The negative experiences and spiritual abuse has some of us now afraid of church
Years ago I wrote this article:
Five Hundred Pound Peep: The Poor and Disabled in the Churches
It still applies, if anything, more of this has worsened.
Maybe then I was getting an inkling of my feelings about church and how the experiences impacted my life. I expanded on this in these articles:
Five Hundred Pound Peep: Churches and Me
Five Hundred Pound Peep: Professor Archive on Churches: Are Churches in America Dying?
They say that now there's a lot of unchurched people. That term is used for those who are Christians and do not attend or belong to a church. They still have faith but they do not attend church. Their numbers are growing.
The other week, I was talking to some friends and my husband about churches. The friends knew I was thinking of finding another church and asked how that was going. I told them, "I haven't found another church, I think at this conjecture I am not going to fit in any, maybe church isn't meant for me anymore. God certainly hasn't led me to one either. The whole enterprise feels empty.
My husband brought up one point beyond the first IFB was happy in, he says, "I have no interest in going anywhere, you always have us leave them". This is true since I moved here, we struggled to find a church home. Twenty years is a long time to try something and keep failing at it. There's a point banging your head on the wall continually gets foolish. Take the good and leave the bad? I had good experiences too, though the second IFB church was a nightmare. I wrote about other spiritual abuse I faced on this blog about Mrs. Curses.
My husband was happy in the UU, and I told him I would understand him staying but the way we do church is we go somewhere together. It's always been like that. He attended my fundamentalist churches with me even though he didn't agree with everything they were preaching.
I've been watching Professor Archive and talked about that video channel some. Life for the poor and disabled have gotten worse in churches, since I wrote that article in 2015. By my reckoning most working class and poor people have left the churches outside of rural areas. Who can afford it, when you struggle to pay the rent or buy groceries? It is more demands and expectations. Poor and working class people simply do not fit in.
Peter 2:3 KJV: And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
Churches seem more like a business now where you're the consumer especially in the evangelical world. The bigger churches with the bookstores instead of library and coffee shops are going to expect you to have a little bit of expendable income. Crony Capitalism ruined many churches with their greedy pastors. You read about the church in the book of Acts, they share things in common, it's not a money game where you have to purchase your way in. Tithing is a false doctrine. Why did I watch pastors richer than me always begging for money? This Christian exposes some of the problems with tithing doctrine and talks about how American capitalism ruined Christianity.
"As a result of this blindness, we see ultra-materialism and multi-million dollar structures rising at the exact same time that homelessness is at epidemic levels. Many people sitting in these pews are already financially strapped, yet pastors teach that if you “plant seeds of faith,” you will receive tenfold. They weaponize scriptures like, “Will a man rob God?” against the congregation.
But truly, after we deep dive into the Word, we will discover that it is actually these pastors who are robbing God. Every ministry peddling this doctrine has fallen into apostasy, and their day of judgment will be made evident by the end of 2027."
Those under immense financial pressures probably are already departing from churches. Many poor people think if I had money to give anyone, maybe I need to give some to my soon to be homeless friends? They aren't so keen to hand it over to a wealthy pastor to waste.
One thing I don't understand is while the USA economy implodes even as some churches do community programs like food pantries and other programs, why don't they admit what is going on out there? Why don't they talk about it? Why do they stick to the likes of Dave Ramsey? Why are their members all middle class and above and the people needing the charities not part of the churches? Why don't we have pastors who talk about any of this? Maybe most of them don't relate. Outside of Barber who is an exception, none of them touch economic realities with a 10-foot pole.
If people feel like they can't even go to church because they can't afford it and all the pastors are out of touch about our day to day lives, what is the use then? One thing I told my friends was I never saw a fellow renter in church. Isn't that strange like the act of simply needing to rent, kept you away from church membership.
No one came to evangelical church who was not a home owner! Sometimes you would encounter an old person who had gone into a condo to avoid yard work and physical strain, but that part was interesting to me. I never ever met a person who lived a lifestyle like mine not even in the nice first IFB. This tells me something about the "needed status" of going to church. Sure there are some biker churches out there, and a few churches that cater to the substance abuse/homeless crowd, but they are rare exceptions. One doesn't always live by one.
