Why I Go to Church in 2024
I wrote an explanation for my church attendance back in 2021. But a lot has changed since then, both internally and in the world. I’ve started over twice, become a mother, started seminary and faced some other personal challenges that — let’s just say — required grit.
So this is just one more entry into an ever-evolving perspective. An attempt to illuminate an ongoing experience that will shift, ebb and flow with time. It feels risky to be so open. I’m choosing to do so in hopes of someone not feeling so alone in it all.
Listening to Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory: American Evangelicals in the Age of Extremism, an investigative look at the psychology of far-right extremist Christian politics, afforded me language for the underlying, growing sense of unease I’ve felt about church since the pandemic.
Through profiles of prolific communicators and institutions on various parts of the American political-Protestant spectrum, he illustrates the nuances of the theology, ideology, psychology and politics of what has come to be associated with the label “Christian” in America today. After attending the far-right rally Road to Majority event by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, Alberta walks away with a clear sense of the fears motivating attendees to act with such urgency in reclaiming the U.S. as a “Christian nation.” Alberta notes that throughout the event, founder Ralph Reed and other speakers alluded to a long list of entities under suspicion or direct attack:
“For three days, Reed looked on as thousands of believers were told:
Their children were being groomed.
That their communities were under invasion.
That their guns were going to be confiscated.
That their medical treatments were suspect.
That their newspapers were lying to them.
That their elected officials were diabolical.
That their government was coming after them.
That their faith was being banned from public life.
That their leader was being unjustly persecuted on their behalf.
That their nation was nearing its end.
In reflecting upon this list, Alberta said, “There’s a reason scripture warns so often and so forcefully against fear. It is just as powerful as faith.”
Alberta later explains these fears often inspire those who adhere to these beliefs to conclude that the ends justify the means — any means. The end of establishing a Christian nation, some imply, justifies just about any means to get there. This is one reason why the very same people who send anger-fueled hate mail about questionable library books seem to turn a blind eye to the demonstrably harmful behavior of leaders such as former President Trump.
Ah. Bingo. I thought.
Living a mobile lifestyle, we regularly attend new places of worship, sometimes ecumenical spaces, sometimes denominational. At this point in my journey, it feels like I‘ve developed a “delightful” new strain of anxiety centered on not knowing if I’ll share a common sense of reality with the people I worship alongside. Will the person passing the offering plate tithe and also believe there’s a child trafficking ring at the local Pizza Hut? Will the greeters welcome me in for a Bible study and then push me out for questioning a cabal? Will the moms’ group pass the fruit snacks and then pass judgment for getting the COVID vaccine?
Disagreements on theology always exist at church. But this is something beyond theology.
How is it that we can agree on core doctrines and yet diverge so wildly in our perceptions of reality?
Conflict and disagreement are natural and help us grow. But in this environment, it feels like the stakes grow ever higher as the publicly stated lines for who is in and who is out grow ever more complex in the white Protestant American church. There is little room to disagree and build a relationship. If you disagree, you are quickly labeled, your salvation coming into question. I take those lines for what they are — human-made creations. But as I navigate new spaces, people and faith communities on a regular basis, I can’t help but feel like I am choosing to walk through land mines. Especially as a female minister with aspirations to lead in my own right, contribute in the public sphere, create racially-just and gender-equal communities and master my craft, it is hard to find a faith space where it feels like I can let my guard down and just breathe.
We currently attend an ecumenical service in the Black church tradition, because it is the ecumenical service in our community for Pentecostal-leaning folk, I like gospel music, the leaders are great, we believe in multiethnic community and because we wanted our child’s first faith experiences to include people who don’t look like her. But part of me also hoped there would be less intrinsic organizational motivation to uphold white-centering conspiracy theories as truth. There’s something different between a church sharing an MLK, Jr. quote from its social media in February and a church where a layperson shares from the pulpit his own relatives’ triumphs amid slavery.
Why do I go to church? It is not because I want to identify with the win-at-all-costs Christianity that has usurped the mic of the public square. It feels embarrassing to have to identify with something so far from the kind of life I want to live. It feels embarrassing to be part of a global spectacle, baffling other believers across the world facing active threats of prison and death.
Those fighting with all available means to “win back” America very well could hold on to power a little longer. But, to me, they’ve lost my generation in the process. And if you lose the next generation, what, truly, have you won?
My peers who are kind, justice-oriented, conscientious, Jesus-loving, accountability-taking, intellectually honest and humble kind of people are walking out the church doors with no plans to return. They can find Jesus better in Saturday river clean-ups and intentional Sunday conversations with friends of faith over brunch waffles and mimosas — who can blame them? It is there that they can contribute to better their community, there that they can build a sense of belonging, and there that they can be honest, seen and heard. At this point, it is hard to trust faith institutions. But it is a little easier to trust faith people.
But perhaps that is because we are swimming in information and don’t always have the wisdom to know what to do with it. We have access to streamed Bible teachers across the globe, news articles and documentaries on the latest leaders’ moral failures and ex-vangelical ex-vangelists building platforms on their own spiritual trauma. Where are we to process it all? In what Sunday School can you bring up your latest YouTube conspiracy theory? In what women’s group can you question the spiritual trauma to which you awakened through language provided to you by a TikTok influencer?
