Bible camp during segregation

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 17th. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you are! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Bible Camp.

Perhaps you’ve sent a child or grandchild to bible camp this summer. Whatever challenges may have cropped up in those camps probably can’t compare to those of a Bible Camp down in Tennessee during the years of segregation.

Here’s WORLD’s Myrna Brown with the story.

DWIGHT ZIMMERMAN: I’m the oldest of five. Four still living…

MYRNA BROWN, REPORTER: At 87 years old, Dwight Zimmerman is recuperating from hip replacement surgery. Sitting on a swing on his front porch along the banks of Watts Bar Lake, the white-haired Zimmerman keeps one eye on speeding boats…

AUDIO: [LAKE]

…and the other on my recorder.

ZIMMERMAN’S SON: Oh good night! I’m afraid of those things.

It’s hard to believe the outspoken Zimmerman is afraid of much. His fearlessness is a trait he likely inherited from the father he resembles—Michigan native and Moody Bible Institute graduate Paul Zimmerman.

ZIMMERMAN: He sought to go to Africa as a missionary, but was turned down. And dad apparently had a heart murmur of some sort.

Instead of Africa, Paul Zimmerman and his wife Ruth settled in Kentucky after seminary. They spent five years church planting when another health challenge emerged.

ZIMMERMAN: Of course in those days all they did was street preaching. They didn’t have microphones. But he ruined his voice in doing it and doctors said he’d have to quit. You didn’t tell my dad to quit preaching, so he moved us to Allegan, Michigan and he preached in a church there, the Allegan Bible Church.

Zimmerman says God not only restored his father’s voice but also brought a pastor from Detroit, Michigan into their lives. The year was 1942.

ZIMMERMAN: Brother B.M. Nottage was from the Bahamas, black brother. The way dad used to tell it, he had Brother B.M. come for a week of meetings at Allegan Bible Church and it was under that umbrella that I personally trusted the Lord as my personal Savior.

Pastor Nottage also encouraged Paul Zimmerman to trust God with his desire to share Jesus with people who didn’t look like him. A year later, the Zimmermans relocated to East Tennessee. Paul took a job at Bryan College in Dayton. While working at the college, Paul noticed a local children’s ministry.

ZIMMERMAN: And they went into the public schools in this area and offered the children a week free at their camp for learning 200 Bible verses and quoting them from memory.

His father also began visiting schools—challenging students to memorize scripture.

ZIMMERMAN: You could do that back then. It was part of the school system. Teachers would help the children learn their Bible verses and sometimes whole classes would stand and recite long passages of scripture.

As valuable as that was, Zimmerman says one aspect of the outreach was especially troublesome to his father.

ZIMMERMAN: Dad was going right by the colored schools in those days and the Lord reminded him of Brother B.M. Nottage and the burden that my dad had for the black communities.

Paul Zimmerman asked the camp leadership for permission to visit and present the scripture challenge to students in the segregated, colored schools as they were called back then. He got permission…but with one condition.

ZIMMERMAN: You need to understand that if any of the children learn the verses, they’ll not be able to come to our camp.

Zimmerman taught the students anyway.

ZIMMERMAN: I think it was 42 boys and girls learned their 200 Bible verses to come to a camp that didn’t exist.

In 1946 Zimmerman rented eight acres of land on the other side of Watts Bar Lake. He began his own camp—Cedine Bible Camp. He called it Cedine because of the abundance of cedar and pine trees on the property. Thirty-six of the 42 students who memorized verses participated in that first camp. They slept in leaky Army tents and sat on rugged, wooden benches under a tree-laced chapel. A then 12-year-old Dwight Zimmerman remembers how drinking water was hauled in from two miles away. Thirty-one campers made a profession of faith.

In 1950 the mission expanded after God provided a 100-acre farm on the other side of the lake. It’s the same land Dwight Zimmerman lives on today. But as the camp grew, the detractors became more vocal as well.

DWIGHT ZIMMERMAN: Not everyone in the white community understood or could understand what my dad and these Yankees coming south from Michigan… what were they doing down here anyway?

On April 21, 1957, a then 22-year-old Dwight Zimmerman was home from Bible college, preparing to be ordained.

ZIMMERMAN: We didn’t live on the property we live in now. We lived 15 miles from here, phone rang… camp’s on fire! Well that sort of stirred my dad up pretty quick. My brother and I jumped in the car and raced out here. Two of the three buildings that had been set by arsonists to burn were gone. One building was spared.

Friends rallied to re-build bigger and better, just in time for June campers. In the sixties, culture began to change. Segregation ended and so did Bibles in the classroom. So, students began gathering in homes and churches to recite their verses. Out of that movement came Bible quizzing tournaments.

INSTRUCTOR: Alright, question number six… the sun is a (ringer) Yes, Ma’am. The sun is the radiance of God’s glory. (applause)

In the summer of 1966 Paul Zimmerman appointed his son Dwight director of Cedine Bible camp. For the next 35 years, Dwight served as director.

WOMEN SINGING: [How great is our God…]

Today, Cedine Bible Camp hosts women’s and men’s retreats. In the Spring, Cedine held a Bible quiz tournament. Churches use the property to host their own camps. And this summer, Cedine’s staff, all missionaries, served students in three different youth camps as well as a family camp. Still sitting and watching the boats zoom by, Zimmerman says in the camp’s 76-year-existence, he can’t remember a time he’s been more prayerful.

ZIMMERMAN: I cannot tell you how burdened I am right now. We’re in a critical, critical, critical part of Cedine’s ministry. As we sit here. All of the developments that you see around us now, there was none of this. God has been gracious and we cry out for him, Lord stay the hand of the enemy.

MEN SINGING: I can’t thank Him enough… what He’s done for me…

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Spring City, Tennessee.

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