Leaving the Church and Being the Church

Lots of people have lots of reasons for leaving church. (The last in a series on the church).

Aug 19, 2023

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Why Are People Leaving Church?

Lots of people are leaving church. You probably knew that even if you haven’t read about it in any of the major publications, both religious and not, in which those deconstructing or leaving church are profiled. Because you probably know someone, maybe live with someone, maybe are someone who has left or is leaving church. There are lots of reasons, understandable reasons, people give for leaving. Political identification and polarization, culture war expressions, scandal, theological positions that no longer feel at home … and others.

I will be talking mostly about the Christian church, but Jessica Grose in her recent five-part series in the New York Times about Americans moving away from religion (linked where referenced here and all pieces are linked below), notes that this is true of all religions in America for which we have measurable data. People are leaving church and the temple and the mosque, probably part of a drift away from institutions of all kinds - but I am a part of the church and I know people who have left, so I will concentrate on that.

“In the United States,” the authors of “Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society” tell us, “somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close down every year, either to be repurposed as apartments, laundries, laser-tag arenas, or skate parks, or to simply be demolished.” Many of us have seen this in our communities. If you wanted to pick up a vacant or little used building that used to be home to a Catholic Church in the greater St. Louis area, where I live, there probably is something available. But for most of us, the stories are more personal. We know people who have lapsed, who have drifted, who have been burned, who have turned away from the church.

Deconstruction is a word we hear often now, especially in church circles. Dr. Mark Ryan of Sage Christianity and Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, has spoken with hundreds of people leaving the church, informally and as part of his research. He has found that deconstruction is an umbrella term that might mean:

Doubt - a potentially healthy reexamination of beliefs
Disaffiliation - no longer part of a particular denomination
Deconstruction - going back to the foundations which may be rebuilt
Deconversion - no longer a person of belief.

He believes that support for those on this journey is a duty of the church and will be an expression of the true faith that they may be looking for. Being a loving and faithful representative of the church may help people on this journey find their way back - in their home church or with a fresh start in another one.

man in black jacket and brown pants standing on green grass field during daytime — Photo by Kirill Tonkikh on Unsplash

For many, the process has completed or was short circuited - and they no longer consider themselves part of the church. Jessica Grose, as part of her series for the New York Times, asked people why they are leaving the church or leaving their faith. She got over 7000 replies. Many of them wrote also of what they missed when they left. People wrote of hurt and disappointments and of what they were doing instead, of how they were trying to replace what church was, but on their own terms.

But many said they did miss aspects of traditional attendance, and often these people still believed in God or certain aspects of their previous faith traditions. They’d sought replacements for traditional worship, and the most common were spending time in nature, meditation and physical activity — basically anything that got them out of their own heads and the anxieties of the material world. Kathy Keller, 60, who lives in Michigan and left the Catholic Church because of its child sex abuse scandals and intrusion into health care that adversely affects women, has had a fairly representative experience. She said that while she no longer goes to church regularly, she still believes in a higher power and prays occasionally. “I try to spend Sunday morning outside appreciating the glory of nature,” she said.
Donnell McLachlan, 29, who lives in Chicago, has been sharing the story of his deconstruction on TikTok, where he has nearly 250,000 followers, since 2021. McLachlan said he now describes himself as a “spiritual pluralist” rather than a Christian, though he still embraces some rituals from his Christian heritage, like prayer, gospel music and “drawing upon the love-rooted, justice-centered wisdom found in the Bible.” He said: “Religion is like a language, a means of communicating with the divine. And just like language, there are many interpretations and ways to express it. I believe that love is the ultimate law of life, and try to align my spiritual practices with traditions that reflect this belief.” McLachlan added that he has found a reservoir of grace and compassion in his online community: “Sharing my story and uplifting others’ stories has been its own beautiful kind of ritual.”
Carson Curtis, 36, who lives in Arizona, wrote about missing a general sense of community from attending church, “Being socially atomized is hard on the spirit.”
Jessica Grose - NYT

What is Church?

Why do people attend - or stop attending - church is one question. Here is another one: What is church? This question comes first. What is the church? What meaning does it offer me? What community does it provide? What affiliation do I desire? What are my conditions for participation? With loving recognition and understanding for all who would answer these questions differently, here is how I would begin to answer those big questions -

I believe we are in God's Big Story. This story is one of God's creation and cultivation of relationship with men and women - and of our fall from that position to brokenness and alienation from God, from one another, from ourselves and from creation. This is followed by God's movement to provide redemption and reconciliation from all of those alienations - with a promise for the full realization of that redemption at the end of this part of the story. I believe this story is not just my experience of meaning or community or purpose - but what defines these things. And I believe God has placed me in this story. And in doing so, He has communicated with me, with us, about who we are in this story, who He is, and what this story means - to Him as well as to us.

