Not Going To Church Today?
Nebraskan Jake Meador is the editor in chief of Mere Orthodoxy which reports on Christianity. Yesterday he penned a column for The Atlantic, Millions of Americans Have Stopped Attending Church. What Will Bring Them Back?. He noted that 40 million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years, “the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.” So, tens of millions of people didn’t go for the twisting of Jesus’ words into a bizarre satanic MAGA politicization. Who could have ever guessed!
The Great Dechurching, a new book by Jim Davis and Michael Graham, “finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Wokism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.”
Wokism… Jesus’ Christianity, not Donald Trump’s version. The Church has perverted Jesus’ message, the root of the problem Meador writes about. Jesus’ message— not the Church’s— is pretty simple and PURE WOKE:
Love, compassion and empathy— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
Jesus spoke about the need to care for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized, showing undiluted concern for those who were suffering while advocating for justice and fairness— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
Forgiveness, redemption, the importance of reconciliation— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
Humility and selflessness, serving others and putting their needs first— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
Inclusivity and acceptance, regardless of social status, background, past actions, etc— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
Nonviolence, responding to hatred and aggression with love and understanding— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
A focus on the Kingdom of God rather than earthly materialism— the opposite of MAGA Christianity
“What is more needed in our time,” asks Meador, “than a community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet virtue and prayer? A healthy church can be a safety net in the harsh American economy by offering its members material assistance in times of need: meals after a baby is born, money for rent after a layoff. Perhaps more important, it reminds people that their identity is not in their job or how much money they make; they are children of God, loved and protected and infinitely valuable.”
[A] vibrant, life-giving church requires more, not less, time and energy from its members. It asks people to prioritize one another over our career, to prioritize prayer and time reading scripture over accomplishment. This may seem like a tough sell in an era of dechurching. If people are already leaving— especially if they are leaving because they feel too busy and burned out to attend church regularly— why would they want to be part of a church that asks so much of them?
Although understandable, that isn’t quite the right question. The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.
The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO, an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.
…Last fall, I spent several days in New York City, during which time I visited a home owned by a group of pacifist Christians that lives from a common purse— meaning the members do not have privately held property but share their property and money. Their simple life and shared finances allow their schedules to be more flexible, making for a thicker immediate community and greater generosity to neighbors, as well as a richer life of prayer and private devotion to God, all supported by a deep commitment to their church.
This is, admittedly, an extreme example. But this community was thriving not because it found ways to scale down what it asked of its members but because it found a way to scale up what they provided to one another. Their way of living frees them from the treadmill of workism. Work, in this community, is judged not by the money it generates but by the people it serves. In a workist culture that believes dignity is grounded in accomplishment, simply reclaiming this alternative form of dignity becomes a radical act.
Pity poor Meador hasn’t a fucking clue what woke means. He’s so close but so far. He wrote that “The great dechurching could be the beginning of a new moment for churches, a moment marked less by aspiration to respectability and success, with less focus on individuals aligning themselves with American values and assumptions. We could be a witness to another way of life outside conventionally American measures of success. Churches could model better, truer sorts of communities, ones in which the hungry are fed, the weak are lifted up, and the proud are cast down. Such communities might not have the money, success, and influence that many American churches have so often pursued in recent years. But if such communities look less like those churches, they might also look more like the sorts of communities Jesus expected his followers to create.” Yes, they can call it Jesus wokism!
I’d bet that most of the Lincoln Dinner attendees in Des Moines Friday night were still Christians, if you want to count MAGA Christians as Christians. There were 13 presidential candidates giving 10 minute versions of their stump speeches. Trump was the only one to get a rip roarin’ standing ovation and the devotion didn’t grow frosty when he launched into an attack on “DeSanctis,” the shorthand he uses these days for DeSanctimonious.
The only candidate to attack Trump was Will Hurd and he was booed off the stage for saying “One of the things we need in our elected leaders is for them to tell the truth, even if it’s unpopular. Donald Trump is not running to make America great again. Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 or 2020. Donald Trump us running to stay out of prison… If we (nominate) Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden 4 more years in the White House.” The Christians didn’t just boo, they started clattering the silverware against their plates to drown him out. Christians for sure. Followers of Jesus? ROTFLMAO
