The answer to this question is complicated but I suspect one of the main reasons is the reputation churches have earned—often fairly.
In a recent speech on NPR, journalist Ray Suarez cited a study about “nones”— those who answer a survey on church affiliation by using that word: “none.” In the study, young persons between the ages of 16 and 27 were asked to say three words in response to the word “Christian.” The responses? 91 percent said anti-gay. 87 percent said judgmental, and 85 percent said hypocritical.
Little wonder, if that was your impression of Christians and Christian faith—of course no outsider would ever darken the door of a church!
Many in a whole generation have these strong associations because of the words and actions of the religious right. Tragically, the whole message and the whole church end up being lumped together. And while that’s not intellectually fair, it makes sense. If what you hear about Christian faith is about people who call themselves Christian while they are hateful to others, or while they focus on a very few issues— they will assume that is what it means to be Christian.
The heart of the faith, the heart of the message is God’s love revealed in Christ. The call is to follow that path of love. It’s relatively simple.
But what the religious right does is to add all sorts of rules to the message. Yeah, Christ, but also, you can’t be gay. Yeah, Christ, but it’s better to be a man, especially if you want a place in the church. Yeah, Christ, but you have to read the Bible just like we do.
C. S. Lewis wrote an important book on Christian faith called Mere Christianity. By this title he meant to show he was writing about Christianity with no “add ons” —mere Christianity. The “add ons” are where the trouble comes, he argued.
Two thousand years before, the apostle Paul made this same point. In his letter to the Christ followers at Galatia, he is steamed because of the “add ons” people are prescribing to the new converts. He writes, “I am astonished that you have been pulled off track….” (Galatians 1:6) “If anyone preaches another message, let them be cursed!” (Galatians 1:7)
What had been preached that made Paul hopping mad? That the message of God’s love in Christ was not enough. People from the equivalent of the religious right had come along saying to these new converts, “Paul told you about Jesus? Great. But he failed to mention that you also need to get circumcised and keep the law…gotta do it or you’re on the outside.”
Paul was infuriated that the good news was being warped into “Christ and…” At one point he writes, “I wish that those who are telling you that you need to be circumcised would castrate themselves!” (Galatians 5:12) (Not the kind of verse you memorized in Sunday School…)
I get Paul’s anger. There’s a world of lonely people, a world of people looking for spiritual fulfillment, and the message they’ve heard tells them God doesn’t really unconditionally love them.
Why do people muddy the message? Maybe it makes them feel secure in a nostalgia for the “good old days,” which probably never existed, but sound comforting. Maybe it makes people feel holier-than-thou to draw these lines of who’s in and out. Maybe it’s a kind of idolatry which comes from putting their particular interpretation of the Bible—which they think is not interpretation!—as more important than God’s message.
Let’s open the windows to Mere Christianity.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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