One thing I noticed is how boomers dominated every church I was in. Now as the boomers die off, the churches are dying out. I talked in other posts how I would visit churches, and there'd be a long line of empty pews there and a small group of elderly people. Sorry, but they deserve it for ignoring Generation X, Millennials and Gen Z. Why were boomer concerns the only ones that mattered?
This also ties into economics as the churches stagnated and adhered to a world that no longer exists economically. The pastors would praise Ronald Reagan and go on like the 1980s were the epitome of civilization. They didn't care what younger people faced. The Catholic church did seem more multigenerational but ignored singles and the childless outside of the monastery and convent world. The evangelical world was just as bad if not worse. The young have left, some have deconverted and become pagans, atheists or agnostics. Some reclaimed Christian faith after deconversion but have nowhere to go.
I saw a Catholic writer write that "belonging" was part of Christian faith. He's right about that. What happens when there's no belonging and you are allowed no voice? The speechlessness in churches for the young took over. That's why they are gone. No one was interested in what they had to say. I think this is one reason that young Christian converts are leaving the evangelical world and going to Catholic and Orthodox churches. They probably are tired of the politics, fads and nonsense in the evangelical world.
As I considered returning to church, feelings of fear came in because of past bad experiences and loss. With the internet, you can watch local videos online. The sameness of so many places appalled me, like they were downloading business plans for a church off the internet. A new church opened up, meeting at this local German club and restaurant. They had language like "equipped for impact". The pastor and family looked like bots, and dressed like you would imagine a "cool evangelical pastor" to dress. How come none ever depart from the formula? They had the memes about being family friendly. What about the people without families? None of them ever seem to care about them.
However my fear almost seemed hard to understand, I noticed with time, it didn't go away. I prayed to God, "Please show me where to go". I got no response. Maybe it's God's will I not be in a church at all. That is possible. I'm too old to start over somewhere new, and I have made a mess of religion. There's not much energy left to do anything and the energy that is left goes into art and staying alive. The people who did it right, probably stuck to a church and grew within its confines, I suppose, they focused on community. They didn't wonder all over the map. A lot of this is my fault. I was a commitment-phobe when it came to religion.
I told one Catholic friend, it may not be God's will for me to be anywhere. His faith is enviable as he has close relationship with his religious home. His church really brings out the best in him. He shares the love of Christ in his day to day life. Religion got messed up for me, seeking too much and my faith was too troubled by my life circumstances. There's good and bad in various churches. There are things I miss about Catholicism too. With my plastered icons on the wall, books by monks and other religious books on bible prophecy, I would confuse most Christians. Obviously, I'm not a UU anymore. I'm not a fundamentalist either. The IFB wouldn't work again even if I found a decent one.
The evangelical world definitely has problems. The Christian nationalism and slavish devotion to Israel is appalling. The churches showed no discernment bowing before the Orange malignant narcissist. He constantly makes it clear he is not a Christian over and over and still the evangelicals never woke up about the guy. My interest into returning to sermons blaming the poor and homeless for poverty is very low. Think about it, I spent over 8 years as an admin and moderator on a message board for ex-evangelicals. This wasn't a paid thing just some online stuff. They knew after I deconverted and deconstructed, I renewed my Christian faith. Some on that board did stay Christians. The pain, spiritual abuse and rest people went through was off the charts. There was concerns I shared with them about the negative directions the evangelical world had taken. Hopefully I helped some of them. One thing I kept arriving at, was why go back to what failed before? I would confront the same!
For some time I was on a board for ex-UUs after I left the UU church. Some of the moderators there were a pain, as they were extreme liberals that did not allow questioning of some social issues without major push-back. They seemed to want to censor me talking about the realities of the US economy as they fit into the UU more socioeconomically and were wealthy professionals. I made some friends on there too, and talked about religion and how I had more Christian beliefs. There were a few there who went into mainline Protestantism after leaving the UU church but that wasn't for me either. Many did discuss how the Unitarian Universalist church had changed in a very short time. How they did not allow freedom of thought or exploration. It did help in discussing these things with others.
