His name was Harry. He was pushing 80 when I met him. In the Second War he was cargo-master on a C-47 flying “the hump”–the dangerous airlift across the Himalayas that supplied Chinese forces fighting Japan. When his plane was shot down over enemy territory, he parachuted to safety and was sheltered by friendly villagers. Returning stateside, Harry married his sweetheart—she died three years later. He was single for some time—no children—then fell in love once more. Within five years his new wife was dead too.
And that’s when Harry left church for his mental and spiritual health. He spent Sunday mornings at the local railway museum restoring vintage locomotives and sandblasting rusting cabooses. He used those Sundays, his talented hands busy at mechanical tasks, to lament–to express his anger and sadness, feelings that weren’t welcome in church.
Unlike the villagers who saw him safely home, Harry’s congregation wasn’t hospitable to his grief. It practiced what Martin Marty calls “summery spirituality”–characterized by joy, smiling faces, and easy faith, but disallowed “wintry spirituality”–which is troubled by doubt, faith struggles, and tears of pain. Harry’s distressing emotions were disenfranchised–not openly acknowledged or publicly supported. He had to leave church to survive.
I’ve been thinking about Harry recently. That’s because I’m feeling now what he felt then–a great disconnect from how my church is managing its life of faith in the gathering darkness of the second Trump administration.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. The scope and speed and seriousness of what has happened these first weeks of the new president–the bulldozing of institutions, the scorching of programs, the blowing past Constitutional guardrails–is disorienting. I’m usually a positive, hopeful person. But now I feel wrenching emotions deep in my body, way down in my soul.
I feel fear. My disabled adult son’s service array–his group home and day training==is mostly funded by Medicaid. Steep cuts planned will gut these already-underfunded programs.
I feel anger. I’m infuriated by elected officials who normalize and support the President’s lawless behavior. Massive tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations paid for by trashing the fragile safety net.
I feel sadness. Having immigrated from Canada, I chose to become an American, but the ideals of “liberty and justice for all”’ are slipping away. It’s only been a few weeks in the whirlwind. But I’m weary. I’m discouraged. I’m drained.
Like Harry, I need a place to process these feelings through my Christian faith. But my church is no longer that place. It hasn’t been for a while. To keep the peace, leadership has chosen to remain silent. To put political discussion off limits. To ignore the elephant in the room. To arrange deck chairs as the Titanic sinks. To fiddle while Rome burns. Pick your metaphor.
My church isn’t a safe place for me to lament and express despair, to be encouraged and build hope. Instead, like Harry’s, my grief is disenfranchised. I leave feeling disheartened and disappointed and heavy, pushed down, not lifted up. This, in a progressive congregation with some powerful conservative members who call the shots.
Church isn’t a place of solace for me or for others who are really hurting, really scared, really angry right now. I know I can’t survive in a congregation that brushes off my heartache and threatens my integrity. A passive church forces me to compartmentalize rather than integrate these parts of myself. That I can’t do.
Nor is my congregation a place of truth. It says the right words: last Sunday the Prayers of the People included petitions “for the victims of hunger, fear, injustice and oppression.” But I worry that these words, which are spot on, are merely saying things that make us feel like good people who care. Since there’s a prohibition on defining what these words mean concretely they come off as empty abstractions—like a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
I’m not saying church should sanction partisan venting or personal vitriol, but it must find its voice against the moral madness. These days I find church demoralizing. I’ve found ways to stay involved, but my attempts to nudge the congregation into action have been rebuffed.
I’m tempted—like Harry—to drop out. In stark contrast with church, I find my advocacy work energizing. Speaking at Protect Medicaid protest rallies. Attending legislative breakfasts. And I’m trying to care for myself. Walking in the woods.. Delighting in the flurry of life at my birdfeeder. Finding back chord charts for Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan. Rereading Robin Myers’ Spiritual Defiance.
I so wish I could work through my grief at church. Maybe, like Harry, I need a shift at the railway museum.
17 Responses
James, I feel a bit like you. I try to stay positive realizing that God is still in charge and has been in charge during times that were very bleak. God was there during the Holocaust and the enslavement of Black people in our country. Listen to Dylan closely he has been discouraged with our cultural response for a long time. This gives me hope just as Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil Ochs, and Joan Baez do for me. Live in peace.
All of those folks are on my playlist too along with Pete Seeger.
Good Morning James, thanks for this thoughtful and painful blog. In a conversation this past week I noted that in the work I do in renewal we lay out 7 marks of healthy churches, one of them being congregations of justice and mercy. In our surveys this mark in 95% of churches ranks last and when I talk to leadership about this they inevitably say they don’t want to focus here because it is too dangerous (i.e. it will cause discord and people will leave). I think not only have we been captured by the culture we’ve lost sight of what it means to be communities of Shalom — a picture, foretaste, scout and ambassador of God’s shalom. Not only have we lost sight of that calling, we actually have no idea how to pursue it, we only know how to do church as North American congregations that have been shaped by the values of North American evangelicalism. Further, we lack the courage to be sacred families of shalom; we know people will walk out — maybe a lot of them, and so we grasp for a shadow of what we are supposed to be to hold on to what we have.
“Since there’s a prohibition on defining what these words mean concretely they come off as empty abstractions–like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Yes. Yes. But maybe that is too generous. Maybe they come off as worse, as untruthful, as lies. The churches have been captured.
I agree: silence is complicity. I think it’s mission-critical for churches to name public evils that harm the most vulnerable and damage the rule of law. That’s what the Hebrew prophets Amos (5:21-25), Hosea (6:6), Isaiah (1:10-17) and Micah (6:1-8) did. Jesus too (e.g., Matt 21:12-17). They called out social injustice and religious practices that legitimated it.
So many seem blind to what is happening in our country; it’s no wonder we are scared or puzzled as we try to understand how quickly things went ‘south’. It’s good you have some avenues for some solace. Thank you for writing this – you are not alone!
Yes!
On my play list are Shostakovich, Prokoviev, and Hindemith, all three of them persecuted, all three resistant.
Thank you for expressing your concerns which mirror mine. My play list is JS Bach’s B minor mass, Brahams Requiem and Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise.
James, Thank you! This hits so very close to home for some of us. How do we reconcile the fact that the church has become one of the last places where we expect to find comfort and a safe space for truth-seeking? The man in your story longs for a sense of belonging, a safe place to process some legitimate grief and trauma. He has 3 choices:
1. Live with the tension and remain at church, disappointing as it is.
2. Protest loudly until he is heard.
3. Leave the church and/or find a “better” one.
I am sorry for what I am about to do because I do not want to detract from the deeply profound dilemma you have portrayed so well here!
My hope and prayer is that my processing will help others also process.
In yesterday’s blog responses, a reader challenged my use of initials rather than a name. I responded a few months ago to this question, but will humbly do so again. Today’s essay explains why. Some of us live, worship, work, and volunteer in places many readers here would consider to be occupied/hostile territory. Why continue to go back to a place that agitates and frustrates you? But anonymity is about neither cowardice nor defiance. It is, for now at least, a calling. To lose anonymity is to lose one’s voice, one’s credibility, to cancel one’s self. Who then could suggest, in digestible bites, an alternative reality to Fox, F on F, the RNC, FG, John Mac_______? This is all that many Christians, actually good people, ever hear! I feel negligent leaving this burden to pastors alone.
So John, I would love to engage you in a private conversation, names included. I do not mean to agitate you or anyone else!! Perhaps you will convince me my calling is wrong. I should find a different church and different friends, let the chips fall where they may. Or perhaps I should read the blog but refrain from responding ( I routinely tell myself that). But for now, I cannot risk someone finding ( and forwarding) my name attached to some commentary they consider to be woke, heretical or worthy of dismissal. To some of us, at this particular time, this blog feels like church and our church feels like our mission field.
Thank you, James. You’re stated reasons for fear, anger and sadness mirror my life situation as well except that I’m American by birth. Church has become untenable. As a dropout, I have pursued the same activities as you. I am so very thankful for the RJ community.
You say that your church isn’t a place where you can “process your feelings.” Is that literally true? There is literally no opportunity where individuals are allowed to speak, no time where prayer concerns are gathered, no time for announcements, no small groups of any kind?
Or is it just that the leadership has chosen to avoid becoming specific about political matters from the pulpit?
It’s hardly news that how a church is going to navigate politically divisive times is an extremely hard task. I think of the observation made by Ohio school-teacher Samuel Harshman during the Civil War: “The feeling of antagonism between the two political parties deepened into animosity, and neighbors became enemies. The children of Democrats and Republicans could scarcely sit peaceably in the same school house, and their parents could scarcely worship together in the same meeting-house.” What you’re experiencing is nothing new. In fact, compared to the feelings assaulting people during the Civil War, I suspect our experiences right now are relatively mild.
As for your “attempts to nudge the congregation into action” getting rebuffed, well, join the club. Prophets don’t usually find a warm welcome, and even Jesus was no exception. But again, as I’m sure you know, there are usually a lot of people in any given church who wish it would be more active about any number of things.
I would like to think that Christians would show some empathy for–and extend some grace to–leaders, no matter, what decision they make. And that, without violating their own conscience if they feel they must speak up. There’s a time for prophetic witness, even if it means alienating or angering people. (Jesus told us to get ready for that–by in church too. It’s not like He found the religious establishment of His time to be a peculiarly “safe space.”) And there may be a time to take off your shoes, knock them together, and walk out. That shouldn’t be the first step, however.
The problem with demanding that the church be a place that reflects your political views and caters to your feelings is, as I’m sure you know, everybody wants that. I suspect you are a mature-enough Christian to know that that’s an impossibility, and that there’s even something wrong with wanting your church to ignore the needs of your fellow-congregants who feel differently. God doesn’t demand we get every jot and tittle right in our theology, our policy preferences, our economic theories, etc., before we’re allowed to come to Him. I don’t think He wants the church to be less welcoming than He is.
The author of this article is not saying that he wants or expects the church to “be a place that reflects [his] political views and caters to [his] feelings…” He is rather mourning the silence of his church leaders, which has done no one any favors and made real conversation about hard things nearly impossible. The church who is silent in such a way is complicit in enabling evil, much as the German Protestant church was complicit in WWII. I applaud this author for speaking up and speaking out. He has every reason to feel let down by his church.
Perfectly said.
I want to offer that some church pastors (mine for instance) have found a way to make scripture come alive in today’s climate encouraging “those with ears, let them hear” without being political. May God’s Spirit allow us to come listening for God’s truth and direction. Hasn’t it been said His Word does not come back to him void? The hard part is to act accordingly. May God help us have “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly WITH Him.”!
In these polarizing times, it’s so strange to see people interpret good words in such opposite ways. If a pastor prays that the nation’s leaders would do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God, part of the congregation hears that as a rebuke of the President (he should have treated Jan. 6 criminals with justice, be showing mercy toward immigrants, and quit bragging, but have some spiritual humility), and another part of the congregation hears that as an affirmation of the President (he’s treating illegal immigrants with justice, showing mercy toward Jan. 6 victims, and walking humbly before God by doing God-pleasing things). Being a retired pastor myself, I have a great sympathy for those pastors who are unsure how to speak the truth without getting into partisan mode. Please pray for church leaders.
I might not like a commenter’s anonymity but I respect it, especially when that commenter is almost always positive and up-building. 25 years ago on a Sunday morning we visited a well-known church in a big city where the greeters did not ask our names. On purpose. It was an open and affirming church which practiced anonymity for the sake of those worshippers who were not out yet and had to protect their identities to be safe. Granting anonymity can be a gracious gift of sanctuary.