Occupy The Churches

[NORM]

...Religion usually , in my view, does not really unite. It seems to create partitions. Community does unite. As long as we put community above religion, each can see the light in the other...Joseph

 

Words to live by, Joseph. Words to live by.

 

I too attempted to be salt and light in my church. I was an adult Sunday School teacher during my de-evolution from theism, so I sought out my classmates as a sounding board for challenging certain fundamentals of the faith.

 

It didn't go well.

 

Several of the Elders of the church banded together to "oppose" me. Heh - and here I thought I was one of the pillars of the church. I volunteered on just about every committee, tithed regularly and largely and helped many sick, elderly and poor within the community. I wrote the church newsletter and had a regularly published article in the main denomination magazine.

 

Mind you, none of the folks after my head were from my Sunday School class (or so I thought). These folks were actually into the sessions (as we called them). We questioned the historicity of the Bible, the virgin birth, miracles, and even - ever so gingerly - the deity of Christ.

 

I was careful to not go too far. For that, I joined a local minyan (I'm half Jewish). In that forum, nothing was out of bounds. It was very freeing.

 

So, pumped from both my experience in the class and the freedom of thought I enjoyed in the minyan, I was quite surprised when I was informed through a strongly worded e-mail (that was copied to half the church) that I was in error and that my services as a Sunday School teacher were no longer welcome.

 

Mind you, I had not veered away from the traditions of the church. It would be a few more years later that that would happen. I was merely raising issues that have always bothered me (and others in the class). I was seeking for the truth about the formations and foundations of our faith. I even brought in the local rabbi to help explain basic Judaism, from whence our faith emerged (some would say, however, that Christianity replaced it - made it obsolete) in a search for context.

 

It turns out, however, that there was a spy in my class! I kid you not!

 

During this time, there was a small group of people in the church who wished to embrace a more conservative, fundamentalist emphasis in theology and practice. For example, they wanted to make it forbidden for women to have authority over men in the church in matters of theology.They used this incident to drive a wedge between themselves and the majority of the church who liked the way things were going. We were more or less a rather progressive-leaning group at that time. The major portion of our missions budget went to local food pantries, homeless services (my wife did credit counseling to young couples and folks struggling financially) and the like. We were pretty heavy on social services and light on evangelical enterprises.

 

The new group quickly gained positions of leadership within the church, and a few well-heeled souls had the ear of the major denomination. They convinced the governing bodies to declare me and my ilk persona-non-Grata in matters of church politic.

 

Most of the progressives in our church began to move on shortly after these events. One by one, they would leave for more "enlightened" congregations elsewhere. Of course, all of the women leaders were the first to leave. They comprised a sustaining core of the church. For the most part, they were the ones who encouraged me to flesh out my thoughts through my weekly columns and monthly magazine pieces and finally; my Sunday School class.

 

Nevertheless, my wife and I remained to the bitter end. For without the former energy embodied in the progressives within the church, it simply died on the vine. The last count of the membership was fewer than 50 (which had actually grown somewhat toward the end because some un-churched Baptists joined because of the increasingly conservative nature of the politics).

 

The last straw for us was when they cancelled most of the social outreach efforts in favor of robustly funding Campus Crusade for Christ. My whole reason for joining the church in the first place was now gone.

 

We left in November of that year, and the church held its last service the following August.

 

We never did find a church that was comparable to our former place. I eventually drifted further and further from traditional Christianity and embraced Judaism.

 

Now I no longer attend any worship service. Occasionally, I'll hang with my Jewish buddies and grab a beer with some of my former pew muffins and commiserate the demise of something good.

 

Jenell, I wish you well in your endeavors, and hopefully, your adventure will be more pleasant than mine.

 

NORM

[JenellYB]

Thanks Norm. I can so relate to your account here of your experiences. I have absolutely no illusions about changing a church, and know better this time not to even consider trying to become 'involved' in anything there. I only hope to be open to one-on-one personal contact that may, or may not, develop with any individuals.