I'm intrigued with the Orthodox church for some reason lately, but I know there's a level of personal foolishness where I have tried every church on the planet already. The Orthodox intrigued me because they saw God not as an angry Dad ready to beat us for the smallest transgression but as a healing Physician. This Orthodox video talking about being trapped in slavish fear when it came to spiritual things also meant a lot to me.
Even the Catholics presented God in a less fire and brimstone way than the fundamentalists. My interest in Orthodoxy came from reading all those Russian writers some time ago. It sounds trite but Dostoevsky saved the dying embers of my Christian faith.
The Orthodox church is too far away. If I went to one, I'd only make it about once a month, and I think I need a church if I was to return to one, that is part of my local community. Sola Scripture and Orthodoxy don't go together either. Interestingly enough more seem awake about the world system than many evangelicals. I was talking to some online for a while. The Orthodox seemed to have avoided some of the problems of Catholicism like with the Pope and later teachings like Purgatory. .They don't believe in the centralized papal authority, but it's a whole other culture, and they have their own political problems. They aren't free of scandal. No church is. I don't agree with all the teachings but sometimes when I read Orthodox articles on the evangelical world and why they are now ex-evangelicals that became Orthodox, I understand WHY.
(1) Varieties Of Evangelical Anguish - by Michael Stefan
Orthodoxy And The End Of The Personality Wars
He's right about the expected personalities in evangelicalism, where the glad-handers and extroverts get first billing. The Cholerics do rule the roost. Evangelicalism is an American product flavored by the two "Great Awakenings" and contains all the inherent traits of America. He's right too about the anti-intellectualism of the evangelical world. You aren't allowed to ask questions or debate anything or even go too deep. If you like studying the Bible and want to discuss it, the majority of pastors I dealt with, weren't too keen on the idea. The Orthodox approach to God is far different too. One aspect some of the Orthodox teachers kept bringing up is how evangelicalism stresses "initial justification" [being born again] and then abandons discipleship. That made sense to me. One evangelical belief I do question and was taught was "Once Saved, Always Saved", since I almost lost my faith for good isn't it dangerous to teach people that one?
My beliefs are different from many evangelicals now. I don't believe in Christian Nationalism and abhor it. On my old religion and conspiracy blog, I had literally dozens of articles against what I called Dominionists. This was a very unique stance even back then. Realizing the IFB was inherently Dominionist despite my own good church, was something I had to face. I don't believe in Zionism, or the pre-Trib Rapture. Darby changed things, dispensationalism just seemed to add error after error. God is presented as too much fire and brimstone instead of a loving Father in many evangelical churches too. The politics and rhetoric against the poor really got oppressive and is one reason, I wrote The Poor and Disabled in Churches article. That has only grown worse as far as my view of things on the internet. Mercy for the homeless seemed rare. Most conservatives considered all the homeless to be drug addicts. I wrote about how the homeless were turned away from help in churches. My first IFB took in a homeless young man and got him a room. That church had some true love in it. I don't see that sort of thing happening in most of the churches in my present community.
One weird thing that happened as I was talking to Christians in other branches online, is I came to question more of the evangelical world. I encountered a Middle Eastern Coptic Christian who seemed to show evidence that his church was even older than the Orthodox and Catholic church. I found what he said to be interesting. History can't tell us everything, we must examine all teachings, but I got the inkling the evangelical world went with some "new developments". Darby would be an example of one of those. Sometimes I have thoughts about how Americanism and religion got in a big stew pot and it blended into a mess. This is one reason Jesus's words about the poor are ignored. I saw evangelical friend's complaining about the "socialists", but none of them seem to understand that a lot of the socialism today is millions of dollars in payouts to those like Musk from the government.
Are we seeing this happen in most of today's evangelical churches?
"Luk 14:13 But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind:"
The thoughtful introverts are pushed aside especially in mainstream evangelicalism. I told my friends with my experiences in evangelicalism, the world lacked depth to me. I was tired of churches that taught kindergarten level stories of the bible and never took things past 6th grade. They always told us not to be intellectually prideful in the evangelical world but was that to shut our minds down? Looking back, I know these things fueled my deconversion. I renewed my Christian faith but now have no where to go. It's difficult. Some online Christians said No one was meant to be a solo Christian, but I've met others in my position. We debated their apostolic succession beliefs with our belief in the ecclesia. Maybe no human institution has gotten things completely right. The Bible says the wheat and chaff are to be found everywhere. Luke 3:17 What good are these pastors if they are committed to the world system and can't even get the basics about Covid or support every war and crooked politicians?
