Hitzonim | Outsiders

A Critique of the Institution of Religion, Moving Toward Life Together

I was about eye-level with the buttons.

The soft ding sounded and the elevator doors opened to a large lobby. This was definitely not the floor I was supposed to be on. I wasn’t an independent, fearless child like my youngest, Gideon, who would gladly explore the huge foyer and probably make a few friends in the process. Instead, me, the oldest, born to young parents, I was a rule-follower, maybe “compliant” wouldn’t be too inaccurate of a description. I was definitely not the sort of kid who would run their hands up and down the elevator buttons like a 1980s synth pop keyboard slide. I had simply pressed the wrong button in error, and enveloped in the paralyzing fear of a surprising elevator exit, I can still faintly recall my horror!

The story goes that I’d sit patiently just about anywhere with a small bag of Reese’s Pieces. Who wouldn’t, amiright?! At the laundromat and in the hallways outside conference rooms, sitting patiently, swinging my feet, snacking on those delicious pieces of creamy peanut butter. Mom and Dad were in their young 20s when I was born, and when my memories begin to come into focus, they were both employed at a large church on the northside. Dad was a recent seminary graduate, and Mom was involved in early childhood education. If anyone knows about church, then you know about meetings. “Christ is born, Christ is risen, we’ll need you to serve on this committee again.” (NB: This is a nod to Mike Birbiglia. If you know, you know.)

Sometime after these laundromat trips, Dad was recruited to a large United Church of Christ church in Phoenix, Arizona, and following that, he would be selected to begin a new, satellite congregation in nearby Scottsdale. This was in like 1987 or 1988. Scottsdale was very much in development, and the land for the new church start was in the dessert. Literally. A couple of state roads and a nearby ice cream shop. It was a Tastee Freez, which always struck me as funny because Dad listened to John Mellencamp, us being Hoosiers and all, and I thought it was so strange that we’d sing about Jack and Diane snacking on their chilly dogs outside the Tastee Freez, but we were a couple thousand miles away from where The Coug wrote that song. Don’t tell him that I called him “The Coug,” word is he doesn’t like that.

Before the new church even had a building, the larger church and my dad had worked out a deal with the local Mayo Clinic campus to allow us to use their auditorium on Sunday mornings to begin this new congregation. Enter the elevator incident.

All of this exposition is by way of introducing this idea: As a pastor’s kid (the infamous “PK” designation), church was work—and not in a bad way. Our family would get to the Mayo campus early to set up tables and chairs (that’s work). Mom always made all the refreshments that we’d load in the trunk and cart over together from the parking lot to the auditorium space (that’s work). Leveraging relationships, Mom and Dad recruited volunteers for all aspects of worship and education (that’s work).

When construction began on the new building, Dad assembled a team to help with landscaping—a role that Dad performed regularly for at least the first few years of the church’s existence (yup, work). One time he had to defend himself (and me, perched on a wall nearby) from a rattlesnake, using a shovel to fight off the snake. This is a true story.

I grew up listening to Dad run through his sermons on the back porch every Saturday night, and I watched him leave in all hours of the day or night when a family after a car accident or with a seriously ill relative called for spiritual care (part of the work of clergy). My grandpa, Dad’s dad, also a clergy member, could be found often reading in his study in my grandparent’s small home—he was working on his third master’s degree in theological studies when he died (the work of theological training). Church, theology, study, volunteerism, and relationship building were the central characteristics of my young religious identity. In short, church took some work!

I was raised joining trips to build houses, beautify spaces, volunteer at food pantries, and participate in walk/run events to raise money for all sorts of justice causes. The one thing we didn’t focus on was doctrine. Church was something our family felt called to do; not something we felt forced to believe. The Jesus of my youth was a Jewish carpenter whose mission was one of love. Full stop. There were many ways to God, and Jesus was one but not exclusively. Welcoming and affirming all of God’s children is, I think, one of my dad’s most strongly held convictions. For nearly 40 years my dad has opened Sunday services with one simple question: Who here is a loved child of God? And everyone in the assembled body, from the seven year olds to the seventy year olds raise their hands.

When we connected to our Jewish family through my mom, an event that opened something in the core of who I am, Dad encouraged me (and Mom) with his whole self to explore that identity and what it meant to us. In the decades after, Dad has attended Shabbat, Hanukkah candle lighting, and Seders that I’ve hosted in my family’s home. Mom and I attend Shabbat services when we can. Dad, to my knowledge, has never felt threatened or concerned about this ethno-religious identity that I affirm, and if anything, our shared study and dialogue has only been enriched by sharing books from both Christian and Jewish perspectives. Dad and I deepen our understanding of the Holy One, and in the process, we deepen our relationship with each other.

