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Now, I'm not so daft as to declare it "religion week" just because I have a religious satire book hitting the virtual shelves [hopefully] this week. However, an article was recently suggested to me and (based on a few documentaries I watched) I feel that a response is in order. Please bear with my groping-for-relevance while I wait for my book to actually arrive and be approved for sale.
If you'd like to read up, check out Rachel Held Evans | 15 Reasons I Left Church.
Back? Good, because you just spent a few minutes being misled.
The title of the post implies something that the body, itself, contradicts. Rachel, as well-meaning as she seems to be, chronicled her discomfort with her church (in other words, a church) rather than the church (left of the capital C):
I left the church when I was twenty-seven. I am now thirty, and after trying unsuccessfully to start a house church, my husband and I are struggling to find a faith community in which we feel we belong.She didn't leave the church (faith community), she stopped weekly attendance to a building. Semantics? Maybe.
That being said, I think she makes some valid points. Planning baby showers wouldn't be an effective way to spend one's time in any context in the face of a/the church's main purpose. Unless they're used as an evangelism tool, I suppose, and I doubt even Jesus would attend an event where people guess what the "poo" in a diaper actually is. Then again, maybe he enjoys those games. Who can say.
It's already been established that I have no faith in all things church. So it should be readily apparently why I left church, both in the faith community and building senses. Admittedly, my opinions are going to be biased in this direction, but having been "outside" for a while now, I've realized my biggest reason for discontentment. Rachel's blog post highlights it unintentionally well, actually.
Participation in the Christian church isn't mandatory, but it might as well be. If you don't subscribe to one of the 1500+ denominations of Christianity, or gods forbid you're an unrepentant Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Atheist (but not Agnostic, because they're easy pickins for conversion), you're thought of as having something wrong with you. In the words of the least relevant celebrity, whose recent commentary on gays was less than well received, you're lost.
Of all the reasons I'm anti-church these days, the biggest one is because the presumption is that "church" is "right." The authority is on their side. The goal is to make everyone agree with them, which should be simple because they clearly know the proper way of things. Now, not every individual throws their spiritual weight around, but I've definitely known some who do. Some of them may even see this post on Facebook and wonder why I'm so
Nothing illustrates this better than my favorite of Rachel's reasons, by the way, is #10: I left the church because of my own selfishness and pride. The church is right, so clearly she's wrong for leaving it, and it's all her fault for being such a selfish and prideful person. It's not the church's fault she wasn't enriched, full of zeal, satisfied with her experience and accumulated knowledge and fellowship. Clearly it was just a matter of she wasn't trying hard enough.
Not much gets under my skin quite like this.
You can thank my feelings on the legacy from being brought up LDS, being encouraged to repeat the mantra "I know this church is true" as a child who couldn't have possibly known otherwise, and coming to disagree with every possible thing about said organization. It puts quite a damper on the whole "faith" thing, let me tell you.
My personal baggage aside, I feel that we should live in a secular society. One where you're allowed to be who you are without having people automatically assume there's something broken about you. Christians aren't perfect, nor are Muslims are Atheists, but presuming that any one group is right and that we should all just jump ship with what we're doing and join them before the Armageddon Clock chimes 13 (or we destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons) is one of the most ridiculous unspoken rules living in USAmerica goads you into following.
I used to cut the various churches some slack. They help people, right? They take your money from the collection plate and do good things (literally) with it. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless; those sorts of things that you obviously couldn't do all by yourself. Then I read a study on how a common church spends its money.
Donations account for 87% of a church's income, probably more in other cases.
About 77% of the budget goes to staff, overhead, and supplies.
Only 15-20% of the budget goes to missionary/support work.
Do that math sometime. I have. To say it's disappointing doesn't even begin to cover it. Make no mistake: your tithing pays for a building and people who work in it.
If you want a decent reason to leave church, do it because they care more about preaching than they do about helping. Do it because they build ever-more-enormous facilities in which to preach in lieu of helping. Do it because your money would be better-spent directly helping people, or going to actual charities who at maximum probably rent a single office in a run-down building in a run-down part of town... so they can more effectively use the money they collect to help people.
Now, that's not to say that I disagree with Rachel entirely. #15 is also one of my favorite reasons, but I don't see the point in disassociating yourself with the one part of an organization when the rest of it, probably even those sitting next to you in those pews, do subscribe to such ridiculous and exclusionary notions. It bothers me that people think they can draw such magical distinctions like, "I'm a Christian, but I'm not a Westboro Baptist (of GOD HATES FAGS fame) kind of Christian," or, "I'm a Christian, but not a fundamentalist Christians like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (of blaming natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina on the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians fame)." Why on earth would you want to call yourself the same thing those people do?
