Christians Are Pushing People Away from Church

In light of my last post, I have been reading books about people who have left the Church for various reasons:

• Because the Church blamed her bipolar disorder on her own faithlessness. (Anna Gazmarian in Devout: A Memoir of Doubt)
• Because the Church shunned her after divorcing her husband (Promise Enlow in The Exvangelicals)
• Because it’s increasingly hard to find a stable and healthy congregation (Jim Davis, Michael Graham & Ryan Burge in The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?

Quotes like these are everywhere in the media:

I have no interest in going back to temple and little trust or appetite for organized religion.  Jessica Grose in a The New York Times op-ed.

You told me to love my enemies, to even do good to those who wish for bad things. You told me to never “hate” anyone and to always find ways to encourage people. You told me it’s better to give than receive, to be last instead of first. You told me that Jesus looks at what I do for the least-of-these as the true depth of my faith. You told me to focus on my own sin and not to judge. You told me to be accepting and forgiving.

I paid attention. I took every lesson. And I did what you told me.

But now, you call me a libtard. A queer-lover. You call me “woke.” A backslider. You call me a heretic. A child of the devil. You call me soft. A snowflake. A socialist.

What the hell did you expect me to do? I thought you were serious, apparently not. Chris Kratzer on Threads

As a mainline Presbyterian Christian with some Bible Church years under my belt and a commitment to Young Life in high school, I find myself semi-obsessed with the flagrant fouls* committed in our congregations. I would feel pessimistic about The Church, but I’m feeling high from a weekend where one congregation seeking a new pastor for years unanimously called an excellent new leader, another congregation overwhelmingly voted to sell some of their property to Dream Key Partners to build affordable housing, and a small college installed an extraordinary new chaplain in the presence of a packed chapel filled with college students – many of them queer. God is amazing even when we forget that God created us to be amazing.

*It’s college basketball season. Thanks be to God.

Note: I recommend all three of the featured books. Can’t put them down.