Ebbert Memorial UMC

Recently I posted the question “Why don’t you go to church?” on a listserve of writers.  These are the answers.  I have deleted names and other identifiers.  I have also corrected a few misspellings and so forth.  Each author is given a letter identifier; these are assigned in the order I received the e-mail. 

Because I needed to cut these down to ten minutes’ reading time, I cut lots of good stuff.  (After editing, I got it down to 3600 words…  thirty minutes’ reading!  So I cut some more.  Okay, 16 responders, so thirty seconds each…  nice thought, but I didn’t make it.)  I have also posted the unedited e-mails (without names).  Some of them are heart-breaking. 

   Please note:  This is about listening to people, honoring their experience, and learning from them; not judging whether they’re “right” or “wrong.”  

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A. says:   

The children across the street recently asked me that very question: “Why don’t you go to church?”

“I do, every day, in my garden.” I said.

I nurture plants. I harvest weeds, I compost and fertilize and water. This is prayer. The fruits and medicines I grow are divine gifts, symbols of the eternal and beautiful work of creation; I am co-creator of God’s world.

“We all worship in our own ways,” I said. “Church is beautiful. So is my garden. In my garden, I find fulfillment and connection to the Divine. Isn’t that the whole point of worship?”

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B. says:    I don’t attend church regularly because I often hear statements there that demean or trivialize people and beliefs which lie outside the church’s ideals. […]  I don’t go to church because when I go, I feel very harshly judged.  *** 

C. says:   

There are really two reasons I don’t go to church. The first, more surface reason is that I’m not Christian and not religious. […]

But there’s a deeper reason. I may not be religious, but in certain ways I consider myself spiritual. The great mystery of the universe and its origins strikes me as far too big to stuff into such a small container as a building and the words of a book. […]  Yahweh Himself wrote the Earth, the Sun, the other planets, the stars, humans, alien life, subatomic physics, dinosaurs, free will, waterfalls, black holes, the Big Bang, happiness, rutabagas, and so on.

So to me, even if every word of the Bible is correct, no man-made church or human preacher’s words can possibly compare to God’s church and God’s words, the universe itself. 

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D. says:   Truth is, while my faith is strong, and I love the theology, I find many elements of the modern church make me feel alienated from my faith.  Intolerant views, emphasis of social importance over personal importance of church, and the over playing of concepts of guilt rather than forgiveness make me feel little tie to the church or its community.  […]  If God, who knows a person’s sins better than they do themselves can forgive all, why is it that so much time is spent condemning others for their actions?

I used to go to church for a sense of community, but I for a time I found myself leaving services irritated with holy-than-though attitudes (often not by the priest).  That being the case, I felt that in my heart I was becoming part of the problem (because of my own hypocrisy) and so felt it was moving me away from God, rather than towards him. 

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E says:   […]   I love the experience of sharing worship with others […] but what I really miss is not having people “like me.”  The social aspect.  When I go to church it is mostly retired people and families with children, and  I am not either one of those things, and I feel lonely.  Where are the young, spiritual, […] don’t-want-children crowd hanging out?  Are they at another church?  Are they all atheists?  If I met more people at church social functions that I could hang out with in other social circumstances, I’d probably go more.  

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F. says:   [My wife] and I miss it from time to time [because:]- Nothing is a big draw that says “I have to be there or else I will be missing out on something.” 

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G says:   Maybe I can turn the question around.  Why go to church?  Well, I think one reason might be community.  My community is elsewhere, though, so that is not compelling.  […]

Another reason for going to church might be the music.  I’m always saying, “Thank God, for Bach.”  But do many churches really pay that much attention to it as they did in his day?  Is there new church music in the same sense?  […]

Here’s a possible reason not to go.  One of the main activities of church seems to be worship.  That whole idea makes no sense insofar as I can see.  The idea of an omnipotent and omniscient creature, maker of everything, master of time and space, requiring or even allowing worship just seems absurd. […] 

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H. says:   1. Church was somewhat coerced on my siblings and me as children. My parents were perpetually tardy, plus my father preferred to sit in the front row (which was always empty) rather than at the back of the church. Therefore we kids were embarrassed in front of our friends, feeling like we were part of the geek parade, going down the central aisle while the congregation was seated, 15-minutes into the Mass.   […]

3. As an adult, church didn’t provide any spiritual connection for me, and the rituals didn’t make up the difference.   

4. Now, I get my spiritual connection through many things. I often attend “Church of the Woods,” which means I go for a hike. I also connect spiritually by studying astrology and tarot. […]  The modern Catholic church frowns on meditation in the Buddhist sense, which is another way I make my spiritual connection.   […] 

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I. says:   I don’t go to church because I find everything I need in the purpose and glory of the universe in my own mind and the world around me.   

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J. says: 

I personally don’t go to church because I find organized religion to be bossy, devoid of true spiritual meaning (for me personally) and to be honest, rather silly. 

When I do go to church, it’s because I feel a certain power in a place where God hangs out, and where people gather to meditate upon God.  Also, organ music in a cathedral can’t be beat. 

[…]  I’ll spare you the saga of my journey from Catholic to atheist to spiritual seeker.  Your parishioners might be interested to know that it was a twelve step program (Al-Anon) that helped me to find a way back to spirituality and the acceptance of a higher power. 

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K. says:   I can provide two perspectives: mine and my husband’s.

I haven’t been attending church regularly because I’m still [church] shopping. […]  Once I get my health back, I’d like to continue my search.  

[…]  Having gone spiritually solo for so long, I truly miss sharing the love of Christ with others. But I need to find a place with people I connect with and can ultimately accept my (admittedly) different views and internal perspective of what the Bible says to me and how I live my life as a Christian. 

