Losing church, losing readers

I lost at least two long-term Christian readers following the post about my decision to stop attending church (three posts back). I was sad about that, especially coming as it did right on top of my disappointment regarding the church. Then, the following sentence came into my head as I lay awake one night, “I am cast back upon myself,” and I found cheer in that, upon myself being the one place I can absolutely depend upon. Even if other people remain loyal, they can still die, and there’s only so much they can do anyway. Eventually, it all comes back to me.

While thinking about my absentee readers, I remembered that I had more to say about my decision to stop going to church. I didn’t say it sooner because I didn’t know how to express it sooner (if I had, I might not have lost my readers because what I have already said, if taken alone, seems harsh). Now that the words come to me, they flow effortlessly. It is often true that something I can’t say becomes easy to say once I get a little distance between myself and the situation that inspired it. The fact is that I went from feeling very welcome at church to doubting that I was welcome at all. 

For much of the time I attended, I was in email communication with two of the women who go there, and it was with them that I shared my objection to the requirement that I say the word Christ as a prerequisite for taking communion. Neither wrote back, at all, ever, and I took that as a very bad sign. Had I continued to feel welcome, I might have continued to go to Bible study even if they hadn’t relaxed their rule about communion. As things stood, I enjoyed Bible study fairly well (shallow though it was), and I also enjoyed the people, but I needed dialogue about the communion issue, and when I immediately ran into a wall of silence, I assumed that the only way for me, as an atheist, to be accepted was to keep my mouth shut about things that bothered me, and to express a reverence for Christ that I didn’t feel. When, after I quit going, no one contacted me to say I had been missed (everyone in class had my email address), I took it to imply that I probably wasn’t missed.

During my first weeks at St. Mary’s, I felt increasingly idealistic and even optimistic due to the initial warmth and liberalism of the people, but left feeling more jaundiced than ever in regard to the merits of any kind of organized Christianity. I don’t know of anything about the Christian religion that outrages non-Christians so much as hypocrisy. I assume that Christians feel pressure to pretend to be more loving than they are, but the result is that they look worse when they fail than they would have looked had they not pretended. And, no, I am not speaking about every Christian. The only reason that I don’t hate the Christian religion more than I do is that I believe in the goodness of some of my Christian readers. That made it all the harder to lose at least two of them. I suppose they thought I was being an ass over the communion issue, but I only brought it up because I wanted to feel that I belonged and because I believed it an occasion when I had something to teach. Perhaps, the reader was right who wrote, “the Church…is not interested in learning from you. From its viewpoint, you should be learning from it.”

In any event, I deserved to have my feelings discussed even if I was in the wrong, because I shared them with people who claim that love is the virtue that they hold in highest esteem, and love does not shut people out by ignoring problems. I could, of course, have talked to more people, but having been so treated by the two who had shown the most interest in me, I saw no reason to think that any good would come from contacting those who seemed less interested, and I assumed that, even if I had, the most likely outcome would have been animosity. Silence is a very effective wall. When people are yelling, there remains the desire to be understood if not to understand, but silence just says, “Go away.”

How America honors the birth of God Incarnate and all that he stood for

America is the most populous Christian nation on earth, so it might well be asked by those of you in heathen lands how we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus, who was renowned for his unremitting opposition to greed, wealth, and consumerism; and his insistence on generosity, not to those who are able to be generous in return, but precisely to those who are unable to be generous in return.

First, we show our respect for the penitential season leading up to Christmas by only gaining eight to twelve pounds, which isn’t bad considering how much we weighed going into it.

On November 26 (the day after a major pig-out celebration known as Thanksgiving), we open our stores at 2:00 a.m. so the benefactors of the poor can get an early start on their Christmas gift buying at “Mark Down Prices.” Eager to take advantage of the “Early Bird Specials,” American Christians literally bring sleeping bags and stand—or rather lie—in line hours in advance. You can best understand this seemingly degrading ritual by comparing it to another revered religious practice known as self-flagellation.

The dedication of our citizenry to helping the poor is so intense in the weeks leading up to Jesus’ birthday, that there is a veritable shopping frenzy that continues until the night of Christmas Eve, when most stores close so their employees can go to church in order to be in the right frame of mind for distributing all of those colorfully wrapped packages to the poor on Christmas morning. “Ah,” you ask, “America is a rich country, is it not, so who are these poor people of whom you speak?” Well, sad to say, but America has many who lay claim to Christian Christmas generosity. They consist primarily of one’s spouse, children, parents, siblings, in-laws, friends, employer, and, of course, oneself.

When the holiday finally arrives, some impoverished children are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of presents left by Santa, Mommy, Daddy, two grandmas, two grandpas, and assorted aunts and uncles, that they cry in frustration at opening them all. Truly, material excess requires some getting used to. Once all the poor people have gratefully received their holiday bounty, American Christians are so moved by the joy they brought into all those impoverished lives with the latest in Communist manufactured electronic gadgetry, that they just naturally want to go out bright and early on December 26, and give it another go. To help with this, the stores—which are understandably eager to support such a noble crusade—open in the wee hours yet again. This means that store employees have to miss out on time with their families in order to go to work in the middle of the night following two major holidays in a row, but they are only too happy to do it.

“Do American Christians observe Christmas in other ways?”

Oh, yes! Although buying gifts for indigent family, friends, and oneself most assuredly accounts for nearly all of the money spent, many churches do observe Christmas in other ways. For example, in most churches a colorfully robed choir sings happy holiday hymns amidst scores of potted poinsettias. A church near my house features a “living nativity” in which teenage girls and boys dress-up like angels, wise men, and shepherds, and take turns standing mutely around a manger that contains a fluorescently lit doll. Other churches “adopt” an entire poor family and drop gifts off at their house or apartment. Still others cook a turkey dinner for the indigent. And while most churches don’t meet on Christmas Day (making it one of the few birthday parties during which the guest of honor isn’t actually honored by his assembled friends), nearly all congregations listen to an Advent sermon in which they are reminded that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” (at least since the church converted or murdered all those solstice celebrating heathens). They are also told that they really need to give up at least a little of their accustomed holiday avarice, if not this year, then next year for sure. After all, if America’s way of honoring Christ’s birth doesn’t represent the true nature and depth of its religious piety, what does?