UPDATE: This came in from a reader. It shows that God can bring good out of a terrible situation. The reader has given me permission to share it without identification:
In 2007, I entered a Lutheran seminary, in preparation for ministry. Youth group and Christian summer camp and campus ministry and Lutheran volunteering programs had been my life so far, and seminary seemed an obvious choice to me and to everyone who knew me.
And it is a factor that cannot be ignored — the mainline denominations are declining and are so anxious about survival, any candidate with a pulse, and especially candidates with no obvious “problems” (anything that might make a congregation nervous), are placed on well-greased tracks rather than any serious discernment process. A people-pleaser like me knew what was necessary. Even though I had a tickle of trepidation and would have been grateful for genuine barriers and exercises to explore vocation. In later years I learned there are more of these discernment processes available, alas, I presented as so confident of my vocation that no one offered them!
At this time, I was full-steam-ahead leftist and thought you should know it, at-the-ready to weaponize all of Jesus’ most compassionate words at anyone not as far to the left as myself. I did not see this at the time, but I must have been insufferable to those with other perspectives, or an ounce of life experience!
My seminary was known to be one of the most “liberal” in our denomination, and we students were by and large very proud of that, and saw ourselves as a generation of leaders who were going to help our church get with the times. Of course, we were, to a person, also terrified of being sent to somewhere like South Dakota, where we would suffer like prophets for the sake of love winning, surely. We spoke (amongst ourselves, and sometimes in class) so condescendingly of the backwards people we were sure to find out in our future congregations — we knew they were out there, as our church had been tying itself in knots for 20+ years over homosexuality, and we knew we were on the right side of history, so it must be those benighted laypeople holding the church back.
I knew of just a few students who were conservative, or just perceived as conservative. I didn’t really know how to relate to them, and never got curious, and this is a grave failing on my part.
So my seminary experience is not like your featured seminarian’s, in that I was his opposite, back then.
What changed? I graduated, interviewed and was called and ordained to serve a small congregation in a small town outside a major US city, and the bubble abruptly burst. A harsh mercy.
The bubble was one I had been in since late in high school, strengthened in college, and deeply reinforced in seminary. A bubble of SJW values, of uncritical acceptance that the left is morally superior, and for those of us who are also religious, a bubble that believes, and I mean BELIEVES, that this is Jesus’s way.
The members of my congregation were lovely and particular persons, and they just didn’t fit in the narratives I used to explain the world and the church!
There was the former cop, who is still one of the most noble men I’ve ever met, who taught me my narratives about law-and-order, about actual police, and even about human nature (we had conveniently ignored humanity’s fallenness in seminary) were misguided.
There was the large and ever-growing family (I baptized their 2 youngest) who attested in their very presence, that life is a gift from God, and worth every seeming-sacrifice to welcome and cherish. This was such a challenge to my perspective — I who donated to Planned Parenthood and belonged to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice!
And, I hate to put a fine point on it, but the persons and families who shared my politics, had generally more chaotic lives. Divorces, “troubled” teens, etc. Hell,
my life was chaotic and I made terrible personal choices, repeatedly.
Of course, #notALL and all that. But where the rubber hit the road, in real life trying to follow Jesus, the flesh-and-blood “conservative” people before me were absolutely shattering my expectations of them and along with that, the sense that I knew a damn thing. Harsh mercy. I am so, so grateful for them.
It was during these years of ministry that I found your blog. I was challenged at first by your Benedict Option diagnosis of the churches in the west, but I could not honestly contradict you. I grew heartsick and weary, finally seeing that my actions as a pastor had been building the MTD religion, not genuine Christianity. (Even though I could see plain as day that they are not the same thing!)
I want to also say, at this point, my heartsickness was deepest because from the very start of this journey, my sense of trepidation about this vocation was the Voice of Truth all along. Deep down, I knew the way of Jesus was beyond our political stances, and that aligning churches with party platforms always distorts the faith. I quit making leftist political jabs in my sermons. I adjusted the aim of my teaching, no longer arguing and trying to demonstrate how the gospel leads straight to progressive causes, but how it leads straight to repentance.
Although this change of heart went over well (of course!) in the congregation, and I was more honestly and truly connected with people, it led to deep internal tension for me, with my denomination overall. As I mentioned above, the institution is desperate for survival, and the ELCA, like many mainline church bodies, has leaned into progressive politics.
I started to fight gagging, at annual gatherings and clergy trainings, as every trendy cause was held up as salvation from decline (we must decolonize, we must become anti-racist (and this was in the Obama years)), meanwhile if one were to suggest that faithfully preaching and teaching the faith was enough, and that the church’s cultural heyday was simply over, let’s focus on discipleship, woooo boy, prepare to be patted on the head and no longer trusted by your colleagues.
I got to a point where I had to get out. I hate that I didn’t have the spine to stay, and to guide my congregation towards a Ben-Op way of being, despite the institution’s drift. I lost heart, knowing that a majority of the congregation were indeed good people but they wanted MTD, and I hadn’t challenged that enough. I lost heart and I really needed a pastor myself, and yet I could not think of one colleague who would understand my soul sickness, much less my perspective that our church was going down a barren path.
At this point in my story, I begin to think I can understand the seminarian’s situation. I do not know what he should do, and I will pray for him.
I am “envious” of him, that he is clear-sighted about his crisis as a seminarian. I wish my turmoil and change of heart had not involved (mis)guiding a congregation – I know God can use and redeem my time and any influence I had among them, but I was just such a weak leader and unfaithful on so many counts, and the people of God need and deserve so much better. I am brought to tears of repentance whenever I think about my “ministry” very deeply. I am weeping right now.
I guess if I have anything like advice, it would be to follow conscience. To leave can be an act of faithfulness and obedience to God. A community of like-minded Catholics might be closer than he thinks, or at least the solace of no longer upholding a dying imperium. As Merton wrote, “the desert itself moves everywhere,” so you might find an ascetic life blossoming in any job that supports you and a studio apartment for a cell. To stay may also be faithful, to speak truthfully and (likely) suffer for it, professionally or personally. I don’t know, but I do care and will not forget you.
I resigned in the spring of 2016. I couldn’t bear to be in church for quite some time; every service I attended, I was either overly judgmental of how they were doing it, or castigating myself that I hadn’t been like them. I tried many kinds of churches, but mostly stayed away. I nearly despaired that any church anywhere would just “give me Jesus.”
Rod, your writing of course remained important to me, and I eventually looked around for any Orthodox congregation near me. I had to see if they were everything they are cracked up to be, and there has been no disappointment. There is of course much to say here, but this is getting long. I was a catechumen for nearly a year, and was baptized Orthodox in February of this year (right before stay-at-home orders and massive disruption!).
Tears. God is so faithful.
UPDATE.2:
Father John Zuhlsdorf, a Catholic priest, sympathizes with the seminarian, and offers fighting words of encouragement.