My head and memories were filled with finger-wagging church ladies, who always saw me as a "project" they had to fix. There was less of that in the first IFB probably because I was still young and we lived in a working-class area, but it grew worse later in Christian churches. Why did they always have families? Why did they always have a security I lacked? Sometimes I asked God those questions and got nowhere. You don't want to be an object of pathos, or the "worm" or the one the rest "feel sorry" for as they plan ladies trips out shopping and gather together for meals out. There was nothing to talk to with them either. One evangelical friend told me, I was sinning to forsaking assembling together, but I just can't go through that again.
This Christian article interestingly brings up a point. I never made any close friends at church. I don't know why but that was just reality. While I had better social connections in my first IFB, we went to each other's houses and had dinners together and discussions, in my other churches, while people were nice, no one became close. The pastors were so controlling when I moved to this community, free discussions were rare.
"As one person told me, “They’re nice to you, but no one becomes your friend.”
It's supposed to be more personal than listening to one guy talk for hours on a stage.
One reason I got bored with churches here, is it seemed like you had to pay all this money to go to this building, and to have people around you. You listened to this one guy for hours and hours and never got to talk to anyone else. Maybe I idealized church too much from the one good experience and what I read in the Bible. I don't know. When we moved here, churches were so impersonal. It was boring and hard to get to know anyone. Some of the pastors barely let the rest of us talk as all the attention had to be on them. There were worship production teams and songs with repeating lyrics and pastors demanding their 10 percent cut, but it seemed a group of people who lacked any true community. You never felt like someone truly had your back. If trouble came, and it did for us a few times, no money or less money meant feeling a lot less welcomed. The whole enterprise got boring and frustrating for me. Maybe it's because they have departed from what church is truly supposed to be like
I've seen websites ask was it all supposed to rotate around one pastor? On my old religion blog I asked about the Nicolaitans.
During this conversation I said to my friends, "Church has become a place for those who had life go by the script, there is no understanding for people who had different lives, It is for higher status people who are homeowners, and have families and financial stability. I'm just not interested in trying to measure up to all the expectations". One thing I noticed in many evangelical churches is that money equaled holiness. Did you have a good appearance of the proper life? Otherwise you were deemed sinful to a degree or not walking with God in the right way. One thing I noticed especially in the evangelical world was unless you were prosperous due to the prosperity gospel infused everywhere you were deemed to have something wrong with you and to be lacking enough faith.
The Christian Century in their article "Has Worship Become a Luxury Good?" agreed with me. They basically came out and said the churches are focusing on middle class people and above. After all that's where the money is, isn't it?
"“Churches have not simply lost working-class people; they have been formed as institutions built on a brand of moral superiority that requires middle-class stability to participate.”
and
"I thought of my former church members’ economically driven attendance when Ryan Burge assessed the data on church membership in relation to class and declared that “religion has become a luxury good.” The religious demographer’s research found that churches are increasingly the habitat of the more educated and wealthy in our society. The people most likely to attend Christian worship have a master’s degree and earn a salary between $60k and $100k. Those least likely to attend worship, who ticked the religious box “nothing,” hold a high school diploma.
Surge’s assessment is stark. Our churches are increasingly designed by and for those who have done everything right according to the White, middle-class script: college degree, marriage, stable income.
Other studies confirm Burge’s findings. One researcher, seeking to understand why White working-class people were defecting from institutional churches, noticed that the economic erosion of viable working-class wages led to a crisis in values and identity. As livable wages, adequate housing, and affordable health care options evaporated in the 1970s, churches that upheld values of education, delayed gratification, and self-control—bourgeois virtues—increasingly became detached from workers’ lives. Churches have not simply lost working-class people; they have been formed as institutions built on a brand of moral superiority that requires middle-class stability to participate."