What does God say about my meaning or purpose? What does God say about the expression of worship? About dying to self? Humility? Love? Forgiveness? How have we understood these things over the centuries? What role does scripture play in this? How do we understand it? How has theology developed and solidified over the centuries? What can we learn from those who followed God five centuries ago? Or fifteen? What relationship do I have, in this story, with these believers of past centuries? Or with present day believers in Malawi, or Ethiopia, or Nepal? What authority has God placed over me? And, in this story, what role did God design for the church? What role did God design for me in His church?

The Holy Spirit working through the church, the body of Christ, revealed in the bible, helps us understand the answers to these questions - and how the church is central to how God has worked in the world over the last 20 centuries. I don’t believe I am free to simply abandon it. It isn’t primarily for me. Or, it is for me only as it is, in my experience, about Him and about others.

I can understand being disappointed in the expression of the faith you have experienced. I have been disappointed. But does that give me, in God's story, a blank slate to respond to this disappointment in any way I choose? If I believe I am still in God's Big Story, in the midst of redemption, subject to the Lordship of Christ ... I think I must search for a local body where His worship can be conducted "in Spirit and in Truth". Religion is more than a language, and the language of religion is given to us, we don’t invent it and the freedom to change it is not unlimited. Walking in nature is lovely, even worshipful, but it isn't the totality of what God has ordained for His worship. God has given us other patterns we are not, if we are subject to Him, given license to simply abandon on our own.

Share The Embassy

In this Big Story, some things are just not up to me. As one who is in His church, I am not given the freedom to decide lots of things - who is my neighbor, who I have to forgive, who I have to love ... I am also not given the freedom to no longer affiliate with God's people. Instead, I am encouraged to be, empowered by the Holy Spirit, used by God within His church to help fulfill His purpose for the church for the person next to me and for the rest of God's people. I am a part of the body of Christ for His purposes and in being here for His purposes, I find my own. I am to be an expression of the church that someone else needs. Because His purposes for me include bringing His presence to my neighbor, and He may intend to do that through me within the body of believers my neighbor and I are in.

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:23-25

Take

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican Priest who has written a weekly Op-Ed column for the New York Times over the past few years. She is leaving that post and shared, in her last column, some of the reasons why. I’ll quote her at some length, and I recommend the whole piece. I think there is something here for many of us to ponder.

For this and many other reasons, it was a tough decision to leave. And as with any tough decision, my reasons are varied and complex, but one is that writing publicly about God each week can do a number on one’s soul. Thomas Wingfold, a character in a novel by the Scottish minister and poet George MacDonald, said, “Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.” Holy things, sacred topics, spiritual ideas, I believe, have power. Dealing with them is a privilege and a joy, but habitually dealing with the outside of them is inherently dangerous.

The “outsides” of holy things, to me, describes the difference between speaking about divine or sacred things and encountering the divine or the sacred directly. To be sure, we need more and better religious discourse in America. In my very first newsletter for The Times, I wrote that “we need to start talking about God,” and I still believe that. I believe that religion and, more broadly, the biggest questions in life are the driving forces behind much that is beautiful, divisive, unifying, controversial and perplexing about our culture and society.

Yet there is danger in becoming a pundit, particularly on matters of faith and spirituality. It can be deadening. I plan to continue to write about faith, to explore its impact on politics, study it sociologically, think about its metaphors and claims of truth. But for any person of faith, public engagement must be balanced with times of withdrawal, of silence, prayer, questioning and wonder beyond the reach of words. Otherwise, faith with all its strange and startling topology becomes a flat and sterile thing, something to be dissected, instead of embraced. And typically once something is fit only for dissection, it is dead. I bring this up because it is a temptation for all of us now. Social media and digital technology have made us all pundits. We are faced with a constant choice: Every experience, belief, feeling and thought we have can be shared publicly or not. In a single day, we can take in more information and ideas than was ever possible, yet at the end of the day we can still lack wisdom.

Constant connectivity empties us out, as individuals and as a society, making us shallower thinkers and more impatient with others. When it comes to faith, it can yield a habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things, fostering an avoidance of those internal parts of life that are most difficult, things like prayer, uncertainty, humility and the nakedness of who we most truly are amid this confusing, heartbreaking and incandescently beautiful world.

Tish Harrison Warren - My Hope for American Discourse - New York Times