[Sundaycommunity] WHY PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM CHURCH

Wed Mar 3 10:09:40 PST 2021

Thanks, David and Brian S.!

Lee

> On Mar 3, 2021, at 12:04 PM, David Walsh via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for sharing your personal thoughts Brian and others. Below are two short reflections I shared recently with friends.
>  
> I am involved with a project to introduce prophetic voices to university and high school students, and I find they are enthusiastic to engage with others on an inter-faith basis around justice issues. With the way the bible and the message of Jesus have been distorted by Christians, we need to reclaim the social justice and contemplative elements of our faith in ways that are not threatening to others who see only the hypocrisy of many Christians. We are fortunate at the Sunday community to have prophetic priests and members who help to raise our consciousness about how our faith relates to the many injustices of our society.
>  
> David
> David Walsh
>  
> “I plead guilty to a life-long passion, even an obsession with making sense of faith, especially for those for whom it makes little or no sense. This concern had a definite moment of birth when I was 21 and spent a full year outside the then very Catholic Ireland at the University of Caen in the north of France. For the first time in my life I encountered widespread agnosticism among my French companions, most of them baptized Catholics. And a first simple insight got born then, one that was strengthened in later years as a Jesuit, working always in different university contexts. I became convinced that most blockages to faith were not on the level of truth but on the level of spiritual freedom. This was later confirmed when I did some more specialist work on Newman and discovered his special stress on people’s disposition. A second insight, born from a year in Latin America, was that our western lifestyle and culture have immense and often hidden power over our spiritual freedom or lack of it. A third dimension entered when I began to understand that human imagination is a key cultural battleground where faith is either starved or nourished. So these three topics – freedom, culture, imagination – came to be natural concerns for me, and in this spirit I tried to explore some of the so-called frontier areas of fundamental theology. <>”
> Jesuit theologian, Fr Michael Paul Gallagher
>  
>  
> The Bible is one massive protest against the ancient domination system, which makes it a very political document. And we need to remember that Jesus didn't simply die, he was executed by the domination system that ruled his world. He was executed because he had become a radical critic of the way that world was put together and he was beginning to attract a following. To be very blunt, it's difficult for me to imagine how anybody who has seen what the Bible and Jesus are about could vote for policies that actually maintain or increase the wealth of those at the top in our day.
> 
> For Christians, a major task is consciousness raising within our own congregations about the Bible. Not only about what it is, but also about the idea that God is passionate about our liberation from oppressive systems.
> 
> Part of the scandal of American Christianity is that statistically the U.S. is the most Christian country in the world and yet, as a country we have the greatest income inequality in the world. And as a country we are uncritically committed, not simply to being the most powerful nation in the world militarily but to being as militarily powerful as the rest of the world combined.”
> 
> Marcus Borg
> 
>  
> From: Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity-bounces at lists.integralshift.ca> On Behalf Of Brian Halferty via Sundaycommunity
> Sent: March 3, 2021 11:37 AM
> To: sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca
> Cc: Brian Halferty <bhalferty at yahoo.ca>
> Subject: Re: [Sundaycommunity] WHY PEOPLE WALK AWAY FROM CHURCH
>  
> Brian, and Lee,
>  
> I also found the article to be pretty good. It didn't go into great depth of discussion on the various points, but it did outline pretty accurately many of the reasons why people either reject the formal church(es) or just put religion aside.
>  
> I grew up in a household that was very Roman Catholic, and very traditional about all of that.  My grandparents, (my Mother's parents) and especially my grandfather had a fairly rigid view of the RC church and its laws and regulations.  I realized in my adult years, looking back, that my grandfather was really a Jansenist, that school of thought which emphasized evil and sin more strongly than almost any other element of belief.  I went to Catholic grade school, and learned a lot of narrow thinking there as well.  Regarding Church membership, we were taught to believe that if anyone we knew -- a friend, or even a relative -- turned away from the Catholic church and left it, we should avoid that person.  Do not visit their house, do not socialize with them, stay away from them.  They are dangerous.  
>  
> I have now long-since come to see that kind of approach as totally judgmental: a fearful attitude at best and a hateful attitude at worst.  Fear and hatred are closely linked.  Henri Nouwen used to say that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear.  And we were being taught to fear, (or hate), people whom we defined as different or not sufficiently like us.
>  
> My Mother, God love her, while being a "good Catholic," was also a more loving person than that.  She had a more open personal attitude towards people, was generous, helpful to others. And she had a good sense of humour, with regard to herself and to others.  I'm grateful for her influence in my life, and for having learned my first lessons about love from her.
>  
> In our own lives, Mary Lou and I have made choices about church and spirituality, how we will worship, and how we will (try to) live our lives. Our 5 children all have their own approaches to things.  ranging from active church participation for a couple of them all the way to complete dissociation from church affiliation.  If we were living the old religious code we learned as children, we would reject those children who left the church, keep them away, disown them, disavow any association with them.  What a hell on earth would we be creating for them and for us!  But that is not how we live.  We love our children, and their children, with our very lives.  Regardless of where they stand on church affiliation, they are all good people: highly principled, living and promoting justice, loving their families and others, and trying to be instruments of peace.  They are spiritual people in a most fundamental way. We could hope for nothing better. We are blessed, and so are they.
>  
>  Best wishes,
>  
> Brian
>  
>  
>  
> Brian J. Halferty
> 146 Sumach Street, Apt. 214
> Toronto, ON  M5A 0P7
> 416-431-0038 
>  
>  
> On Wednesday, March 3, 2021, 04:48:36 a.m. EST, Lee Piepgrass via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca <mailto:sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca>> wrote: 
>  
>  
> I read it, Brian, and I thought it was pretty good, right on the money in many cases. And even though it deals more with “Christian,” even evangelical Christian, rather than explicitly “Catholic” churches, there were many points, I felt, that were well taken and could equally apply to us. My kids like yours don’t go to church and have not baptized their kids. I support them in their choices, which make sense to me on many levels. Don and I always counselled then not to mistake religion for spirituality. They all have healthy spiritual outlooks, they like young people mentioned in the article, don’t find nurturance for that part of their lives in any church.
>  
> If it weren’t for our community and others like it over the years, I might not have made it this far.
>  
> Thanks for this, even if you didn’t read it.
>  
> Lee
> 
> 
> On Mar 3, 2021, at 3:43 AM, Brian Shaughnessy via Sundaycommunity <sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca <mailto:sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Why People Walk Away from Church. A Post-Church Christian Reflects on the… | by Dan Foster | Backyard Church | Medium <https://medium.com/backyard-theology/why-people-walk-away-from-church-9724179d9234>
>  
> I haven't read the article.  Don't feel I have to.  I have a pretty good idea from personal experience.
>  
> It's ironic.  The main reason we moved over in 1991 from St. Peter's Church to here was because our kids were in the public system, having started there for French immersion and with the approval of some of the younger Paulists.
>  
> The "CIC" having at that time two very lively and active youth groups, a senior and a junior, that our kids much enjoyed until the time came for them to go off to university, Val to McGill and Tony to Waterloo.
>  
> Now not one of our three go to Mass anymore.
>  
> We have 5 grandchildren, not one of them baptized.
>  
> "You can lead a horse to water.  But you can't make it drink."
>  
> "Into Your hands, Lord, I commend all of our spirits."
>  
>         Brian S.
>  
> -- 
> aptYLJC,Twbd,ttM
>  
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