Therapy, yes. For those who can access it. But even then, how do you reconcile the questions you are asking privately when it seems as if no one else is asking them publicly at church on Sunday? What do you do if you feel like others are simply smiling and waving when the world is on fire? It is a fast road to a sense of isolation. As I’ve learned over time and mistakes, the road out of that isolation is tough to navigate without spiritual and emotional maturity — and support.
It requires emotional maturity to understand how and when to apply information and how and when to let go of it. It requires a sense of when knowledge provides helpful language and when it becomes a destructive label. It requires awareness of others’ perspectives, journeys and abilities, and a willingness to meet people on their own turf. None of that can be faked, scaled or manufactured.
It also requires support. Support in the form of someone looking you square in the natural eye, sharing the same fold-up chair circle and the after-church potluck mashed potatoes and asking, “What’s on your mind?” And being available simply to listen and connect. Support that shows you, amid a world of grifters, OnlyFans and twenty-one-year-old influencers amassing followers and dollars, that who you are is truly okay, and indeed necessary. Someone to say, “It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay to be where you are in life right now.” And someone to say, “I see what you’re saying, but have you considered thinking about it this way … ?”
We all need people, a community, to counteract the ubiquitous messages of the online world that so easily convince us as individuals to keep trying to become smaller, higher, faster, richer, smarter, prettier — no matter what we achieve.
We need emotional maturity and support that serves as the antidote to insignificance. Each person needs someone who recognizes both strengths and flaws and still says, “You are critically important to this community. You are significant to us. You are known. You are loved.” What better place to offer this antidote than the church?
The factors that make this a challenge lie beyond any one church or any one pastor. Most faith leaders are doing the very best they can with impossible circumstances. I can’t imagine ministers’ experiences as the pressure in their congregations mounts to choose either one worldview or the other (as it is often posited). To remain neutral is often considered a side in itself. Both “sides” (recognizing it is actually a spectrum) likely agree on every core doctrine, and yet, as Alberta so vividly demonstrates, for many, it is a Jesus PLUS gospel that prevents the truth from advancing. Jesus PLUS nationalism. Jesus PLUS white supremacy. Jesus PLUS wealth. Jesus PLUS power. But Jesus PLUS anything is not the gospel.
When I look at the grand scale and news headlines, my hope in the American church wanes. The spark nearly dies out. How can I possibly find a meaningful place within it? Where do I fit? What do I lose if I walk away? Anything?
I’d so much rather slice syrupy waffles and slurp hot black coffee on a quiet patio while laughing and supporting a few close friends on a Sunday morning than sit in a creaky pew.
But Jesus.
Jesus.
Jesus cares about people. And Jesus cares about the people who compose the American church. Even when I don’t.
His commitment lies not in our institutions, our policies and our bureaucracies, as complex, sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful as they can be. He experienced firsthand the harmful effects of institutions and the people within them.
Maybe I could call myself a Jesus-following pragmatist. I want to see things as they really are: the good, the bad, the ugly. I want to see the church lady who offers a judgmental look from her pew and then gives the last two dollars she has before payday arrives. I want to see the leader-turned-grifter for the reality of what he did and the choices that made it possible, but also see the faithfulness of the board members who recognized the error of their ways and reported his actions.
I want to be ruthless in recognizing reality in an age where reality is becoming increasingly optional. As Beth Moore said, “Denial makes for a terrible lifestyle, but a pleasant lunch.”
I want to commit to people for the long haul. And I want to commit to doing what is in my power to help create safe systems of accountability and supportive, mature faith environments.
I want to approach my place within the American church with openness. Perhaps it is naive. But if Jesus only operates within the realm of reality, as Dr. Alicia Britt Chole said, then that is where I also want to live. He saw the full reality of humanity and still packed his bags for the trip.
Our environment isn’t new. These factors were there all along in varying degrees, but now are only made more visible and perhaps more impactful by the online world. Sometimes everything in me wants to cut my losses and create Brunch Assembly with four trusted friends. But something deeper in me wants to stick it out. To work hard in the tiny ways I can to carve out a path through it that others might also be able to find their way.
Perhaps as American Christianity as we’ve known it crumbles in a heap of celebrity, profiteering, fear-mongering and political posturing, something more honest will take its place. Perhaps we will look finally to the hard-earned wisdom of those living faithfully along the margins.
Why do I go to church?
Church models will come and go. And I am studying hard to develop the skills to discover more of them. But in the end, Jesus is committed to the church because he is committed to people. And when I sit in front of someone, listening to their precious story of courage, loss or wonder, I think, This. This is why it’s worth it.
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I’m a minister, copywriter and writer writer with a global outlook and passion for people. My creative workflow is fueled by midday mocktails and post-work lap swims. I’m in seminary because I want to help people discover how digital literacy can inform their spiritual practice to thrive in a digital world.
