All the attention has been on the Going—people dropping out of church, giving up on religion, turning away from the faith once delivered to them. And rightly so: the statistics are alarming. Affiliation with a house of worship has dipped below 50% nationwide; only 31% report attending religious service over the previous seven days; and the two largest denominations are embroiled in controversy and decline.
The global video platform TikTok features thousands of testimonials wherein people narrate their negative experience with religion (generally white Evangelicalism or Mormonism) and their decision to disaffiliate.
Like Sarah Carr, who speaks clearly and cogently about her experience in a generic Evangelical congregation in south-central New York, one that finally resulted in a criminal indictment of her former youth minister. He now faces extradition from his home and ministry in Australia.
Just weeks ago, the famous pastor Rick Warren wrote a letter and recorded a video challenging the status quo in the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted their precipitous decline in membership and their failure to address the issue while all tied up in knots over their history of ministerial sexual abuse.
The pandemic pushed many people away from regular church attendance, and even before that participation had dropped from two times a week to once a month for many, many church people. Most claim some version of this statement: “I’m not giving up on Jesus, but I’ve got problems with the church.”
That could be said by most ministers in any given week!
But there is another wave of people confessing something like this: “I’ve got problems. I need friends. My embrace of Christian faith and practice helped me on both fronts.”
The New York Times recently added a regular column on Christianity. The Washington Post published an article about the value of church choirs. Jana S. Harmon wrote a book entitled Atheists Find God: Unlikely Stories of Conversions to Christianity in the Contemporary West. (Warning: it sells for $100 hardcover!) And more than 46,000 people showed up for Easter worship at the various campuses and services of the mega church where my nephew serves as a minister.
Little more than a month ago, I was guest in the home of a long-time friend in a small town in Kentucky. Twenty or more of her social network also gathered, more than one of whom were spiritual seekers. One described his recent relocation from New Jersey. “I grew up in a secular home,” he said to me, “but I have been searching.” He then chronicled his exploration of Eastern philosophy and religion and his turn to Christianity. “I know nothing about Jesus,” he confessed and then admitted he had never attended a Christian gathering. “I am drawn to the Christian understanding of truth and morality,” he explained.
Whether or not he is on the road to Christian baptism I cannot tell, but I would not be surprised. He represents so many who immersed themselves in secular culture and found it wanting, even wasted.
The chaos and uncertainty of the world pulls people into the search for security, for community, for hope.
While thousands are fleeing the authentic craziness of organized religion in the United States (and here, the Bible-thumping, flag-waving rioters of January 6 come to mind), hundreds are moving against that stream and finding their way into spiritual communities.
A ministerial friend recently recounted to me the various seeker groups that have contacted him because of his podcast, newsletter, and online videos. And I had to pause a conversation with another person and google the phrase “simple church” to get up-to-date on a version of faith community that is, as we say now, a thing.
In my own micro-church, those coming in the door are mostly gay men, finding in our version of following Jesus the welcome they have wanted and needed for a long time.
In between those coming and going are others that are finding their own way, somewhere in between, like Victoria Hoffman who wrote for Huffpost an article with the provocative title “I’m a Horny Christian. Here’s How I learned to Own My Sexuality.”
It concludes with this confession: “I haven’t physically been to church in the past few years or more, mostly because I don’t want to be aligned with a belief system that is not my own. Ultimately, I think God intended for our relationship with him to be a place of comfort and grounding, as opposed to guilt and shame.”
Frankly, I cannot tell whether she is coming or going. Maybe neither. Time will tell, I suppose.
All the attention has been on the Going—people dropping out of church, giving up on religion, turning away from the faith once delivered to them. And rightly so: the statistics are alarming. Affiliation with a house of worship has dipped below 50% nationwide; only 31% report attending religious service over the previous seven days; and the two largest denominations are embroiled in controversy and decline.
The global video platform TikTok features thousands of testimonials wherein people narrate their negative experience with religion (generally white Evangelicalism or Mormonism) and their decision to disaffiliate.
Like Sarah Carr, who speaks clearly and cogently about her experience in a generic Evangelical congregation in south-central New York, one that finally resulted in a criminal indictment of her former youth minister. He now faces extradition from his home and ministry in Australia.
Just weeks ago, the famous pastor Rick Warren wrote a letter and recorded a video challenging the status quo in the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted their precipitous decline in membership and their failure to address the issue while all tied up in knots over their history of ministerial sexual abuse.
The pandemic pushed many people away from regular church attendance, and even before that participation had dropped from two times a week to once a month for many, many church people. Most claim some version of this statement: “I’m not giving up on Jesus, but I’ve got problems with the church.”
That could be said by most ministers in any given week!
But there is another wave of people confessing something like this: “I’ve got problems. I need friends. My embrace of Christian faith and practice helped me on both fronts.”
The New York Times recently added a regular column on Christianity. The Washington Post published an article about the value of church choirs. Jana S. Harmon wrote a book entitled Atheists Find God: Unlikely Stories of Conversions to Christianity in the Contemporary West. (Warning: it sells for $100 hardcover!) And more than 46,000 people showed up for Easter worship at the various campuses and services of the mega church where my nephew serves as a minister.
Little more than a month ago, I was guest in the home of a long-time friend in a small town in Kentucky. Twenty or more of her social network also gathered, more than one of whom were spiritual seekers. One described his recent relocation from New Jersey. “I grew up in a secular home,” he said to me, “but I have been searching.” He then chronicled his exploration of Eastern philosophy and religion and his turn to Christianity. “I know nothing about Jesus,” he confessed and then admitted he had never attended a Christian gathering. “I am drawn to the Christian understanding of truth and morality,” he explained.
Whether or not he is on the road to Christian baptism I cannot tell, but I would not be surprised. He represents so many who immersed themselves in secular culture and found it wanting, even wasted.
The chaos and uncertainty of the world pulls people into the search for security, for community, for hope.
While thousands are fleeing the authentic craziness of organized religion in the United States (and here, the Bible-thumping, flag-waving rioters of January 6 come to mind), hundreds are moving against that stream and finding their way into spiritual communities.
A ministerial friend recently recounted to me the various seeker groups that have contacted him because of his podcast, newsletter, and online videos. And I had to pause a conversation with another person and google the phrase “simple church” to get up-to-date on a version of faith community that is, as we say now, a thing.
In my own micro-church, those coming in the door are mostly gay men, finding in our version of following Jesus the welcome they have wanted and needed for a long time.
In between those coming and going are others that are finding their own way, somewhere in between, like Victoria Hoffman who wrote for Huffpost an article with the provocative title “I’m a Horny Christian. Here’s How I learned to Own My Sexuality.”
It concludes with this confession: “I haven’t physically been to church in the past few years or more, mostly because I don’t want to be aligned with a belief system that is not my own. Ultimately, I think God intended for our relationship with him to be a place of comfort and grounding, as opposed to guilt and shame.”
Frankly, I cannot tell whether she is coming or going. Maybe neither. Time will tell, I suppose.
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