Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

[iluvatar5150]

I think the modern world doesn't like to be told what to do or follow anybody's rules but their own Some of us grew up in church but fewer and fewer people are taking their kids to church or the kids refuse or make such a fuss about it parents leave them at home. So every generation since before 1900 has had less to do with the church. Now with science and computers providing everyone's answers, people look less and less at religion or they go for yoga or Buddhism but more often Atheism. We are letting go of God and he will punish us for it.

Woke culture and the green movement are full of rules - so much so that I’d argue that it’s filling a compulsion for piety among the non-religious. So it’s not merely “rules” that people are rejecting.

 

[FireDragon76]

Perhaps it is a thing of the past. There used to be the moose lodge, the elks, the fraternal order of something or other. Basically social clubs where generally older people came together to associate, dance, eat etc. Sometimes it was to help you get ahead in your business organization.

Loyal Order of Moose - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The generation that came of age in the 1970's was the "me generation", and had different values. They were more personal success oriented and individualistic than their parents, who often had survived hardships during the Depression.

Perhaps we are talking about a different Assemblies of God?
Of course research on Google returns wildly contradictory results, but these are a few from what I feel are reputable sources. It seems the AOG is as big or bigger than many of the older congregations. Of course we pray for the success of all. I was born and raised Episcopalian... and have seriously considered returning as I get older. Feels like "home" .

AOG:
"The Assemblies of God was founded in 1914. Today there are close to 13,000 churches in the U.S. with nearly 3 million members and adherents.
There are more than 69 million Assemblies of God members worldwide, making the Assemblies of God the world's largest Pentecostal denomination."
"The Assemblies of God (USA) experienced its 27th consecutive year of growth in 2016, with 3.24 million adherents and 2 million in major worship service attendance. In 2016, the AG saw an all-time high of new church plants and water baptisms and a 16 percent increase in Spirit baptisms. A new AG church is planted in the U.S. every 21 hours."

They've had slow, steady growth. I wouldn't be surprised if alot of that growth is due to higher birth rates.

For comparison:
Lutherans:
"The ELCA (Lutheran) was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. As of 2021, it has approximately 3.04 million baptized members in 8,724 congregations."
And they are shrinking:
Will the ELCA be Gone in 30 Years?

"The LWF (Lutheran World Federation) now has 149 member church bodies in 99 countries representing over 77 million Lutherans; as of 2022, it is the sixth-largest Christian communion."

Lutherans are mostly all white and have small families. That's why they are declining, they are following the rest of the white population in the US, which is also declining. Most people in the US don't even know what is distinctive about Lutheranism, aside from maybe knowing Lutherans look vaguely Catholic (sometimes), so it's very hard to see what's attractive about being Lutheran.

As a Lutheran, I would love to have a way to have the local church council listen to somebody who actually understands the demographic catastrophe that is about to hit their church, and why things have to change (and what resources and changes they are likely to need) , but it's a religious denomination where there's a 50/50 chance the pastor is nagged by little old ladies when they so much choose the wrong hymn. And there's just something about being Lutheran, the Lake Wobegon thing I guess, where the people can be remarkably insular and inward-looking. Most are also blue-collar types or civil servants that put all their energy into their secular vocation, and just expect the Church to just be there for them (due to the old-world model of the Church as a civil service, perhaps).

 

[FireDragon76]

Woke culture and the green movement are full of rules - so much so that I’d argue that it’s filling a compulsion for piety among the non-religious. So it’s not merely “rules” that people are rejecting.

What they are rejecting is the old paradigm of Protestant religion as the "10 impossible things you must hold in your head before breakfast", and not the dry moralism (which is what has been secularized, commodified, and turned into "wokeness"). In other words, it's highly propositional rather than provocative, it inherently appeals to a man (and yeah, I meant to say that), a man who no longer exists. The man was a buffered self, who could use instrumental reason and propositional truths to achieve autonomy and agency. Postmodernity has taken that all away (and revealed it never applied to half the human race in the first place). Now people are just revealed to be cogs in machines and slaves to algorithms and fake news.

Most of what made Christianity deeply meaningful in terms of embodied experiences, smells-'n'-bells, pilgrimages, feasts and fasting, masses and prayers for your dead ancestors, etc. were jettisoned or de-emphasized during the Reformation, and we've been living off the eviscerated corpse of the western Gregorian reforms ever since. Finally, we are just running on fumes and there's no "there" there anymore, in a postmodern world where words have lost their power to convey the transcendent.

 

[archer75]

What they are rejecting is the old paradigm of Protestant religion as the "10 impossible things you must hold in your head before breakfast", and not the dry moralism (which is what has been secularized, commodified, and turned into "wokeness"). In other words, it's highly propositional rather than provocative, it inherently appeals to a man (and yeah, I meant to say that), a man who no longer exists. The man was a buffered self, who could use instrumental reason and propositional truths to achieve autonomy and agency. Postmodernity has taken that all away (and revealed it never applied to half the human race in the first place). Now people are just revealed to be cogs in machines and slaves to algorithms and fake news.

Most of what made Christianity deeply meaningful in terms of embodied experiences, smells-'n'-bells, pilgrimages, feasts and fasting, masses and prayers for your dead ancestors, etc. were jettisoned or de-emphasized during the Reformation, and we've been living off the eviscerated corpse of the western Gregorian reforms ever since. Finally, we are just running on fumes and there's no "there" there anymore, in a postmodern world where words have lost their power to convey the transcendent.

Great post.

The only hopeful thing I can say is that, in this world that runs on fumes, just a little meaning can go a long way. Knowing even one little thing about our liturgy sustains me for a while.

 

[FireDragon76]

Great post.

The only hopeful thing I can say is that, in this world that runs on fumes, just a little meaning can go a long way. Knowing even one little thing about our liturgy sustains me for a while.

I try to get out and connect with nature, or I just practice meditation. All are good practices that get you outside your self-narrative.

I'm still not sure what I do religiously. I just know that most mainline Protestant churches are asleep at the wheel at the institutional level. They are run by people that are often not fully awake themselves, more than a few are frankly damaged individuals, and others think being relevant is trying to navigate secular politics (which isn't the solution, it's more of the problem). And Evangelicalism is a flaming wreck right now with zero credibility with most of the unchurched.

The pastor at the UCC church I have been visiting is a hospital chaplain, she has to see stuff like fatal teen overdoses on opoids. For those of us who are mature, and/or affluent enough, it's not so bad, but for people on the margins it's hell. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better, at least in the US and North America.

 

[rturner76]

Woke culture and the green movement are full of rules - so much so that I’d argue that it’s filling a compulsion for piety among the non-religious. So it’s not merely “rules” that people are rejecting.

I'm not political about my religion, I think Christians especially come from all walks of life. We could also say that a capitalist's greed can hinder their spiritual development. To me, woke is just a label to put on people like capitalists. We can't all be in one category or the other, there are a lot of grey areas. Social media has encouraged us to take more and more extreme points of view and social media spreads messages worldwide that influence people's way of thinking. It's like we are encouraged to join a political team instead of just having personal opinions.

I will agree that "wokeism" (though I'm still not sure what that really means in practice) has adverse opinions to "conservative" viewpoints when it comes to Christianity but then there is also a liberal viewpoint on Christianity that is more focused on love and acceptance than obedience to the law so I honestly wonder what Jesus Christ's message was more pointed to. Loving your neighbor or obedience to God's word?. Though I suppose both were the message of Christ, people choose to lean one way or the other

I don't know. These things make me confused like, who is more righteous when we are dealing with an opinion based on either love or obedience?

 

[dzheremi]

I am glad to see that some people here understand the value of living in a liturgical and sacramental community, rather than on an isolated and isolating island of individualism and personal interpretation/reduction of everything. Truly our life and our death are with our brothers and sisters, and increasingly adherents of Christianity in western forms of the religion (and yes, I meant to say that) are realizing that the same applies to the life and death of their entire way of being Christian in whatever tradition they are in. (Those who claim no tradition are definitely included.)

When whatever form of Christianity we are talking about dies, it won't be the stereotyped blue haired feminists or the gays or the whatevers who cause its death, but its own evolved fragility. You don't think Christians in the geographical (middle) east haven't faced worse than you can imagine for centuries now, with attendant plunges in overall population that are even deeper than that which you are facing now? Egypt and Syria are both roughly 10% Christian, Lebanon in the 30s, UAE about 20%, Kuwait 18-20%, and most other places that even have churches in the single digits (Oman 6.5, Jordan 3, Turkey 0.3, etc.). They get by like this for centuries not because they have some grand design of how society must be in order so that they can exist, but instead are dynamic and strong in their witness to an alternative vision of the world not offered by the majority religion of these countries. His name is escaping me right now, but there was a famous Muslim convert to Christianity in Egypt who had been, prior to his conversion, a translator of the Qur'an, and I guess at some point in that process he had a crisis of faith and decided to check out what the other major religion in Egypt (Coptic Orthodox Christianity; there are other churches, too, but well over 90% of all Christians in the country are Orthodox Copts, and it is seen as the de facto national/native Church) had to say. When he was asked what prompted his interest in Christianity in particular, he said something like "I saw in it a God of love that I didn't have in my religion. Christianity emphasized love in a way that Islam did not."

Perhaps an issue at least as concerns 'moral philosophy' (for a lack of a better way to put it) for western Christianities is that they are largely reactive to the secular (re)definition of love in a way that makes Christianity seem hateful by comparison. If nobody sees you clothing the naked, or if they see that you are 'clothing' them in sanctimony rather than warmth, can you blame them from turning away from you and your message? We could think of the oft-quoted supposed Gandhi aphorism about how he likes our Christ so much more than our Christians, but I think the more straightforward and 'American' way to put it is more like the bumper sticker I've seen on the road more than once here in our lovely California traffic: "Jesus Loves You...But Everyone Else Thinks You're A (Jerk)."

One of Christ's most famous statements is the question "Who do you say that I am?" I think the western world by and large knows who Christianity says Jesus is. Maybe then there's room for a little soul-searching on the related question "Who do you say that My followers are?" I think all kinds of churches (not just western ones) need to seriously look at that. We are blessed in the Coptic tradition in particular to hear the proclamation of the Apocalypse of St. John as part of every Holy Week service, and over a significant portion of it, the response of the people (to each one of the characterizations of the individual churches of Asia) is "He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says unto the Churches." In such a reflective time as Holy Week, it gives us a welcome opportunity to assess if we are really who we say we are, and what the Spirit might say to us if presented with our spiritual life as a congregation.

But getting there would require a much more communal spirit than many of the more modern forms of Christianity have to begin with, so I don't know. It is certainly a tough position to be in, and I don't envy western churches just because they don't have the same type of problems as those that churches in the MENA region often face in their homelands. What's worse: Nobody caring what you have to say because they tuned you out decades/centuries ago, or a certain subset of people really, really caring what you have to say to the point of wanting to physically punish you for it?

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm not political about my religion, I think Christians especially come from all walks of life. We could also say that a capitalist's greed can hinder their spiritual development. To me, woke is just a label to put on people like capitalists. We can't all be in one category or the other, there are a lot of grey areas. Social media has encouraged us to take more and more extreme points of view and social media spreads messages worldwide that influence people's way of thinking. It's like we are encouraged to join a political team instead of just having personal opinions.

I will agree that "wokeism" (though I'm still not sure what that really means in practice) has adverse opinions to "conservative" viewpoints when it comes to Christianity but then there is also a liberal viewpoint on Christianity that is more focused on love and acceptance than obedience to the law so I honestly wonder what Jesus Christ's message was more pointed to. Loving your neighbor or obedience to God's word?. Though I suppose both were the message of Christ, people choose to lean one way or the other

I don't know. These things make me confused like, who is more righteous when we are dealing with an opinion based on either love or obedience?

I'll take loving over right. Love isn't about being righteous, but seeking the good of the neighbor (to put my Lutheran hat on for a moment). Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought Christian ethics couldn't be reduced to moral principle. He was very much a proto-situational-ethicist, and saw alot of nuance behind even the seemingly simplest ethical dilemas.

 

[lismore]

When the gospel is preached it bears fruit (Colossians 1:6), regardless of race, background or 'Gen XYZ'

This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.

No gospel, no fruit. God Bless

 

[rturner76]

I'll take loving over right. Love isn't about being righteous, but seeking the good of the neighbor (to put my Lutheran hat on for a moment). Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought Christian ethics couldn't be reduced to moral principle. He was very much a proto-situational-ethicist, and saw alot of nuance behind even the seemingly simplest ethical dilemas.

I try to also navigate the grey area of what is loving and what is "right." I can't say I don't have some conservative tendencies when it comes to not living a sinful life but I don't force my moral compass on others unless it it about someone harming another person. Meaning I don't judge others unless I want to be judged myself. In my life, I just try to do my best and ask for forgiveness when I fail. I would probably advise anyone else to do the same. I think if people went by that, we wouldn't have these woke and conservative extremes.

 

[Andrewn]

Most of what made Christianity deeply meaningful in terms of embodied experiences, smells-'n'-bells, pilgrimages, feasts and fasting, masses and prayers for your dead ancestors, etc. were jettisoned or de-emphasized during the Reformation, and we've been living off the eviscerated corpse of the western Gregorian reforms ever since. Finally, we are just running on fumes and there's no "there" there anymore, in a postmodern world where words have lost their power to convey the transcendent.

Valid as they are for many people, these are expressions of Christianity rather than Christianity itself. Christianity is a loving relationship with God, who became incarnate, suffered for the sins of humankind, died, and rose again to save the world. This is the Good News. The expression of our relationship with God can change from one culture to another without the person in this relationship becoming less Christian. In this sense, Christianity is a supra-religion.

Most people still believe in an afterlife and perhaps even in God. So why do many people find Christianity untrustworthy? I suspect it is because of particular features/baggage preached as essential elements. Or, as you said, "What they are rejecting is the old paradigm of Protestant religion as the '10 impossible things you must hold in your head before breakfast'."

Can we identify the features that most people reject? I have some ideas but would rather listen to other thoughts.

 

[archer75]

@Andrewn I'd guess it's not always an active rejection, but sometimes a lack of interest in something that doesn't offer them anything they can't get more easily. If what's on the menu is some kind of generic niceness or generic conservatism...well, you can get that at home.

Fr Robert Taft of the RCC said somewhere (I'm paraphrasing) that people like to go to church do so something: get hit with something, eat something, get rubbed with something, carry something...at so many churches there's very little to do as part of the worship except maybe sing. Obviously you're not going to just walk in somewhere and participate in some kind of involved liturgy, but you might see people doing it. I admit I found that very attractive at the OO parish I visited once (very few attendees, but they were in and out of the altar and doing things the whole time) and also at the first EO parish I attended: clearly people in street clothes singing part of the service, others lighting candles, shuffling around, moving slowly, praying, venerating icons, attending to children, moving something or other...it made a big difference. If we're talking liturgical churches here, I bet the involvement of the laity in the liturgy (or doing something other than sitting during the part the clergy do) has a lot to do with how newcomers perceive it.

Also, people have just as much interesting in healing and transformation as they ever did -- look at the neck-cracking videos on youtube: freedom (from pain), release, relief after 20 years of stiffness...it's the same faith-healer or snake-oil stuff. People always want that. But these days it's hard to encounter that in a church. Very often the central notion is something pleasant, but that doesn't lead anywhere: conservatism, acceptance, presence or absence of a rainbow flag...and there's not a lot to do in a lot of churches, and not much promise for change.

So I bet part of what's rejected is the perceived invitation "give us your money and your very precious free time and energy, so you can either get what you could get for free anywhere, or get nothing, and do nothing but wish you weren't here."

 

[FireDragon76]

Valid as they are for many people, these are expressions of Christianity rather than Christianity itself.

Religious expression of some kind is essential to religion, it isn't accidental to it.

Christianity is a loving relationship with God, who became incarnate, suffered for the sins of humankind, died, and rose again to save the world. This is the Good News.

This is just another series of propositions.

The expression of our relationship with God can change from one culture to another without the person in this relationship becoming less Christian. In this sense, Christianity is a supra-religion.

I see no evidence to support that notion. Some Evangelicals have tried to reframe Christianity as a non-religion, but that's really intellectually dishonest, and it's ultimately not been helpful in actually understanding Christianity as more than merely propositions about the world.

Most people still believe in an afterlife and perhaps even in God.

Two things to consider:

1) Atheism and/or agnosticism are rising quickly among Gen Z in North America, and this is already widespread in Europe.

2) People may say they believe in an afterlife or God as a proposition, something their culture has taught them is the appropriate response, but they don't necessarily engage with those concepts as meaningful realities: the concepts don't relate to actual practices or structures in their lives. And if asked, most of these people will say that their religious or spiritual beliefs aren't very important in their lives. And that segment is growing in every western society.

 

[archer75]

2) People may say they believe in an afterlife or God as a proposition, something their culture has taught them is the appropriate response, but they don't necessarily engage with those concepts as meaningful realities: the concepts don't relate to actual practices or structures in their lives. And if asked, most of these people will say that their religious or spiritual beliefs aren't very important in their lives. And that segment is growing in every western society.

One thing I have trouble understanding (even in my own church, but especially in popular discourse) is what "spiritual " even means.

 

[FireDragon76]

@Andrewn I'd guess it's not always an active rejection, but sometimes a lack of interest in something that doesn't offer them anything they can't get more easily. If what's on the menu is some kind of generic niceness or generic conservatism...well, you can get that at home.

Fr Robert Taft of the RCC said somewhere (I'm paraphrasing) that people like to go to church do so something: get hit with something, eat something, get rubbed with something, carry something...at so many churches there's very little to do as part of the worship except maybe sing. Obviously you're not going to just walk in somewhere and participate in some kind of involved liturgy, but you might see people doing it. I admit I found that very attractive at the OO parish I visited once (very few attendees, but they were in and out of the altar and doing things the whole time) and also at the first EO parish I attended: clearly people in street clothes singing part of the service, others lighting candles, shuffling around, moving slowly, praying, venerating icons, attending to children, moving something or other...it made a big difference. If we're talking liturgical churches here, I bet the involvement of the laity in the liturgy (or doing something other than sitting during the part the clergy do) has a lot to do with how newcomers perceive it.

Also, people have just as much interesting in healing and transformation as they ever did -- look at the neck-cracking videos on youtube: freedom (from pain), release, relief after 20 years of stiffness...it's the same faith-healer or snake-oil stuff. People always want that. But these days it's hard to encounter that in a church. Very often the central notion is something pleasant, but that doesn't lead anywhere: conservatism, acceptance, presence or absence of a rainbow flag...and there's not a lot to do in a lot of churches, and not much promise for change.

So I bet part of what's rejected is the perceived invitation "give us your money and your very precious free time and energy, so you can either get what you could get for free anywhere, or get nothing, and do nothing but wish you weren't here."

Good stuff.

Orthodox liturgy, with its sense of participation, is probably something that would be appealing to many people (look at the perennial popularity of events like Burning Man, for instance, which is all about participatory liturgy)

The problem is that Orthodoxy as a totality is ill suited in its current form for western culture, esp. with its strong tendency towards a moral authoritarianism (somebody on reddit recently was joking about how Romanian Orthodox penitential canons punish oral sex with more penances than abortion, for instance). While we as a culture need to reconnect with embodied systems of meaning-making, forgoing healthy critique of moral authority is simply not going to have purchase with post-enlightenment western people. Not when so much of our society has traditionally been rooted in a sense of moral responsibility.

 

[archer75]

Good stuff.

Orthodox liturgy, with its sense of participation, is probably something that would be appealing to many people (look at the perennial popularity of events like Burning Man, for instance, which is all about participatory liturgy)

The problem is that Orthodoxy as a totality is ill suited in its current form for western culture, esp. with its strong tendency towards a moral authoritarianism (somebody on reddit recently was joking about how Romanian Orthodox penitential canons punish oral sex with more penances than abortion, for instance). While we as a culture need to reconnect with embodied systems of meaning-making, forgoing healthy critique of moral authority is simply not going to have purchase with post-enlightenment western people. Not when so much of our society has traditionally been rooted in a sense of moral responsibility.

There is a huge need for participation (in things other than mobbing and conspiracy theories) right now. Most of life used to be participatory. Now very little is.

If I understood you right, you think Orthodoxy tends toward moral authoritarianism. There is definitely some of that in some strains of Orthodoxy. I think of any authoritarianism as unOrthodox and unChristian, but I'm sorry to say I know what you mean and I can see how it "pops."

I do think there's history within Orthodoxy for "moral responsibility." We love to talk about how each Christian is responsible for the faith, how the laity and monks bucked the bishops who returned from the Council of Florence talking about union with Rome. However, I'm not sure how often we live that visibly. Again, I see what you mean.

But I didn't just mean the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom or any EO liturgy. I meant: if you go to see Zen Buddhists having a service, even if you never heard of Buddhism, you'll know they're having some kind of religious service. Same for medieval Roman Catholic liturgy, from what I read. Same for Orthodox liturgy, at least the kind that appeals to me. But at a lot of religious services, and I've visited a good number over the years...well, I'm not pointing fingers, and I'm not saying the EO are great and perfectly exemplary...this is just an observation based on my experience of MOST Christian services that I have attended in the US. There's not a lot to do. Okay, not everyone wants to be Orthodox. I got that. Don't Anglicans have plenty of liturgical stuff to choose from? I understand each priest can't just choose whatever on a whim, that you need a blessing to do whatever you do. Some Anglican churches, yeah, it's more like participatory liturgy, although still mostly observed by the laity, as far as I've seen. Sometimes it's really really really low on the liturgy scale.

It's very hard for me to understand. I know you can't just decree this stuff, I know there are few attendees these days, I know that I am not in the position of an Orthodox or Anglican bishop who has a million things to juggle. But there is nothing to do at a lot of churches, certainly not for a visitor! So it feels to me...

And I think this is related to the bit about moral responsibility. If you participate in the liturgy (serving formally, venerating icons and fixing the candles, helping someone understand what's happening, whatever), I think it goes a long way toward participating in the living of the faith. We are so used to observing and then making a quick judgment about what we observe. You go to a church -- "I didn't really like it," "I didn't feel at home." We are used to the idea of moral responsibility, but our online cults and coalitions have claimed our moral responsibility for their own. We participate by clicking, not by praying. If you got ten million people to take a year off social media, I bet church attendance would get a serious bump.

Another thing related to this thread is that a lot of people used to go to church who just weren't that interested. Social pressure to do so is way down...so attendance is down. And if you don't go, why even "identify" as Christian? Seems to me that Christianity (in many places) has enjoyed a long period of state support and inertia that made it look like "everyone" was a Christian." That era is waning. Is that the end of Christianity? I don't think so, and most Christiand -- certainly EO -- would say it can't be. But there is no article of faith and there are no words of Christ that tell us that Christianity will always be super visible within US culture. There is no article of EO faith that says that we will always be numerous enough to support our bishops and many of our priests.

 

[Lost Witness]

Christianity won't survive without institutions to support it.

The 'world' can't put out the Light that the LORD had Established when he walked the Earth.
The Lord is that Light and it remains even to this day as it shall always remain

 

[rturner76]

The 'world' can't put out the Light that the LORD had Established when he walked the Earth.
The Lord is that Light and it remains even to this day as it shall always remain

Ames, there are billions of us around the world who inspire billions of other people. However, I do see a trend in the western world of throwing off anything that discourages sin. I think the big divide started happening in the 60's when middle-class kids went to college and "expanded their minds" throwing away the nuclear family to make more room for personal pleasure.

I mean how do we go back to restricting our behavior when we have thrown out any "traditional" values? The next generations have gotten more extreme with the indulgence of carnal pleasure and voyeurism etc. It seems that the only thing that brings us back to God is plague and natural disaster.

But I still have hope that the billions who are dedicated to living right will influence those who find themselves at rock bottom or at least in need of a change in their lives.

There is kind of only two roads, living for self-pleasure and living for God. Self pleasure kind of destroyed the Roman Empire as it does with just about every empire.

(apologies for ranting) I actually agree with your statemant here.

 

[dzheremi]

Valid as they are for many people, these are expressions of Christianity rather than Christianity itself. Christianity is a loving relationship with God, who became incarnate, suffered for the sins of humankind, died, and rose again to save the world. This is the Good News. The expression of our relationship with God can change from one culture to another without the person in this relationship becoming less Christian. In this sense, Christianity is a supra-religion.

I think I understand what you mean about the expression of this relationship differing from culture to culture, but what exactly is the purpose of divorcing Christianity as a loving relationship with God from the means by which we participate in that relationship, so that the former and not the latter are "Christianity itself"? No other relationship works this way. For example, if I'm married and say that my marriage is a loving relationship with my wife, then aren't the things I actually do to manifest/show that love at least just as important as or even possibly more important than mentally understanding or emotionally feeling love towards and from her? Can you even have one without the other? Anyone can say the words "I love you", after all, but as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.

Maybe this sort of dualism is part of why a lot of people reject certain forms of Christianity.

 

[iluvatar5150]

@Andrewn I'd guess it's not always an active rejection, but sometimes a lack of interest in something that doesn't offer them anything they can't get more easily. If what's on the menu is some kind of generic niceness or generic conservatism...well, you can get that at home.

Fr Robert Taft of the RCC said somewhere (I'm paraphrasing) that people like to go to church do so something: get hit with something, eat something, get rubbed with something, carry something...at so many churches there's very little to do as part of the worship except maybe sing. Obviously you're not going to just walk in somewhere and participate in some kind of involved liturgy, but you might see people doing it. I admit I found that very attractive at the OO parish I visited once (very few attendees, but they were in and out of the altar and doing things the whole time) and also at the first EO parish I attended: clearly people in street clothes singing part of the service, others lighting candles, shuffling around, moving slowly, praying, venerating icons, attending to children, moving something or other...it made a big difference. If we're talking liturgical churches here, I bet the involvement of the laity in the liturgy (or doing something other than sitting during the part the clergy do) has a lot to do with how newcomers perceive it.

Also, people have just as much interesting in healing and transformation as they ever did -- look at the neck-cracking videos on youtube: freedom (from pain), release, relief after 20 years of stiffness...it's the same faith-healer or snake-oil stuff. People always want that. But these days it's hard to encounter that in a church. Very often the central notion is something pleasant, but that doesn't lead anywhere: conservatism, acceptance, presence or absence of a rainbow flag...and there's not a lot to do in a lot of churches, and not much promise for change.

So I bet part of what's rejected is the perceived invitation "give us your money and your very precious free time and energy, so you can either get what you could get for free anywhere, or get nothing, and do nothing but wish you weren't here."

That’s an interesting point, and one that I’ve been experiencing myself. The only thing that makes sunday service bearable for me is working on the production crew. Otherwise, it’s just a hassle and a boring waste of time.