There was always that burden of class in all the churches I visited here. What is there to talk about for me in Christian housewife circles as they talked about vacations, and home décor? Maybe deconversion came from wilting on the intellectual vine. The Orthodox church seemed more intellectual, that appealed to me and the Catholics have the scholastic tradition. You could be poor far easier in the Catholic church, there may be a little gossip, but there was less demands for money. Poverty also wasn't taught in Catholicism as a personal failing. Think about it, even some of their religious take "vows of poverty". Why were all the saints tossed away in the evangelical world like they had no good advice about life? Why weren't we allowed examples? That was one thing I missed.
The evangelical world definitely became classist. That was the strange thing about Christian Nationalists, there's a certain level where you are just "too poor" to be one, and if you need disability, Medicare, Medicaid, as they all yell about the leeches on government, it just doesn't work out! One thing I noticed while I was a fundamentalist, there was this expectation that everyone owned a house, had children, the wife cooked, cleaned and homeschooled. The expected life never fit my economic parameters. Even among the Catholics I felt the pressure over being childless but it was worse in the evangelical world. This applies to all the evangelical Christian churches in this area, that push Dave Ramsey, where there is assumption that there is good health, I said to my friends, "Church today is for people who had life go by the script!"
There is a religious caste system. One needs a certain lifestyle to have it all lock together. I found out the hard way the conservative churches expect a certain type of person and the liberal churches do too. I left the UU over this caste system being imposed from the liberal side of things. Could some reject Covid tyranny and be a UU still? The answer for me was No. I never met another UU who agreed with me on Covid though I met a few ex-UUs online willing to talk to me about it. The conservative world was just as bad. Those who didn't vote Republican or support Trump were almost automatic outsiders. The churches have just grown more political with time. This is one major reason that people don't go to church. Where do independents go? They are tired of politics.
With multiple denominations and churches, I see the good and bad, the commitment to scripture in evangelical churches is a positive, the Catholic church has their saint and intellectual tradition but then the corruption of the Vatican and them doing things like being involved with the World Economic Forum is not a positive. Roman Catholicism has monasteries and convents and charity programs worldwide. The Orthodox are more intellectual too, and I can see the positive reasons for the conversion to Orthodox trend in America. They have avoided some of the pitfalls of the Catholic church and are seen as more "ancient". Some evangelicals may point out the "smells and bells" are bringing them in too. There is beauty in these churches with the art alone as well. The fundamentalists and iconoclasts took things too far.
The evangelical world fell in love with trends, it always seemed to be constantly changing, Does that stuff hold with time or do people simply get worn out by the latest, greatest thing? I was in when The Prayer of Jabez was popular and Weight Down, and some of that got old, how the newest latest thing was presented as having all the answers but would fade away. While the Catholic church is having some church closures, evangelical churches didn't seem so long lasting. We all knew of popular evangelical churches, that would rise and fall, and often they would close when the popular pastor who was good at sermons left. The consumerism got old, towards the end of my sojourn the churches were selling more diets based on 40 days of fasting. The Purpose Driven life stuff of 20 years ago was a bad influence. It made everyone want to be a 'star" lending itself to narcissism instead of dealing with the fact most people in this world just have ordinary lives. One thought I had about the evangelical world is everything always had to be "new". Sure some stuck to the Bible and taught truth in testing things by scripture, but there's a fault line there when a church gets involved in constant fads.
The IFB taught me scripture beyond any other church. That was a positive being in that church but sadly they have the things they got wrong too. Some may say just choose a church, Peep and take the good and the bad. I explored things too heavily. Maybe this was the price of being a seeker, and wanting to know what was true. Maybe autism affects this, where I over-analyzed things. I've prayed to God about where to go and simply haven't been shown and haven't been given any direction. Sometimes I think my life is better without church. I read my Bible, pray and read other spiritual books and talk to Christians online and a few in real life. Other times I yearn for the community of a church and think I should be in one, but just get stuck. I don't know where to go.
