Sunday Sundries #34

This Sunday, I’m joining a church.  It’s not really a huge deal in the scheme of things, but biographically it’s a pretty big milestone for me.  It’s the church that my wife co-pastors and that I’ve been part of for 6 or so years now, so the folks there know me pretty well, and I know and like them a lot.  In fact, I suspect a number of them might be surprised to learn that I’m not a member already.

I haven’t been a member of a church, not really, for 35 years or so.  This is despite the fact that I have worked for a church, including leading worship and running mission and youth programming; that I have attended and graduated seminary and in that time considered becoming a minister myself (I didn’t); that I married a minister; and that I have spent the majority of Sundays in my adult life attending church somewhere! 

 I am a pastor’s spouse, and so one could plausibly argue that I have already held a kind of honorary membership in that sense.  At both of the two churches that my wife has served full-time in our life together, I’ve never felt the pressure that I understand pastor’s wives used to feel from congregations to basically be a second employee: leading women’s groups, being a “model Christian woman” and perfect hostess, etc.  I am decidedly not those things, so I appreciate that that’s never been an expectation. That is certainly part of the privilege of being a male pastor’s spouse in the 21st century. 

My relationship with church has been deep and rich and lifelong. It has run the gamut from feelings of wanting to perhaps be a minister, to wanting to cut ties with it forever.  In my twenties, the rampant hypocrisy and judgmental prudishness that I experienced repelled me strongly.  Fortunately at that time I had a good friend and mentor who was also a minister, Bill, reminding me regularly that if I didn’t like the hypocrites in church, I should at least be glad that they had room for one more: me!!  Church is also wrapped up tightly with my relationship over the years with my father, who has now passed away.  He was a truly excellent man and father in just about all respects.  However, his religious commitments were something I never could take up fully, and by the time I reached adulthood, I didn’t want to.  I felt compelled to figure out what, if any, of this Christianity thing worked for me, to separate it from sexual or moral fetishes, bullshit “Christian just war” theories, “country club” church memberships, capitalism, and heteronormative culture.  I felt that I needed to jettison all the unworkable ideas that I couldn’t stomach nor support, and see if anything was left.  In that process, a lot of things have gone out the window: Hell as Eternal Damnation for Bad People and Heaven as Eternal Individual Bliss for Being a Good Boy are a couple big ones; sexual mores that come much more from Victorian ideals than anything biblical are another; obsession with abortion but complete silence about institutionalized ecocide…; Christian complicity in war. . . I could go on.

I’ve church-shopped plenty over the years.  And that’s been very good for me, as I’ve seen and experienced a lot of groups of sincere people doing worship each in their own way.  My time in Waldorf schools was another church-like experience, too.  Folks in the Waldorf movement often protest that anthroposophy isn’t a religion, and I think they’re right.  But I also think it's disingenuous to claim that when one works at or attends a Waldorf school, one isn’t experiencing many of the social hallmarks, at least, of a church experience: things like a community gathered around a liturgical yearly cycle, and a worldview that takes the working of the spirit in our lives to be a reality.  Much of the rich artistry and pageantry of the Waldorf school also has obvious churchy sensibilities.  Some of the most moving “worship” experiences I’ve ever had have been Waldorf assemblies of song, story and artistic sharing presented by the students and teachers at the schools where I have worked. 

I don’t fit the mold at all of a stereotypical believing Christian, which is the way I want it.  I don’t any longer believe that belief is the litmus test for me that informs my choice to join, or not join, a group of people. And, even after I join,  I still won’t identify myself as a Christian in certain circles. My reason for that lies in an experience I had when I was a teacher in Chicago. I had a student who decided to embark on a gender re-assignment process from biologically female, to male, in senior year.  He underwent medical procedures, changed his name to Andy, and had the full support of his parents.  He had my full support, too.  Late in senior year, I was chatting with Andy in a group of a couple other students, and he had the courage to ask me what I thought about his decision, because “Wasn’t I a Christian?”  And, don’t Christians oppose this kind of thing?  Isn’t that what being Christian means?  I did my best to answer Andy’s questions.  But it was the questioning itself that stuck with me.  Andy was wondering whether, despite the fact that we had a longstanding and good relationship, did my Christian-ness mean that on some level, I condemned Andy as headed for hellfire? That conversation was the proverbial feather that broke the camel’s back for me, and it convinced me of a couple things: first, the reputation of Christians worldwide was not one I wanted people assuming applied also to me; and second, that I didn’t need to identify as a Christian to follow my own path of what I have thought of for many years as the Way of Jesus of Nazareth who is called the Christ.  Some early Christians identified themselves in this manner, as Followers of the Way.  Speaking about it in this manner has much less negative associations for me than “Christian.” The fact of it is, I strongly disagree with the vast majority of “Christians” out there.  In fact, in many things, I oppose them completely (but I don’t assign them to Hell!). So, they can have the title.  I don’t need it.

So, I’ve been searching and wrestling for a long time.  And, now, at this time in my life, through a lot of my own searching and questioning, I feel much clearer in my own understanding of what Jesus did and didn’t do, and what he was and wasn’t trying to do.  For example, I’m pretty sure Jesus wasn’t trying to start a new religion or church!  I’ve had lots of time to get clear about my own conceptual worldviews that I will choose to operate from; I think I’m ready.

And, honestly, these good people have won me over (a number of them subscribe to this Substack!).  They’ve made it easy for me to be me, to do a variety of things, as I wish to try to contribute.  They have even allowed me to bring many of my far-out Wendell Berry-an and Rudolf Steiner-an ideas, my composting zealotry and my enthusiasm for all things natural and wild.  For instance, I previously shared that I hosted a discussion group about the movie Napoleon Dynamite at this church.  The very fact that they not only let me do this, but that I got a warm reception to the idea, and good attendance, was a testament to the open, welcoming nature of the people at this church!   Besides being welcoming, I’ve also found some complementary souls in many of the people that I get to work with on things like native prairie plantings, bicycle repair workshops, and community gardens.  We share an understanding that this kind of work is proper work for a church to be doing.  In addition, this church has a bunch of other longstanding mission programs: so I can go serve at a food pantry or a soup kitchen, or collect care kit items for soldiers or supplies for school kids.  And, to top it off, my church is actively working to be even more welcoming to more people, including LGBTQIA+ folks.

It’s a great church with stupendously friendly and faithful folks.  The sheer fact that they are cool with me is enough to prove to me that it’s a welcoming place!  This church has won me over.  I’m willing to get down off my fence and join them, quite happily.  

Actually, after all of my searching, trying out, philosophizing, rejecting, I feel that I’m coming back around full circle to the model of church as a way of gathering people that serves such a unique and vital role today.  Especially in these times of hyper-advertising, capitalistic loneliness and moneyed meaninglessness (and predatory and fundamentalist religion), I think church can be a lifeline.  At my church, I can say “Hey” to people that I know, and they know me. I can shake hands and share smiles. I can ask after them and their lives and their families, and they can do the same for me.  We can pray for each other, and we can pray together, and we can sing together, and help each other raise our kids together.  We can give our money and our time away freely, which is of course what money and time are really for.  We can work together to be even more welcoming. We can live in a way that takes its pattern from the way Jesus lived his life, and support each other in that Way.  We can talk about the kin-dom of God, and search together for what that looks like.  We can breathe in, and breathe out, knowing that God’s spirit is in every breath. All of this strikes me as very, very good.

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
 It is as if the dew of Hermon
 were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
 even life forevermore.

Psalm 133

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash