s and 30s from all over Ohio. Out in the darkness, there were nearly 2,700 other Jesus-loving dudes in 279 groups who’d come from as far as Mexico, Canada, and Ghana to camp on the 431-acre property.

Images by GIACOMO FORTUNATO

In 2023, Man Camp drew nearly 2,700 attendees. Here, campers line up to check in for the weekend retreat.

Due to the BYO-Everything nature of the weekend, most Man Campers looked like they’d just looted an adventure supply store: technical doodads, hunting knives, hiking boots, cargo pants, lots and lots of camo. Our group fit that mold, except that practically everyone but me wore a credit-card-sized cross around his neck that one of the guys had handmade from wood.

Having been to other men’s retreats, I expected us to kick rocks around for hours before finally opening up, but we got right into it. As a hearty flame crackled beneath a tar-black sky, two men bonded over their wives’ miscarriages. Another told us wistfully that his long-estranged father had rebuffed his attempts to reconnect. The most chilling story came from a guy who, almost two years earlier, had lost three people to suicide, including his mother. “Holy crap,” someone said. Was there any more whiskey to drink?

Images by GIOCOMO FORTUNATO

Herman, the 71-year-old organic farmer, before giving the author his cross.

I revealed that I was going through the agonizing process of losing my dad toALS. The incurable neurodegenerative condition would soon rob him of his ability to speak and swallow. It was the uncertainty of his slow erasure that weighed most heavily on me and my mom. We’d lose a fraction of him every day until some future unknown day when we’d lose all of him.

The eldest member of my group, a 71-year-old organic farmer named Herman, handed me his cross. “I have felt in my heart that I needed to give that to you for this weekend,” he said. I sensed that he wanted me to put it on. Instead, I discreetly slipped the object into my pocket.

OFFICIALLY, I’D COME to write about Man Camp as one of the latest examples in a tradition of evangelical men’s retreats that combine macho activities with the sincere pursuit of God.

The event, which costs $150, is the brainchild of Brian Tome, 58, the square-shouldered and silver-tongued senior pastor of the Cincinnati-based Crossroads Church (the fifth-largest church in the U. S.). Man Camp, which promises to “destroy your spiritual comfort zone,” is a legal-vices-welcome weekend. (When I first encountered Tome the day before, during setup, he greeted me with an easy gaze and a Coors-and-cigarette combo in hand.) In addition to the intense fireside chats, the schedule featured a manual-labor activity, an arm-wrestling competition, and an obstacle course. There were spiritual talks and a prayer tent situated next to 80 kegs of free beer. The weekend culminated with baptisms in an uninviting cow pond.

I’d arrived in Ohio at a point in my life when I was more spiritually open than ever before. My parents are lapsed Catholics, so I’d adopted an agnostic lifestyle. But my dad’s 2022 ALS diagnosis had kicked up all kinds of existential questions about life, death, and his place in the much-contested beyond. I’d also just crossed into my 40s with a profound sense of being stuck. With no kids, I’d been trying to achieve my way out of feeling empty. (Never a great strategy.) Therapy was helping, but my gut told me I needed something bigger to overcome my soul-deep malaise.

That’s not to say I was fully prepared to accept Jesus into my heart. My friends in Los Angeles have their own biases against Christianity. Most of them are culturally Jewish or comfortable only with commerce-led, noncommittal spirituality: new-age self-help books, Transcendental Meditation, psychedelic trips, yoga retreats. Before I left for Man Camp, I jokingly asked my wife—an atheist from Sweden, one of the least religious countries on earth—what would happen if I came back converted. “I’d divorce you,” she said in a ha-ha-but-maybe-I’m-not-really-joking kind of way.

All of that was running through my mind on Friday night when that cross landed in my hands by the campfire. I wanted to arrive at a greater sense of peace with everything happening in my world. But I wasn’t quite sure what that looked like, or if I was comfortable with what it might take to get there.