“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
―Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“The reasons you have for continuing to be a part of your worshipping communities are largely similar but the reasons you have for no longer being a part of a worshipping community are wildly varied.”
—Nadia Bolz-Weber
Last week Nadia Bolz-Weber published a thoughtful piece on what she characterizes as the great church decluttering. In it she responds to another piece by Jake Meador in The Atlantic on the ‘misunderstood reasons millions stopped going to church.’
Bolz-Weber also hosted an admittedly informal survey on her blog and got a lot of responses. 2698 responses when I glanced at the page this morning, through which she invites researchers to read.
I will not try to offer a play-by-play here of where and how I agree with Nadia Bolz-Weber, and where and how I agree or disagree with Jake Meador. I think the critiques she offers through her blog posts are the right critiques, noting as she does that Meador overlooks Christian nationalism as a primary cause disaffiliation.1
I loved Nadia’s characterization of the difference between why people do or don’t attend religious services—I mean, she’s riffing on the opening sentence of a favorite novel of mine, after all.
In her blog she also summarizes the main responses to her question about attendance at religious services. I quote them here just so those of you who don’t have the time or interest in going back to read Bolz-Weber or Meador’s articles can still perhaps find yourself in her summary.
“Some reasons we do not attend religious services:
We do not align theologically anymore with the church.
We do not align politically with the church (it has gotten either too liberal or too conservative and has replaced the Gospel with ideology).
We simply cannot be a part of a church that does not welcome, include, and celebrate everyone.
We just got out of the habit during COVID and haven’t mustered up the will to return.
Our lives are busy, and so Sunday mornings are too precious to spend waking early, getting dressed up and driving to go somewhere to be around people.
We were too hurt by church to ever heal enough to return again.
The pastor we loved is gone and the new one isn’t to our liking.
When COVID hit we were deeply disappointed in the church’s response: either because of a perceived over-response (succumbing to fear and closing its doors), or because of a perceived under-response (too cavalier in opening back up and ending mask requirements).
We find connection with God and others more elsewhere than in the church.
Some reasons we DO regularly attend religious services:
We have a feeling of belonging there and the community is welcoming and inclusive, cares about loving the neighbor, and cares for those on the margins.
Worshipping with others is an important part of our faith.
We are paid to be there (staff and clergy).
We pivoted to ZOOM during COVID and never pivoted back (for reasons of health, proximity or comfort) so still attend, albeit virtually.”
—
In conversations over the years I’ve heard all the reasons she lists in the ‘do not attend’ column. Perhaps the big one that’s missing that I now hear with regularity: I’m no longer a Christian. And one more: I decided to honor that I’m truly an introvert.
Where I’m feeling a certain gap is in the ‘happy families’ ‘do attend’ list.
Emerging ‘happy families’ are actually happy in a wider variety of ways than the survey, or Tolstoy, would seem to indicate. Among us, for example, I hear at least the following:
I’m not a Christian but this is a safe space for me.
I live here. [literally]
Being here is slowly unwinding some of my religious trauma.
I want to be a part of what this church does in the community and how it impacts it.
I need my kids to know the dominant kind of Christianity around here isn’t the only way.
—
Like Nadia and Jake, I think I’m perennially interested in the reasons why people do or don’t attend religious services, and I’m also concerned about the decline in attendance.
What I think we’re all wrestling with in various ways is a fundamental question: What if anything should or can we do about it?
I do have one specific thesis on decline that I haven’t seen articulated elsewhere, and so I’ll conclude this post with it.
Think about this: Back in the day, let’s say the “salad days” of the church in the late 20th century, I think you could be a part of a church without revealing much about yourself and your beliefs. The average church had a diversity of political perspectives in it, churches and clergy were mostly careful about not being stridently on “sides” of issues.
Not only that, but in the absence of social media, all members of churches and most members of clergy could go about their daily lives without having to reveal very much about their private commitments in public ways.
And since pretty much everyone went to church, going to church had a lot of cover, it didn’t mean a whole lot.
Now, with the rise of polarization combined with prevalent public social media communication AND a decline in church participation, this means those who do go to church are more revealed.
If you take our church as just one example, we are very public in our statement that we are a progressive church, that we are a part of LGBTQIA+ inclusion, that the politics of our church leadership lean pretty far Left, etc.
So anyone who attends our church, if they check into church Sunday on social media, or if they just show up, can almost immediately take on all the attributes that come along with “guilt by association.”
The same holds true for all the churches. If you leave your United Methodist church and go join the new sect that is more bigoted, that says something about you. If you remain the Southern Baptist church while it votes against women in leadership, this says something about you.
So I imagine, for better or worse, that at least one part of the movement toward disaffiliation has to do with a great sorting that is happening where either
a) people are retaining some level of their private beliefs by no long affiliating with organizations that would reveal their beliefs, or
b) disaffiliating because they’ve now discovered their personal beliefs do not align with their organization as the org has become more forthright about stating those beliefs publicly, or
c)2 church no longer provides the cover it once did because it isn’t the dominant cultural type anymore, so those who want cover will choose NOT to attend church for the same reason they used to attend church.
This last point is perhaps the story we’re all least willing to tell ourselves because it implies, in part, we all act not out of our own volition or faith or what-have-you, but under the influence of the various cultural forces that swirl around us.
Less people are going to church because less people are going to church. That’s a much more pragmatic/pessimistic viewpoint than some others being offered, but it may have the advantage of being… true.
I can’t offer practical advice here, but I can say that it feels freeing to have stated what I think is true. As Rosa Luxemburg once said, “The most revolutionary thing one can do is to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
I also think Meador is right that people choose to affiliate with organizations or movements that really challenge them—that church might learn from orgs who make it harder rather than easier to join—but I think this thesis is in stark contrast with his other concern about a culture of work and exhaustion endemic to American life… and I also think the thesis has a number of gender identity issues that go uncommented on in his essay, given that the church historically has almost always been sustained by women’s work.
(this one is the most interesting to me)
Whether it’s convincing of some over others, mapping the right and left into an equivalency is a common fallacy of the right. I’ve heard it so very often and then sometimes it drifts to moderates or even liberals.
Your point about homogenizing is true, in the sense that we did not experience a demand for critical theory to be the main analytical engine for theological critique until the last decade. However given that it is new, that would seem to indicate it’s a testing period rather than an exhausted one.
Here’s the question: let’s say we desire a liturgy under the cross. The liturgies that we were raised in thought they overtly referenced the cross allowed space for the emergence of the kinds of Christianity we now see.
So did they work? Did they do the cross thing? And why can’t we offer space for progressive Christians to engage powerful secular forms of discourse for a time and discover whether they are surprisingly cruciform?
I think I understand what you are trying to do but I don’t fundamentally agree with it. First, I think it’s an inherently problematic argument to claim a rather tiny group (progressive Christian’s globally are such a small proportion of the whole) is rehearsing tired tropes.
I’d argue quite the opposite, they/we are just now and in rather embattled contexts relating to work out at least a few liturgical phrases that are keepers.
And they have only been doing it in fits and starts for a short period of time. To claim this is a litany of topical outrage comparable to things on the right is, in fact, one way of joining the right.