My own past experiences differe from yours as you describe them above in two significant ways...first, being a divorced/remarried woman there was noever any possiblity of my being involved in any of the ways you were. Second, and for me the most deeply painful as well as frustrating, is that when difficulties arose over my expressing things that went against the grain there, perhaps because they really had no solid ground whether on basis of scripture or just common sense and reason on which to base attempts to discredit me. It always, ALWAYS, time and again, came at me through what was really outrageous, and totally unfounded, malicious and slanderous gossip, that attacked my reputation, mostly of sexual imorality and secondarily absurd allegations involving "devil" stuff as they must think is rampant in our world.

Even more frustrating, that I could never get anyone to bringing this kind of stuff out into the open, what was charged against me, by whom, or opportunity to "defend" against any of it.

 

My name even got connected to a sleazy little gypsy-style spiritual reader/psychic/fortune-teller/tarot/palm reading "business" that has operated briefly in a nearby small town a few years before. I had noticed that place when it was there, in a ramshackle old house on a run-down back street of old, and by then, mostly vacant 'old down town'...simply because of the coincidence....the gaudy amateurishly painted 4 X 8 ft sign out front offered these services "by JENELL". Sure I noticed it, my first name is not a common one, the same spelling as mine even less common. Other than having of course noticed it for that reason, I knew nothing more about it or whomever owned it that that.

 

My moral repuation throughout my community was BADLY damaged, in ways that caused REAL negative effects on my life and interations and even doing business within my community. And that this is such a 'networked' community of many interconnected 'old families', such stuff spread rapidly from church to church, so that even attempts to escape it and begin anew at another went bad in short order. And I do mean outrageous stuff, such as ones that obviously didnt even know my husband was a truck driver turned the frequent overnight stays of 18 wheeler rigs at my house being my offerring 'services' to truck drivers. I heard back from the rumor mill through aquaintances that I had been "the other woman" in the break-up of at least one and possibly more than one marriage, that the presense of "different cars in my driveway most every morning of the week" were different men that had spent the night...when those cars were actually my grooming shop (with clear signage, that I had operated for close to 20 yrs) customers dropping off their pets!!!! I even experienced twice strange men knocking on my door seeking "services" they'd been led to believe I offerred, and once when I called a local electrical repair service for repair of a home electrical problem, was told by the man's wife, who handled his calls, there was no way HER husband was going to come to my home! That much of it all involved inclusion of "facts", such as where I had lived when, that I was married, even that I had my dog grooming business for years, so far from anything of my real life made it pretty clear those behind it didn't even KNOW me! At the time, I had lived in my present home only several years, but had moved here from my previous home of 21 years, less than 4 miles from this one, yet mixed up in the rumors were things I had done, even legal trouble I had been in, in distant communities before my "recent" move here...they didn't even know I had aready been a resident here for 21 years! One of my "previous residences" was, of course, the above mentioned "fortune-teller" operation in the nearby town.

Being unable to get anyone willing to get any of it out in the open, to confront me directly, give me opportunity to even know WHAT I was accused of, and state my defense, WAS absolutely the hardest part of it, but I learned that is just how it is there, not specific to my situation.

So, clearly, if I find a place to go back, it will not be in this immediate circle of churches closest to me here.

 

Some may question, and I honestly try to question myself, make sure nothing of it is in this, whether there is really any anger, vindicitiveness, desire to 'hurt back' involved in my thoughts about this. Is there anger? Of course there is, I'm human. BUT, part of the reason I completely pulled away from that environment is because I had recognized my hurt, my anger, my defensiveness, my shattered trust, was causing me to sometimes act, speak, in ways that could hurt innocent people there, that had done nothing to hurt me, weren't involved, and to do that made me fall into the very 'evil' toward others as had been done toward me. And I very much did NOT want to do that.

I have been honest to some of those, not with details, but in general reason, that have actually noticed i left, and expressed question why...while others were innocent in an overt sense, they were not in another sense. Even made aware of those kinds of problems there, they won't deal with it. They won't confront their offenders there, they defend their own inactions with such as, well we cant help what some other do. And I've told them that. Not only it being the reason I left, but the reason they have BIG problems getting and keeping new members. I am NOT their only or even an exceptional 'victim'. So I've told them, "Until those of you in these church decide to acknowledge and address these problems, their churches are going to just keep dying as they have been for years.

 

The community I plan to be moving into in the next year or so, near my daughter a few miles away, is a neighboring communtiy, with some overlap in business/economic/social environment, but not so interconnected as within the immediate local area. So, I shall see how it goes.

 

Jenell