Because you have to. Something is wrong with you if you don't. Sure, you can disagree with them all you want, but you all still believe in the same god, read from the same book, and perform the same weekly ritual. People like me just don't understand it. Maybe now you'll have a better idea of why that is.
Click here to order your copy of Thomas Redpool Goes To Hell. It should be "live" soon, I promise.
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Titles, buildings and whatnot. Can't really say those are the things to focus on.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with Thomas Redpool. Have to admit, quite the interesting cover.
I rarely comment, but today you got me.
ReplyDeleteYou dismissed this, but I question whether it's fair to paint all things Christian with the same broad brush. I appreciate the intellectual honesty in your approach, but you lost me with the financial breakdown as proof of why the church is evil.
I've worked in churches most of my life. Out of curiosity, I looked at our latest financials. They were consistent with your figures: 30% for salaries, 45% for overhead, and 25% for missionary work. The reports are updated monthly, readily available to anyone, and aren’t meant to be secret.
But is that financial framework really so horrible?
Let me give you examples of what those expenditures provide.
Our building is near a government hospital for Native Americans. Most patients are indigent, having neither health coverage nor means to afford it. As government funds dwindle, their facility takes a hit. Adequate meeting space for training meetings is nonexistent. As a result, our building is used by the hospital for training. But who pays the mortgage? Who pays to have lights and heat, to clean up after 200 people, to replace paper products and equipment that wears out more quickly? We don't charge the hospital a penny. It comes from the Sunday morning collection plate, from people who donate to improve the quality of healthcare for indigent people who will probably never know our church exists.
We meet single mothers struggling to make a living. Jobs necessitate childcare they can’t afford, so they work as reps for companies like Mary Kay. How can they invite customers to a Mary Kay party in their dilapidated trailer on the edge of town? Where do they send their children? The church opens up free meeting rooms and a play area for their children. Most of them don’t go to church. They’re welcome, of course, but we don’t expect them to listen to a sermon as a condition for assistance.
A family in town lost two loved ones. The father passed away and his son committed suicide. The family couldn’t afford the local funeral home. They held the funeral here with 500 people in attendance. None of them had ever set foot inside our church. No one in that family was charged a penny.
And the people who actually go to church here, what do they get?
How about a facility readily available for birthdays, reunions, recitals and weddings? A gym where their kids can play basketball away from gangs and drugs? A place for their study groups, committees and meetings?
And the salaries, what do they get for collectively hiring us?
How about open doors, listening ears and helping hands when their marriage is ending, or they've been laid off, or they're being evicted? How about people who come in the middle of the night when they’re in the hospital? People who encourage their children to make good choices, or tutor struggling students when the public programs close down?
As someone whose salary comes from donations, I’m constantly aware of the gravity of this. I feel privileged to serve this local body. No one tells them how to spend their money, yet they collectively choose to hire me. I serve them in return as best I can.
Meanwhile, their building gives them a rallying point on Sundays to be inspired to continue serving each other and their communities. They meet with like-minded people to encourage each other in their resolve to make a difference.
That hospital? Many doctors and nurses go to church here. They have incredibly difficult jobs. They could easily work in better towns with better salaries. But they feel called to serve some of the poorest Americans who could never afford healthcare and can be the most difficult to treat. At church, they find strength to tackle another hard week.
Regardless of how you feel about Jesus, Buddha, Xenu or whomever, if a common faith serves as a focal point to draw people together and motivate them to become better human beings, is that really so horrible?
I'm sorry, man, but I just don't see anything so awful about that.
Rob, I understand and appreciate your response. There's two things I think I need to clarify.
DeleteYou're absolutely right that I painted with a broad brush, however, shouldn't I be able to? I mean, I know that's kind of an idealistic way to look at things, but don't we always attempt to categorize as widely as possible when dealing with the world's religions? Individuals, who may have studied or know people of x/y/z, can make a distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, where your average layman would not. Considering that to call oneself Christian, one must share the same core beliefs as other Christians, and the rest are denominational details, I'm not sure I was wrong by categorizing broadly in this context (that of "we believe we're right") because it kind of goes with the territory regardless of the religion, doesn't it?
Secondly, I never said the church--or what it does--was evil, horrible, or awful. I referred only to the disparity between how much money they take in and how much of that is budgeted to actually help people as being disappointing, because it does disappoint me. This is because when I ask rhetorically what purpose religion actually fills, I am reminded that the church helps people. The question then becomes how helpful are they, and how helpful could they be.
You've highlighted some great things your church does, and I applaud those things. You help people who need to be helped. But I'm sure even you are frustrated that you can only help people to a certain extent... whereas if you had four to five times as much money you could many more people (or the same amount 4-5 times as much). Even I'm not so naive as to believe it's so simple, though; even with interns/volunteers, things cost money. What's disappointing is that the organization costs so much simply to exist, and with existence established they are then able to use what I feel to be a meager amount left over to actually perform their function. I have no idea whether anything is being done about this, or if anyone else even notices it, but it is a disparity that takes away some of the church's credibility in my eyes (as a charitable organization). However, being that existence IS the primary function, and helping people secondary, I would imagine the ratio is operating as intended.
Oversimplifying the way you did, that ALL a common faith does is serve as a focal point for community and improvement, who could argue against that? If you really believe that's all religion/church does, or that's all it's used for, then I honestly don't know what to tell you.
Thanks for responding. Don't misunderstand, I'm not asserting that there's nothing wrong with church. If I started making a list, I could go on for days. Hopefully I would start by pointing the finger at myself before pointing out the flaws of others, but that's a different discussion.
DeleteYou are right that I’m oversimplifying, and I realize there is more to church than just a call to loving, compassionate service. But I truly believe that service (to believers and nonbelievers alike) should be the foremost defining characteristic of the church. This is advocated throughout the New Testament, taught by Jesus, and displayed by the early church according to Acts.
Various self-declared "Christians" have bastardized and exploited core foundations of the Christian faith for their personal gain, and some have created far-reaching waves of corruption in their wake. I feel like some sort of experience (or combination of experiences) has to be at least part of the reason behind your vitriol toward religion as a whole. But those exploitations don't change what Christianity is foundationally supposed to be.
Your explanation helps me understand your perception of the financial disparity a little better.
I admit, when I look on the last page of our financials and see an annual total expenditure of $400,000, I think to myself, "Wow, that's a lot of money." I can't help but wonder how many water wells that could dig or how many impoverished children it could feed.
I've worked in the smaller non-profit sector, too. With minimal staff and overhead, their percentages look better on paper until you start plugging in numbers and find that oftentimes, many aren't able to pull together resources to do anything significant at all.
Let's say we cut all but one staff member and move into a small office space. In order to keep pace with what we're doing right now, that person has to singlehandedly raise $100,000 to support mission/relief work annually, plus enough to cover his/her salary and whatever overhead still exists. That's a tall order. Can one person accomplish that? How will he/she go about doing it from a tiny office with no consistent way to interact with potential donors? It COULD be done, and small charities do it. But there’s strength in numbers, and I don't think that a church is the worst possible approach, even if it means greater overhead.
As for the theology aspect, man, I don't know. From my own perspective as a pastor, I don't feel threatened by the unbelief of others or feel obligated to convert them. Share the message with them? Sure, IF they're willing to hear it. Convert them? That's the Spirit’s responsibility, not mine. Conform them? Again, only if they’re ready and willing. You've been to the LDS church, you know what their theology is about, you decided it wasn't for you. You've been in evangelical church and discovered the same. Only you know what you can accept or reject with regard to faith. I wouldn't presume to imply that something is wrong with you if your beliefs, faith, or absence of either makes you different from me. I do hope (as I would for anyone) that you find your motivation to contribute toward the good of humanity. I'm glad to see you using your creativity as an author to expand the global collective of literature.
As Epstein says, there are plenty of people who are "good without God." There are great people who, completely apart from religion, do big things that make the world a better place. They find some different motivator, some different rallying point that works better for them. But I think many people just naturally gravitate toward church to serve that function for them, so even if it's not essential, I think it's still basically good for it to exist.
Whatever you’ve lived through has obviously led you to believe otherwise. I don’t agree, but I can understand it.
THank you for your post, Todd. I completely agree with you, so it is hard for me to judge, but I felt your response was balanced and in no way harsh towards religion.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, just because one thinks differently, doesn't mean they are wrong - especially when it comes to belief. Looking forward to reading RedPool, by the way. Will it be availbe in Kindle format?
I actually JUST made it available on Kindle (through KDP) this morning. You can find it here: http://t.co/UcmzYdZR, but I'll be doing a full post with purchase links as soon as the paper copy is available. Plus, the custom URL www.buythomasredpool.com will soon point to a page where you can choose your version (and where to buy). Can't wait to hear what you think!
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