Though he has attracted countless eulogies in the two millenniums subsequent to his expiry, "phat", "sorted", and "wicked" are not adulatory terms traditionally associated with Jesus Christ. This failure on the part of posterity's imagination is, however, to the credit of an institution that has become a fixture of latter-day Christendom: the Christian teen camp. Coming to a town near you this summer, British Christian teen festivals such as Soul Survivor have risen to the call of preaching the gospel in the patois of the Twitter generation, as John Wycliffe was moved to translate scripture into the plebeian tongue. God will be said to be awesome. Jesus will be a diamond geezer. Sin will become minging and preserving one's virginity for the marriage bed, sorted. Though the theological implications of Christ as diamond geezer are for others to ponder, we may at least conclude that the efforts to twitterise the good news have been successful in terms of bums on seats. Tens of thousands of British teens flock to such festivals and they have become an established fixture of the ecclesiastical calendar.

The yoof lingo is, of course, mere window-dressing to the escapades going down at the Christian teen camp. Longhaired Christian guitar heroes thrash out three-chord hymns for the Lord, workshops agonise over whether tattoos and piercings are prohibited by scripture, and middle-aged clergy holler to their charges about the wonders of knowing the Lord. Proceedings finish by a godly hour and the Babylonian substances that lubricate secular teen gatherings are surplus to requirements.

All of this is also merely in support of the core raison d'être of the camps. For, in addition to giving today's teen the chance to have good clean fun away from more worldly temptations, the Christian teen camp also aims to bring them to the Lord. This it does in industrial numbers according to the camps. Thousands are said to make decisions for Christ every year. Our prodigal island is slowly brought back to God as he transforms our teens' lives one by one.

To object to such frolics may be to be a killjoy, yet there are two things about Christian teen camps that should give us serious pause for thought. The first is that the evangelical tactics used at such camps are on occasions manipulative. Sermons at such camps often take the form of wild orations that aim to wear down the resistance of the audience to the message. Videos designed to whip up the emotional temperature of the audience are shown, and fervid calls for youngsters to accept Christ are made. This culminates in the centre point of such meetings: the altar call. After having their emotions softened, hypnotic music typically sounds out in subdued lighting as youngsters are urged to come to the front and give their lives to Christ. Giving one's heart to Christ can alas be done in a fit of absence of mind, and many youth ministries therefore have contingency plans. Ignite, a Welsh youth organisation, encourages youngsters to sign a prepared document pledging their allegiance to Christ. Signatories promise to include Jesus in their thoughts, words, and actions and to let the Holy Spirit lead them each day. None of any of this is fair to teens: young people have a right to choose their religious beliefs without being subjected to strategies that emotionally exploit them.

The second objection we should have to the Christian teen camp is that the youth lingo and guitar riffs conceal messages that could be damaging to young people. Whatever the attempts to dress them in the garb of youth culture, many of Christianity's most controversial doctrines are given a full airing at the camps. Youngsters are threatened with divine judgment, and they are initiated into the world of charismatic Christian practices. At Soul Survivor, the largest Christian youth festival in the UK, teens have been told that witch doctors can maim children by cursing them. They have also been informed that God judges us on death for our deeds and thoughts, and they have been encouraged to practise physical healings. Could the real "wicked" in Christian teen camps actually be their effects on teens' emotional wellbeing?