It is not in spite of my Christian (mainline Protestant) childhood that I am navigating my Jewish identity but because of it! In a good way! Because Jesus was always Jewish (historically, of course, but in our religious education, too); because radical hospitality and inclusion were lifelong values; because our tradition is non-doctrinal; because we affirmed religious pluralism and diversity in religious expression in our home; because I’ve always felt safe to be who I am in my parents’ home, and this safety stems from unconditional love from whatever cosmic forces or creator may or may not be involved in how the world hangs together. Because I want our children to understand their heritage in a way that the world just didn’t have instore for me. Because I have always been a loved child of God, and so is everyone else!

For me, and this complicated religious identity—the “Jewish Pastor’s Kid,” which was the leading contender for the name of this Substack for a long time, before, ultimately, Notes from the Diaspora won out—has led me to closely examine religious institutions. And it’s the institutional insider knowledge and lifelong participation, study, and engagement through which I have plenty of thoughts about the future!

The United Church of Christ, a progressive mainline denomination (and for disclosure, the denomination where I am active in volunteer service), is often derided as standing for “Universalists Considering Christ.” I guess to suggest theological similarity with the Unitarian Universalists. The lack of certainty is the hidden premise by which this joke “works.” It’s funny, only if you think religion should be in the certainty business. Truth is, the premise of this joke is one of my favorite parts about the UCC. I’d probably like it about the Unitarian Universalists, too, but I’m not familiar enough to comment. Some institutions traffic in certainty. The traditions that do are certainly not for me. One of the call and response liturgies I’ve used in the UCC setting affirms, “If you believe in God some of the time, none of the time, or all of the time, you are welcome here.”

Check the doctrine at the door. I think rigid, doctrinal commitment is what makes institutions most vulnerable to prioritize power over people—I mean that both ways, power over people: to prioritize the preference for pursuing power over the preference for pursuing that which meets the needs of the people; and the other way, to prioritize the power of the institution over the power of the people. Rather, quoting Obery Hendricks from his book, The Politics of Jesus, we are called to treat other people’s needs as holy. People over power. Power to the people.

The purpose of this post is to nudge us toward an inclusive way forward for laity and leaders alike who see faith organization as a matter of community, shared resources, diversity, values-alignment, and justice, rather than buildings, private property, doctrine, and personal salvation.

In short, I think we are called to do, not to believe. I’ve come to more deeply understand how this coheres with my understanding of the Jewish historical Jesus in setting and my own religious identity. The Torah, the law for the Jewish people, is something to follow, not something to believe. Jesus says to repent, but he means a turning toward God and Torah. Obeying the commandments, sure, but also engaging in cultic practices at the Temple in corporate assembly, speaking on behalf of the marginalized, from the margins, and interpreting Torah to direct our lives. These principles are reflected in the first century Jewish Jesus. Christians need not convert to Judaism, but they should be damn sure they don’t take themselves to be replacing the very tradition that Jesus lived.

Of course, the backdrop to the historical Jesus was Second Temple period Judaism—and the Temple was an institution. But the evangelists, the anonymous gospel writers, for their backdrop, was a post-Temple sectarian Judaism under Roman occupation. They were an oppressed people, and the gospels are as much about post-Temple Judaism as they are about Jesus. Context matters. And maybe, like me, in the topsy-turvy, complicated, nuanced, and confusing religious identity as a Jewish pastor’s kid, the gospel writers have things to say about post-Institutional religion. It wasn’t until the late 3rd, early 4th centuries CE that Christianity became a separate “religion”; an institutionalized one, at that. Constantine’s Christianity.

Ultimately what I’m driving at here is to challenge whether the institution continues to be valuable. I suggest that the present question is not whether institutions will collapse, but when? LIkewise, the question is not whether we’ll need progressive-minded former-institutional leaders in building the future, but who will respond to the call? The purpose of my post is not to seal the fate of religious leaders tout court. It is to be clear eyed about the future and who we’ll need to lead.

Last year, NPR reported on many ways that new, post-institutional faith communities are finding meaning:

In response [to institutional decline], religious leaders are scrambling to experiment with new ways to offer meaning in peoples’ lives. Most of the folks who show up at Battlefield Gardens [a non-traditional gathering] on Sunday mornings say they’re looking for a faith community, but they’re burned out on traditional religion. … “I want time to sit down, like we do on Sundays sometimes or around the fire, and, like, pray and re-center and figure out what we’re about in the world. Because the world is very noisy. And then I want a church to get s*** done with your community and for your community.”