My husband, on the other hand, doesn’t like church because all he thinks about are the injustices that have been committed by Christians over the years. […]   

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L. says:   Why I don’t go to church (when I don’t go).

I’ve looked ahead at the sermon topic and decided that it falls outside of the boundaries of “too challenging” and “not challenging enough.”  Or I have child-care duties that morning and the three-year-old isn’t in the right mood to come to church.  Or my non-religious-participant husband is giving me signs that my husband is a jealous husband and that church is a false (and silly) idol.  And sometimes I think, “I think I’ll skip singing ‘Spirit of Life’ one more time and the obligatory holding hands with people I see about once a month, and its following expectation to feel like it is a Shining Moment of Deep Spiritual Communion.”

And sometimes I think, why go to church when I can find spiritual communion on a hike in the woods. 

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M says:   I was never raised with church, so why I don’t go is because I was never in the habit.

Why my mother stopped going to church  […:]

My mother’s first marriage was to a Vietnam veteran, an ex-con […]  When she realized that this man was degenerating into violent madness [shooting her dog, for instance], she knew she could not stay married to him any more without risk to her very life. No, he had not hit her […] but she could not remain his wife.  

When it became clear that the Catholic church would not forgive her for divorcing a violent maniac, and still considered it a mortal sin, she abandoned it, and organized religion, entirely. […] 

So, I was raised with a Menorah under the Christmas tree, a Buddha on the mantelpiece, and told the history of Samhain on Halloween. Our God needs no church, and no Man’s doctrine.   

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N. says:   […]  I have no desire to challenge anyone’s faith or belittle anyone who does go to church, but this is as honest an answer to your question as I can come up with: 

I don’t go to church because I don’t believe in God.  I am interested in spiritual matters, but in a personal rather than an institutional sort of way. I seek my spiritual understanding in nature, by surrounding myself with it and studying how the natural world works.  I’ve seen no evidence for the supernatural in my 50 years of life, so supernatural explanations for how things work don’t fit my experience.  The religions I’ve been exposed to dwell too much on the supernatural for me to accept their basic tenets as real, even though I agree with many of the social values taught through religion.  I just feel that for me, understanding how the universe works will come through studying the universe itself rather than studying people’s beliefs about the universe. 

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O. says:    

I grew up in an agnostic household, where church wasn’t a focus in our lives, and I was actually the odd one out for trying to make it to church whenever I could. […]  I liked the message: that Jesus loves me. […]  I found the message to be very comforting, so I went when time allowed.  

What made me stop [… :] 

I think the first death knell was when, as a teenager, I fell in with the Assemblies of God. […]  The hellfire and brimstone message of how people who ‘weren’t right with God’ (i.e. gays, liberals, etc. etc.) were going to be punished forever, and how this was a GOOD thing. It was something to celebrate! That didn’t set well with me. I’m a bisexual feminist. […]  Needless to say, there was no place for me there. 

Even so, I stayed […]  I believed in Jesus, and his message. […]  It’s what I clung to when all the damnation and brimstone was raining down in those sermons. The bit about loving one’s neighbor, and turning the other cheek, it meant a lot to me, and it still does. […]  [But]  all the church did was make me feel bad about existing in the first place while taking steps to micromanage my life.  Forget my existential questions, they had to get me a husband! 

In the end, I was kicked out. They never found out I was one of those filthy queers or I’m sure I would have gotten the boot a lot sooner.  Rather, it was in youth group, and the youth pastor was teaching [the younger kids] to call down the wrath of God in prayer on [those who mock Christians], and pray for their damnation. If your faith was true, God would strike them down. I didn’t want these kids to go around thinking that was okay, and I kept saying, “What about Jesus’ message of forgiveness? What about loving your enemy and turning the other cheek?” I got told to quiet down or I’d be kicked out. I wouldn’t quiet down, and, well… On my way out, the youth pastor said he would call down the wrath of God on me. I was seventeen. 

I tried to continue with church at one time or another into my adult life, and eventually fell out with Christianity altogether. I simply never felt welcome, not really, [because of my sexuality… ].

It wasn’t until years later I rediscovered my faith […]  It wasn’t because of church though.  It was because I was so certain I had felt God’s presence, shortly after a friend had died and I was in such desperate need of comfort.[…] 

However, I run into the same problem with most churches. If you’re not ‘right with God’ you’re going to Hell. Maybe God loves all his children, but his followers most certainly do not. I’m sad to say that a lot of trust was broken, and it may take awhile to return, if it ever does. 

[…]  I have gay friends who are out of the closet and practicing Christians, and I’ve seen them welcomed with open arms, but I still have such a hard time working up the nerve. The church I know […] carries the underlying message that who I am is wrong, and that if I did what they say, they could ‘fix’ me. I don’t want fixed. I don’t need fixed. I don’t want to belong to a community that says that, in order to be okay, I have to be someone I’m not. 

[…]  To be honest, the idea of attending church hasn’t occurred to me because I don’t know how church can help me develop my personal relationship with God. In the past, church has done so much to get in the way of that relationship, it just seems safer and saner to go it alone. 

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P. says:    [see complete version on this page] 

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Q. says: 

[…]  I generally haven’t gone to church when I have lived in a place where I already felt that I had a strong sense of community.When my wife and I moved to Illinois from Colorado for her to pursue her PhD, I knew that she would have colleagues, while I would know no one at first.  I suggested that we go to church.  [My wife] said, “I’ll go, as long as I don’t have to pretend to be a Christian.”  We were active members of the Green Street Unitarian Church in Urbana.
[…] 
Church feeds my need for community if I don’t have such a community already.  If I do have a community, I seem to feel that my spirit is fed by having friends with whom I can speak about matters of heart, spirit, and soul without a formal place of worship.