Saturday, March 28, 2015

About church, from a malcontent.

About church, from a malcontent.
I grew up in church. I thought (and still sometimes think) that my skills are best suited to working with church. I spend time daydreaming about an idealized church, as well as examining the flaws of the real church. But while I used to attend church, at times because I was the speaker, I no longer do.
I want to share these reasons so that I can learn from others. Consider yourself invited to chime in or call out BS as you see fit.
Economy: Church is an economic burden. This means that either church further burdens over-burdened and indebted families, or it relies upon the rich in a way that lacks respect and reciprocity. This sets up a situation where the church mimics, rather than correcting, social and economic divisions already present in society. Black churches will remain black, white churches white, poor churches poor, and rich churches rich. This leads me to ask again, “Ok, so what is church for?”
Culture: Church promotes empty positivity because it functions as a service industry. It sells comfort, entertainment, and a shallow version of community that is packaged into hour segments a few times a week. Church is unable to challenge culture, but is innately progressive as it seeks to modify culture incrementally. Cultural negotiation between the church and the world is typically biased toward a both-and or win-win conclusion. Church, because it relies on people, can only tell them (long-term) what they want to hear. This leads me to ask again, “Ok, so what is church for?”
Pedagogy: Let’s be blunt, if brainwashing kids is a thing then the church is doing it. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a church that listed independent thought as one of the virtues, and at least we can recognize that church is more about establishing answers than about helping in the development of questions. I wouldn’t mind this soooooo much if the church was sensitive to doing this appropriately to human development. Minimal catechizing of infants is useful, as is memorizing the alphabet. But care should be paid to how it handles matters like morality. It is usually safer to tell the story rather than deliver a law to kids. Where church really drops the ball is with adolescents, and nobody would disagree. The problem is that the church is unable to allow questioning minds to risk asking real questions, tasked (again as a service to impotent and scared parents) with behaviorally reinforcing morality. Here kids are offered a form of sanitized cultural matrix where they can have fun without getting anybody pregnant. Church is completely unable to challenge these kids with the burden of wisdom and discipleship; it is completely engaged with just trying to keep idle hands busy until they are adults and the parents (and thus the church) are functionally off the hook. All church does for adults is reinforce a particular set of cultural mores. This is why adults get to choose their flavor of church, and why churches are unable to break out of these molds. This leads me to ask again, “Ok, so what is church for?”
That’s enough for now, but I also have a rant on leadership (the trend toward pastoral celebrity), ethics (the incoherence of peacemaking and retributive justice), and ecology (if anybody should be radical earthkeepers, it should be the church, no?)

(a facebook post I'm keeping here for review)

No comments: