"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHURCH?"

 “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHURCH?”

If you are of a certain age (like me), you can remember when white American churches were booming and growing.  Over the five decades since I became an adult, the church began to fade fast.  Indeed, my home church – First Presbyterian Church in Helena, Arkansas, is now closed, as is First Baptist, right across Porter Street.  Caroline’s home church in Chattanooga is closed.  Part of the reason they closed is that they had big, old buildings which the dwindling membership could not maintain.  But, this story is being repeated all around the country.  In this series, I’ll be concentrating on white churches, but much of the same can be said of Black churches – two large differences between Black and white here is that Black churches are often led by “tent-making” pastors, meaning that the pastors have full or part-time jobs in addition to pastoring.  The second difference is that only the wealthiest Black churches had large buildings, so the cost to maintain a much smaller building is easier to navigate.

And, speaking of race, that is one of the central reasons that white churches are failing and falling – those of us classified as “white” did not allow Black people to worship or become members in the congregation.  In small Southern towns like mine, that meant that at least half the population was automatically excluded from potential membership.  As MLK put it, the 11 AM worship hour is the most segregated time in the United States.  And, though some churches are notable exceptions to this, even now the vast majority of all churches are segregated.  

    This exclusivity not only applies to race – it also applies to sexual orientation.  All churches have had and continue to have LGBTQ+ members, but very few churches have allowed such members to be themselves in church.  Caroline and I have been part of church bodies ordaining LGBTQ+ people since 1978, but the Presbyterian denomination did not approve such ordination until 2011.  When they were in high school, my kids asked me why the churches were against ordaining LGBTQ+ people.  Since we ordained them at Oakhurst, I did not have an adequate answer, but David and Susan assured me that many of their young colleagues were departing the church because of this mean and oppressive policy.  The meanness and judgmental approach of the church has been – and continues to be – a huge turnoff for young adults.  Even though the Presbyterian denomination (and many others) have changed our minds on this issue, the horse is already out of the barn.  Young people know that we don’t mean it – on race, on sexual orientation, on money, on social class.

    Running all through this is the triumph of individualism in American culture.  We all believe in one form or another that the individual is the fundamental reality of human life – the idea that what is most important is the individual.  The necessity and value of community is seen as an antiquated approach to life.  Nowhere was this seen more clearly than in the Covid time, when most churches closed for extended periods of time.  Zoom/You Tube came to our rescue to stream services online, but that very service reminded us that we could get by pretty well without being in the physical presence of others, that we could do OK without the incarnated existence of the church community.  All churches were affected by this power, seen so clearly in the Covid time.  The need for community was lessened by this time in Covid, and we are still recovering from that loss, but we may never recover.

    The longtime split between spirituality and justice in the white American churches is also at the root of the demise of the church.  This split came because of the power of slavery and neo-slavery in American history.  In order to hold people as slaves, the enslavers had to lop off “justice” from the Christian faith, and though neo-slavery ended in 1965, the power of this split remains strong.  Neo-slavery is making its comeback now, and it is no surprise that Christian nationalism is one of the driving forces behind such a comeback.  Those of us classified as “white” have a long history of such a split.  The Religious Wrong (not “Right,” as they are often called) has combined spirituality and politics and is using it a powerful tool, but they have not united spirituality and justice.  (For more on this, see “The Spirituality of the Church” by Ernest Trice Thompson, or more recent books  “The False White Gospel” by Jim Wallis, “The End of Theological Education” by Ted Smith, and of course, the book that Dr. Catherine Meeks and I wrote called “Passionate for Justice.”). The moral bankruptcy of Christian nationalists shows how low we in the church world have sunk.

    This split between spirituality and justice means that most mainline churches have little community or engagement with those who are poor.  For us Presbyterians, we believe in a rigid order of worship which emphasizes our educational level and our desire not to display any vulnerability.  In that sense, we are almost saying that we are giving God a break by coming to worship Her together in a building whose history and existence have proclaimed to those who are poor that they are not welcome.  We may have many commendable church programs which seek to serve those in need, but we have rarely seen those in need as prospects for our community of faith.  For Black worshippers and for those who are poor, worship of God is life-giving because when they step out of the church sanctuary, the forces of racism and sexism and materialism await them to seek to crush them.  Those of us in mainline churches have not often been aware of this chasm, much less sought to bridge that gap.

    With these forces at work among us, it is no surprise that the white mainline American churches are in trouble – indeed, though there are notable exceptions, most of our churches are in hospice, waiting for a dignified death.  There are possible answers and signs of hope for the mainline American church, and next week, I will look briefly at those.  In the meantime, I’ll be glad to get your comments on this – what other causes for the demise of the church would you cite?