Churches are not comfortable places for independent thinkers. This applies to bother liberal and conservative churches. I shouldn't have been so alone in my views with Covid in the UU. It unsettled me and probably will for the rest of my life how everyone there followed it and did not question. People should not have liberal litmus tests applied to them either. Single and childless people in the majority of churches I have been in, were ostracized. Some mainstream evangelical churches I visited appealed to the young but the majority appealed to Boomers and people who had money first. If someone is an "outsider", disabled, etc, that too, made church uncomfortable. The UUs were more accepting and friendly when it came to disabilities and the childless.
Many are let down promised "great fellowship" and "church families". I got a taste of that for a time, but didn't realize how extremely rare it was. Many churches have cliques, and it can be hard to break in a new-comer. Things are so transitional in American culture, you can find a group only to have it break up. Remember after I moved my good church closed for a few years and re-opened in a neighboring town. There's around 4-5 of the original members left from 20 years ago. I have some contact on social media, that's how I know.
Many evangelical and other churches became more structured, where they followed national programs, scripts and business models instead of taking into account what the members wanted and the local community. Some during church classes would institute endless rules of "no cross talk" and more that often served to silence members instead of church leaders.
If you face hard times, churches will teach that you lack faith to complain too much. Even liberal ones will push programs and messages to "think positive" and focus on the positive and false teachings about forgiveness that really gives place and enablement to abusers. One issue I had with the evangelical church is they were not honest about suffering or how life could bring suffering. There was too much boosterism and denial of the pain and trouble faced. The Orthodox and Catholics seemed to have better answers about suffering and avoided the prosperity gospel dreck, that taught if you lacked faith, that "bad things" would happen to you.
Some of us women who had life not go by the script, faced pain, censure and judgement especially in conservative Christian circles where depression, anxiety, severe health problems and more were judged as personal shortcomings. Some would be compassionate on the front end, offer prayers and tell us to turn things over to God, but with the passage of time unless your problems were solved, judgement could enter in. "Why won't she get herself together?" "Why isn't her faith being rewarded?" My life became happier being free of these pressures. I do not want them back and that's another reason, I just never went back to church. Comparison is the thief of joy, and honestly I got tired of trying to integrate into circles where they had no understanding of a life of extreme challenges and judged it.
I learned to keep more problems to myself to survive but then you think at a certain point "Why go through superficial gestures with people you'll never be close to?" One thing I noticed over the years, is I never met anyone like me in a church situation. I did elsewhere don't get me wrong, I have people I have met with harder lives than me especially women with severe Lipedema. How come I never met one disabled woman who faced economic challenges in the local evangelical churches here? Why were they gone? It's something to think about you know. There were a few in far away rural churches. When I was Catholic think there was more variety in people in churches, we did have some poor and ill people in my last Catholic church.
One thing in some of these well-heeled Christian circles, is you learn you will never be "one of them" and you have wasted your time. With the UUs, they did respect both I and my husband as artists and a writer in his case and while we had the socioeconomic chasm, things worked better there. Many people there were to be respected for their work, and art too from the other direction. I do wonder about how false teachings in the Christian religion impact this treatment of "down and out" people. The prosperity gospel is literally infused into the evangelical world all over the place. One can feel the disrespect on the edges. This is why I believe American poor and working class people unless they live in a small rural area with a church full of people in the same position, church is no longer a comfortable place for us. It is worse in the evangelical world too.
If you have problems, you can see the others growing weary with them. You think, "Why did I share my problems to begin with, with people who don't share in them?" Or if they have any, they'd never dare share them. It seemed very easy to make church people uncomfortable. Some did have very sheltered and comfortable lives. This is a judgement on my part, but it didn't seem to take much to have them clutch their pearls. When I was in the second IFB, I kept my no contact from my family a secret, I referred to a little religious estrangement but kept it vague. It's good I did because the pastor did a sermon about the "wicked" people who go no contact from their families. This was around 2015, and I was 2 years in. That's a sermon I didn't need to hear back then. Christian love and understanding was rare in supply. Even today I see the estranged parent crowd who often are evangelical preach against "no contact" ignoring great parts of the Bible where Jesus warns of the division to come in families.