Let’s push a little more here. Praying carries a religious tone, but is an overt religious attitude needed for the sort of post-institutional frame that I have in mind?

Authors of a study published in PLOS One, an open access and peer reviewed journal, “working together to advance science for the benefit of society, now and in the future,” reports:

We conducted a field study with individuals who celebrate secular rituals at Sunday Assemblies and compared them with participants attending Christian rituals. We assessed levels of social bonding and affect before and after the rituals. Results showed the increase in social bonding taking place in secular rituals is comparable to religious rituals. We also found that both sets of rituals increased positive affect and decreased negative affect, and that the change in positive affect predicted the change in social bonding observed. Together these results suggest that secular rituals might play a similar role to religious ones in fostering feelings of social connection and boosting positive affect.

These secular rituals may connect with another group, sometimes overlooked, dismissed, or derided (like the “Universalists considering Christ” rhetoric trades on): the “Nones” who claim no religious affiliation or membership and the “SBNRs,” or Spiritual but not Religious. Discussing these groups, The Atlantic reports:

[N]early 70 percent of “nones” report belief in God or a universal spirit, and 37 percent describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” This may or may not be the story of the decline of “religion,” but it is clearly also the story of the ascent of “spirituality.”

Nones and SBNRs “doing” religious life together? Check out this guiding framework described in a recent article published by Convergence, an organization that “supports the reshaping of organizations, congregations and leaders engaged in an age of movement from ‘organized religion’ to ‘organizing religion’ driven by the values of an inclusive, progressive theological vision for a more just world for all.”

While this language has a bit heavier religious tone than maybe resonates with me, the core of what we’ve been discussing here is present. Convergence proclaims that:

• Groups of people are called together by God to do Christian life together

• The forms this will take are unique and local and will vary as much as the flora and fauna that surrounds us

• Truly “doing life together” requires more than 1 hour per week in order to share practice, build community, and truly know and be known

• Christian life together should teach and model healthy communication, and transformational change skills, and must focus on the well-being of others more than ourselves

When I think about my mom making all that food each Sunday to feed the fledgling congregation, or my dad swinging that shovel at that snake, or my grandad focused in his study, all of these memories position me in relation to others. Each of those memories come from people who were doing their faith. Feeding a group, maintaining public grounds, learning theology to teach others.

This relational faith reminds me of the Jewish Torah study practice called chevrusa, study with two to five others so that no single person gets too caught up in their own interpretation. The study of sacred texts, almost more than in any other field of study, requires diversity! Otherwise you just get the single interpretation of those at the table—look where that’s gotten the church!

We need to talk through our sacred commitments while we walk through our lives, in relationship to others. I strive for a relational faith, not a personal salvation.

It’s sad to me that while editing the final draft of this post, the Southern Baptist Convention ousted congregations with women clergy. The final paragraph of the Times article reports:

When the appeals were over on Tuesday, a woman from Texas pushed through the crowd to find Ms. Barnes Popham. The woman had brought her daughter, 14, who was weeping. Her daughter wanted to be a pastor one day, she said, and wanted to meet Ms. Barnes Popham, who she said gave her hope for the future.

“It is not a sin to be a woman,” said the girl, Lottie Baird. “Why can’t we be shepherds to lead the flock of God’s people?”

A shepherd to lead the flock. That’s doing faith together. I think about those house builds, doing faith together; the beautification projects, doing faith together; the marches and walks, doing faith together; voting to adopt an Open and Affirming Covenant, like I wrote about Sunday, and the booth our congregation hosted at the Pride celebration, doing faith together; watching my Pastor dad light Hanukkah candles with his grandsons, my boys, Isaac, Noah and Gideon, now that’s doing faith together.

The institutional critique is that we’ve forgotten about relational faith, and we’ve got too caught up in telling people how faith is to be done. Gay people are sinners and can’t be members, trans people are unnatural, women should be quiet in church, divorced people make broken homes, people who support women’s reproductive rights are killing babies… This is not doing faith together. Yet these are popular views (at least among the leaders) for many institutional American churches. If this is the church in decline, then let it fall, and praise God!

I’m excited to do faith together with you. To get shit done in your community, like the fellow from Battlefield Grounds said, or to follow the shepherd of God’s flock, a 14 year old girl who the church should confess its sins for letting down.

Thanks for being part of the future with me. If you think someone else may like to do relational faith with the community we’re building here, maybe share this post, and let’s see where our relationships may take us. I have some ideas about doing.

I’ll bring the Reece’s Pieces.