Recently I’ve been pondering the notion that I might be a better ‘Christian’ if I stopped having any church involvement. This has come from thinking about The Ranter’s deconversion (which I don’t share) and a comment from a friend in the pub. The comment was about how they now avoid any church involvement because their past involvement with churches has shown them that all churches did to them was to ’suck out all their energy’. The Ranter has also made past comments about how the church actually takes from the local community, as opposed to giving to it, because the local people who might be inclined to be actively involved are involved in church paraphrenalia instead.
My idea also comes from the context of having limited energy to do activities outside of work. When you have involvement with churches or Christian groups (which may or may not be defined as ‘church’) there is an expectation of a certain level of commitment, even if this is not explicit. My worst experiences of this were in an Evangelical Charismatic church where the church ended up becoming my whole life. I didn’t really know anyone outside of the church and most evenings were taken up with prayer meetings etc. There was no time or space to have any involvement in anything unrelated to church. An illustration of this is that after the Ranter and I left this church, it was very difficult to meet with people from the church because they were tied up with so many meetings. They were supposedly very ‘concerned’ about the Ranter because going to an Anglican church was seen as losing her faith (at the time this didn’t actually reflect anything about her faith other than that she was pissed off at them and their worldview!) but they couldn’t even keep an invite we had planned around homegroups etc. They were too busy being Christian in a busy way to be Christian in a way that they themselves would see as Christian…
I see much the same thing happening in my present life – even though I have left that lifestyle and my current involvement with my Anglican and alt_worship groups involves a lot less commitment. The Ranter and I have moved to the nice side of a rough area, and our Anglican church is now no longer our local church. The community around here has a very active group to assist regeneration etc but the meetings always seem to clash with my Emmaus homegroup, so I have yet to go. I also feel too tired and busy to commit to any active responsibility in the local area. Is the Christian thing to do to give up church involvement so that I can actually make a difference to my local community?
You may answer that I should join the church that is for my present parish, but the problem with that is it is led by a homophobic vicar who would consider my blessed, permanent, legally binding relationship sinful. I don’t think this would solve the issue!
There could actually be a new Christian Movement to give up Church to be better Christians. We need to stop being too busy ‘doing’ Christian to be Christian!
Too churched to be Christian?
May 5, 2007 at 5:23 pm (alt_worship, cultural comment, evangelical past gripe)
Recently I’ve been pondering the notion that I might be a better ‘Christian’ if I stopped having any church involvement. This has come from thinking about The Ranter’s deconversion (which I don’t share) and a comment from a friend in the pub. The comment was about how they now avoid any church involvement because their past involvement with churches has shown them that all churches did to them was to ’suck out all their energy’. The Ranter has also made past comments about how the church actually takes from the local community, as opposed to giving to it, because the local people who might be inclined to be actively involved are involved in church paraphrenalia instead.
My idea also comes from the context of having limited energy to do activities outside of work. When you have involvement with churches or Christian groups (which may or may not be defined as ‘church’) there is an expectation of a certain level of commitment, even if this is not explicit. My worst experiences of this were in an Evangelical Charismatic church where the church ended up becoming my whole life. I didn’t really know anyone outside of the church and most evenings were taken up with prayer meetings etc. There was no time or space to have any involvement in anything unrelated to church. An illustration of this is that after the Ranter and I left this church, it was very difficult to meet with people from the church because they were tied up with so many meetings. They were supposedly very ‘concerned’ about the Ranter because going to an Anglican church was seen as losing her faith (at the time this didn’t actually reflect anything about her faith other than that she was pissed off at them and their worldview!) but they couldn’t even keep an invite we had planned around homegroups etc. They were too busy being Christian in a busy way to be Christian in a way that they themselves would see as Christian…
I see much the same thing happening in my present life – even though I have left that lifestyle and my current involvement with my Anglican and alt_worship groups involves a lot less commitment. The Ranter and I have moved to the nice side of a rough area, and our Anglican church is now no longer our local church. The community around here has a very active group to assist regeneration etc but the meetings always seem to clash with my Emmaus homegroup, so I have yet to go. I also feel too tired and busy to commit to any active responsibility in the local area. Is the Christian thing to do to give up church involvement so that I can actually make a difference to my local community?
You may answer that I should join the church that is for my present parish, but the problem with that is it is led by a homophobic vicar who would consider my blessed, permanent, legally binding relationship sinful. I don’t think this would solve the issue!
There could actually be a new Christian Movement to give up Church to be better Christians. We need to stop being too busy ‘doing’ Christian to be Christian!
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