I do think in churches trying to connect and be part of a group you have very little in common with socioeconomically may be a great burden no matter how nice the people are. Over the years I have asked outside of one regional ministry that ministers to the homeless and poor, and is too far away for me to attend, is why aren't there churches for poor people? Some avoid church because they are tattooed from their past, or don't have the right clothes, appearance and more. This is an issue for me, being so overweight. I am in the 450s, stuck in another plateau, I hope will end soon. Some churches teach that fat people are wicked and openly do so. They assume we are all sinful "gluttons" and ignore medical problems and rare cases.
Many people are uncomfortable and disappointed by their church experiences. I was happiest in the first IFB and also in the latest UU before Covid and things changed there. My differing beliefs and renewal of my Christian faith would have had me eventually leave there anyhow. Church hopping definitely is a trend now, some say people treat church like a consumer product to be chosen, but what do they expect when we aren't raised in a church or becoming part of one via extended family, history, or heritage? I talk about this stuff with some religious folks on Substack.
Religion was determined a lot more by one's family and heritage even just one-two generations ago. Would I still have been a Catholic for life, if I had not been wrenched away from the church I was very close to as a child in Virginia? I've looked the place up, it's still going. It's something to think about. My family was so angry that I left the Catholic church as a young adult but they sowed the seeds too, breaking attachments and being so abusive. The caring nuns there probably kept me from being completely destroyed by my parents too.
I've had weird thoughts about that move. Why would two parents take their children out of a high-class urban area to move to a dying rust belt town, that is so crime ridden, it has a slang name for drugs and crime? Think of Chiraq for Chicago, the name is like that. My classmates became lawyers and successful. I had the academic chops to have kept up with them back then. The house I lived in then, sold for 1.3 million dollars two years ago. My parents bought it for 77,000. Sometimes I think that move had more to do with control of us kids. It's weird I was talking to my husband about how I was close to the nuns at the church and convent across the street and how I had far more freedom as a 12 year old then I did as a teenager. There are lots of caring people around via the church, it wasn't just the nuns but fellow church members and my 4-H club director right across the street. Later I had the revelation, that while I faced bad abuse, it worsened as a teenager and it's because I no longer had this religious community surrounding me and we became far more isolated. Churches served other social functions, beyond the worship and services, and we are losing those things.
We moved from a place with buses and subways and dense community to a boring suburb of a dying town where you needed a car to get everywhere and my high school was 13 miles away even keeping me from extracurricular activities. I turned to him and said, "She moved us there, for control!" My father's job was secure by the way, he had not lost it. Maybe there were other reasons but I was thinking about the insanity of that decision and how it put my life on a negative trajectory. It meant major life regression. It's something I never confronted her on. How could you ruin your children's future potential that way?
If you are always leaving places, maybe church in the old school way is broken. You fumble around always being the "new person". My husband had a point, "We always leave". I apologized but none of the places worked out. He apologized in turn for taking me from my rural community and first decent IFB. We stayed here for medical care we both needed.
I've been too disappointed to try again. The churches in this community are awful. The UU was a respite but didn't work out. Many churches see the people in seats as a consumer now, not a community or a family. That's one reason CNN said 100,000 churches are going to close. The churches are dying along with the social contract and connection in America. Maybe all those megachurches were like Walmart too, cleaning out the small local churches, but now those megachurches are closing and the churches as a whole are being wiped out. Many Americans have no money for anything extra and many can't afford church donations and service they once were capable of.
There is a trend of the "unchurched" out there now, people are tired of politics that demand endless conformity, out of touch pastors, spiritual abuse, demands for money they don't have and our society has become too transient with required moves, that mess up church in the way where one doesn't develop the connections and stability to develop a faith in a community. Economic nomads don't do church well. We seek belonging but it's harder to find. Some may say you were given too many options. I meet others who still have faith in Jesus Christ online and who don't go to church. There are websites out there that question the church system. I wonder what wolves they faced in the pulpits too. I don't know if I will decide on one in the future or be shown a place to go. Maybe one day, I'll decide on a church, it hasn't happened now. The church really is believers in Jesus Christ, not organizations or buildings. Everyone wants community and a true church home. Maybe one day, I'll find something but for now it hasn't happened. There's more Christians no longer going to church, and there's many reasons for it.
